The Last Journey of Ninoy

Poster from Rogue Magazine

I just watched Jun Reyes’s The Last Journey of Ninoy on ABS-CBN’s Sunday night feature. For us who grew up living through Martial Law when the press was muzzled and the news was “managed,” it is refreshing to see a documentary that’s able to dramatically portray — without resorting to sensationalism, too — what really happened to Ninoy during those times.

Because for us who got fed only on what was considered “the true, the good, and the beautiful” during those dark times, there were a lot of questions the answers to which we could only read between the lines of type. Even the so-called mosquito press, despite their stinging bites against the Marcos regime, during the last few years of the dictatorship could only give us little. We had to filter whatever news as rumors. We became great puzzle-solvers and conspiracy-theories experts.

Reyes’s docu provides those answers and more. For instance, I always wondered how Ninoy and the others were rounded up that night in September 1972? The docu shows us footage of his arrest. It seems like a full battalion came to arrest him at the hotel where he was having a meeting with other Marcos opponents. And because it is video footage, we get more than the still shots that surfaced later on.

But it is not only the video footage that provides us new insights into these events. The writing — and the research that went into it — also delivers what really seems to have been on Ninoy’s mind when he made the decision to come back to the Philippines. That is, he literally meant what he said: “The Filipino is worth dying for.”

By framing the docu along the timeline of his decisive return back to the country — taking the circuitous route from Boston to LA to Singapore/Malaysia to Taipei and finally to Manila — we also witness the twists and turns of his political journey from being the ambitious and young politician to shrewd senator and presidential aspirant to detainee and renewed Christian to exiled patriot and to — what he must have hoped against — the martyr to democracy.

This is a must-see for all Filipinos.

I am Ninoy

There’s this site with a cool header that shows how each one of us can say: I am Ninoy.

With Cory Aquino’s death and the continuing exposés on the Arroyo government’s excesses, there seems to be a growing sentiment for each Filipino to make a difference. To become Ninoys, ready to die for one’s country. Or as the spin now goes, “to live” for the Filipino and the country.

Will it snowball, this sentiment? I don’t know. But I remember writing something about it last year, and the year before that.

Why I do farming instead …

With the brouhaha over Willie Revillame’s blowing his top over inserts of Cory’s funeral cortege during his noontime show to artists rallying over insertions in the National Artists Awards, who can blame me from leaving the noise behind and going off to do some planting and harvesting in Farm Town.

There’s something comforting in this virtual agricultural pursuit that calms the spirit beset by the latest but not the last controversy in Philippine politics, media, and the arts. Tomorrow or next month, all these will be forgotten and another one (or two or three new) controversy will be brewing.

Yes, I’m apathetic. Especially when it comes to things that never seem to change, however much we try to effect new beginnings.

By the way, my last name is Cynical.

Anger + Love = ?

A GRATEFUL NATION. The remains of President Corazon C. Aquino, guarded by soldiers representing the four branches of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, are brought out of the Manila Cathedral at 11:30 AM on Wednesday August 5 to make its way to the Manila Memorial Park in Paranaque City for interment. Behind the coffin is a throng of supporters all wearing yellow, Cory’s signature color. Posted on MindaNews with photo by BJ Patino

Like everyone else who couldn’t join the funeral march of Cory Aquino, I’ve been watching the live coverage on TV.

I like what Carol Arguillas says — 1983: Anger drove people to march. 2009: Love drove people to march.

How wonderful it would be if love and anger transforms into a fervid need to create change in each Filipino and in Philippine society.