BOOK
REVIEW
PUDDLE
OF BLOOD
by Juan L. Mercado
( Weekend of 21 August
in Sun-Star syndicated newspapers, Palawan
Times, Mindanao Bulletin, Gold Star Daily,
Bicol Post, Bohol Chronicle, Metro Post, Visayan
Daily Star, Mabuhay, Leyte Samar Daily Express,
Mabuhay, Voice of Pampanga, Zamboanga Scribe
and other papers. )
Our
paths crossed, for the last time, at the San
Francisco International Airport. The family
and I were heading for our Bangkok flight
gate. Striding toward his Boston plane, Senator
Benigno Aquino, Jr. bumped into us.
The
years have blurred what we chatted about then.
We did laugh over my having an airline courier
sneak his protest, smuggled from his Fort
Bonifacio cell, to Bangkok Post editor Theh
Chongkadikhij.
The
PA system announced our flights. As we parted,
my then grade-school son Francis, groused
: "Why didn’t you introduce me?
That’s the next Philippine president."
That
was not to be. Twenty two years ago, on 21
August, the 52-year old Aquino returned to
Manila. While military agents "guarded"
him, a single bullet tore into his jaw, on
the airport’s 19-step metal service
stairway..
Marcos’
censored press suppressed even the arrival
statement he never got to read. The two-page
speech is part of history in a country where
half of youngsters, an Ateneo survey reveals,
don’t read even comics.
"I
have returned of my own free will to join
the ranks of those struggling to recover our
rights and freedoms through non-violence,"
Aquino planned to say. "I seek no confrontation….
Aquino
knew that the dictator suffered then from
failing kidneys. He felt that a direct appeal
to the increasingly isolated Ferdinand Marcos
could help usher in peaceful regime change
– and cap looming violence.
Return
would only provoke a brutal regime, many warned
Ninoy He saw the danger. "If they kill
me, they’re out in two years",
he predicted. That forecast fell short of
People Power Revolt by two years.
Was
Ninoy’s adamance stupidity? Or principled
stubbornness? Recall how the Duke of Norfolk
badgered the imprisoned Thomas More to heed
Henry VIII’s demand for consent to the
king’s divorce.
"Think
Master More," the Duke urged. Indignatio
principis mors est. ( "The prince’s
anger is death." ),
"Is
that all my Lord?", More replied. "In
good faith then, there’s no difference
between your grace and me, but that I shall
die today, and you tomorrow."
Ninoy’s funeral saw two million mourners
line the streets. It took 12 hours for Aquino’s
hearse to reach Manila Memorial Park, after
a Santo Domingo requiem Mass.
Thousands
were glued to Radio Veritas, the only station
that dared to cover the rites. Crowd forcibly
lowered the Philippine flag to half-mast when
Aquino’s coffin passed Rizal Park. "No
umbrellas", people chanted as rain fell.
"Only Imelda uses an umbrella!"
– a jeer at cronies who’d hold
a parasol over the First Lady..
Ninoy’s
murder transformed a miniscule opposition
into to an unstoppable movement. Indeed, the
blood of martyrs is the seed of heroes.
But
the same question festers today : Who were
the mastermind(s)?
The
new book "Who Killed Senator Aquino :
The Unsolved Assassination" ( Universe
Inc, New York, 2005 ) doesn’t answer
that question beyond the soldiers.
But
author Ramoncito Umali provides a novel insight.
""(I) was personally responsible
for overseeing the washing and cleaning of
Senator Aquino’s blood on the tarmac,"
he says in the foreword.
Now
a US resident, Umali managed the family-owned
Loyal Maintenance & Janitorial Services.
It serviced Manila International Airport.
Umali walks the reader under the airport ramps,
one by one. Clipboard in hand, he checks his
crews use hoses and a degreaser machine, to
flush dirt, oil slicks – and "dried
blood." Ramp Number 6 was where Aquino
had been gunned down. That’s what the
dictatorship claimed. How could the networks
mistake Ramp 6 for Ramp 9?, Umali wondered.
But Ramp 6 "looked clean and normal…"Engineers,
mechanics and cargo cars were being readied.
Strange for a supposedly "major crime
scene". "Nothing to put on the report
sheet" for Ramps 7 and 8. At Ramp number
9 ( I ) "got the eerie feeling that something
was wrong….There were at least three
times that number of cargo cars needed for
one flight….Then, ( I ) "saw a
puddle of dried blood… surrounded by
big plastic cones." There were no off-limit
signs, ropes or guards. In his janitorial
company uniform, Umali edged closer until
"( I ) was one foot away from the puddle
of dried blood. It measured approximately
two feet by three feet in diameter which had
dried up from the heat of the sun…"But
there were not two victims? Aquino was shot
once by the Rolando Galman who, in turn, was
repeatedly shot by guards. So, where was the
second blood puddle? "I was stunned and
could not move a muscle", Umali recalls.
He records his conversation with another supervisor
who walked by
Umali : "Am I going blind?"
Supervisor : "Why do you ask?"
Umali : "I see only one puddle of dried
blood on the tarmac".
Supervisor : "No you are not going blind".
Umali : "Then, whose blood are we looking
at?"
Supervisor: "That’s the dried blood
of Ninoy Aquino."
Umali : "Okay. What happened to the other
puddle of dried blood."
Supervisor : "There’s no other
puddle….Galman was already dead when
he arrived at the tarmac."
Umali : "God!"
Now
a 37-year old Northwest Airlines pilot, Francis
never met Aquino. Today, eight out of ten
students barely remember Aquino. Nor do they
understand what that puddle of blood on tarmac
means. They too haven’t met Ninoy. "The
struggle of man against power," Novelist
Milan Kundera writes, "is the struggle
of memory against forgetting." That’s
why we must remember.
(
E-mail : juan_mercado@pacific.net.ph
)
