Musing on who is Cory Aquino in Moro History

Originally posted at facebook

Tuesday, 04 August 2009 at 20:55

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I was born a year before People Power. I might not have any awareness of what was happening in my environment at those time, but the fact that I was able to go to school securely, read the history of terror during Martial Law, and the stirring People Power, I feel so grateful for the blessing to live in a much better society. Though history tells the story of a woman whose trademark colour is yellow, it is not as moving as how she moves people’s lives who bear witness to the dark era and has united a nation.

But on her death, I realised how influential and how she touched people’s heart and soul. Thus, I cannot keep my silence in this corner of the world.

Corazon “Cory” Aquino deserves more than a peace prize. She is hailed high because she is a mother. A mother of peace. The mother of autonomy in Mindanao. The mother of strength. The mother of resistance. Above all, she is a mother of hope because she believes, she has faith.

I hailed her high not just because we both have the same birthday (Jan. 25) and she toppled down martial law, but the reasons are she goes beyond that and touched the lives of the Moro people in different ways.

She is the icon of democracy in the Philippines and beyond. However, for a woman of the Southern Philippines like me, she is a symbol of strength and resistance against a regime who enslave a nation, and an autocracy that claimed thousands of Moro lives and showered terror during the prime of martial law.

His husband led the investigation of the infamous Jabidah massacre in Corregidor on 1968 of Moro trainees which was the turning point of the Moro resistance in the South. Ninoy had openly and fearlessly expressed the need to put into agenda the Moro problem in Mindanao a year after the massacre. When Ninoy died of assassination, Cory continued his husband’s commitment in reaching out to Moro people.

She is an epitome of peace. Her legacy to Mindanao peace process will remain in the history of Moro people. Who could have forget her humble and courageous effort to visit Nur Misuari in Jolo, Sulu on September 1986 that resulted to informal peace talks and signing of the Organic Act for Muslim Mindanao?

She is a true mother. A true inspiration to women and men. She might be a self-proclaimed “just a plain housewife” but it entails huge responsibilities in nurturing her family whilst his husband was devoting his life to freedom of his Motherland. She was with her children all those years that the country was under enslavement. When her time was called to unite the nation, she was there raising the light and guiding her children – the Filipino nation. Even after People Power until the day she laid to rest, her commitment to freedom and democracy was selfless.