by Larry Farmer
A week later, Marcos was officially declared the winner of the election. But Aquino ignored the results and declared for a protest march. She also called for a boycott of businesses owned by Marcos’ cronies.
Reagan’s presidential envoy, Philip Habib, famous for his negotiations for the end of the first Middle East war against the newly founded state of Israel, tried to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement between Aquino and Marcos. Aquino refused it.
“This isn’t going away,” I said to Lois as we listened to the news.
“Marcos is worried about an uprising in the cities,” Lois said. “In particular, Manila. You’re the one who explained this to me a year ago. I remember now. You went into such detail with Margaret about it, on one of our visits.”
I was having my own flashbacks from all this drama. In 1977 I was working on a kibbutz when I heard the news that the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was to arrive in Jerusalem in order to make peace with Israel. Being a Jew, nothing in my lifetime until then had moved me as much as the process that Sadat’s arrival in Israel spurred. Peace. There was a chance for real peace in the Middle East.
And now, while I was in the Philippines, on Saturday, February 22, 1986, events spurred an equally deep amount of drama and hope.
Lois and I sat in the living room while my Lola made small talk with us as she chopped food items at the dining table adjacent to us. No one paid the radio any mind. Suddenly, however, Lola was quiet. The quiet felt like a vacuum. I wondered if there was another political assassination announced on the radio.
“The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Fidel Ramos, and the Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, have defected from the Marcos government,” my Lola explained. Her head kept shaking in bewilderment as she did so.
Though Lois could speak Tagalog fluently, she looked to Lola for explanation.
“General Ramos is even a cousin of Marcos,” my Lola said. “This is big news, such big news. There will be a revolution now.”
Lois and I looked at each other. This was why we were here, somehow. As part of some destiny. To be a part of the new Philippines. To witness history.
“Cory Aquino,” my Lola continued, “is in Cebu now with Carmelite nuns. General Ramos and Defense Minister Enrile have declared their support for her, saying they believe the election was fraudulent and that she was the real winner. They are supporting the reformists in the military. Now we have to find out how many reformists there are, and how many will follow Ramos and Enrile and join them.”
She looked at Lois and me in such a serious way. “May God help us,” she said.
“We have to go,” Lois declared, staring me in the eyes.
“Go where?” I asked.
“Where my brilliant husband predicted a year ago the revolution would take place. Manila.”
“Lois,” I said sternly. “This is their revolution. It’s for Filipinos. We’ll only be in the way. We can’t be onlookers. It’s not our place. This is not a spectator sport.”
“I’m going,” she said.
It gave me goose bumps. Not just the revolution taking hold, but this girl I adored that was so a part of my life.
We didn’t have the money for plane fare. I had a credit card and charged the amount for both of us. Ramos and Enrile had made their announcement on a Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning Lois and I were on the plane to Manila as hundreds of Filipinos, then thousands, then millions, made their way to the Ministry of Defense complex in the section of Manila called Edsa. A huge human buffer area was created to protect the reformists.
Things moved swiftly. The Catholic Church, already active during the election, renewed their efforts after these major defections. Time was of the essence.
“Cory Aquino called for every Filipino to join her on a march.” I related to Lois the things I’d heard from other travelers on the plane as we arrived at the airport in Manila. “She and Cardinal Jaime Sin want to protect the reformists in the military from the army and also to encourage the soldiers to join the reformist movement. It’s going on right now. This is why we’re here, and it’s already happening. We’ve no time to lose. The military and the masses against them are already forming at Camp Aguinaldo. That’s not so far away. We could take a taxi. Things could already be happening.”
“And did you hear?” Lois chimed. “This morning when we landed at the airport in Manila I heard some of the other passengers from Cotabato City talking while we waited for our luggage. Last night a plane was highjacked at the Cotobato City airport with some Air Force general on it. When he got here, he was immediately arrested, though, and can’t help the rebels after all. Things are really moving fast. What’s next?”
I was a Marine during the Vietnam War. That war was so unpopular that much of my generation held protest marches and talked to soldiers to persuade them not to fight, and even confronted armed military and put flowers in the rifle barrels. I had a bitter taste in my mouth about protests because of it. Especially anti-military protests. But as Lois and I stood with the crowd of peaceful revolutionaries in front of Camp Aguinaldo, we watched the millions of Filipinos, led by nuns and priests, holding vigil while doing exactly those things. This eased the anger that was still inside me from years before, during those anti-Vietnam-war days.
Nuns led the masses toward the Philippine Marines and soldiers confronting them at the camp’s periphery. To thwart the rifles the revolutionaries faced, the nuns carried rosaries, crucifixes, and Bibles. This was a cause I believed in, the one happening before my very eyes on the streets of Manila.
“Join us,” we heard some of the nuns saying to the soldiers. “Who is more important to you, countrymen? Put down your rifles. March with us. We march with Jesus. We march with history. We are the people. We are of you. We are for you.”
We could hear strains of singing around us. Quickly it began to pick up. Within minutes, among the throngs, a loud chorus arose. “Onward, Christian Soldiers” we heard. The singing and the spirit moved me to tears. I joined the crowd while holding Lois’ hand as we sang with our Filipino brethren. The soldiers refused to fire on their countrymen, instead firing into the air above their heads. Many broke ranks and joined the demonstrators.
It was the climax of spirit, and every ounce was needed. Military tanks stared at us, but the nuns, in particular, held their ground. Inside Camp Aguinaldo, Defense Minister Enrile and Chief of Staff Ramos held press conferences explaining their position to their countrymen and to the world. They knew of their vulnerability and that it might be their fate to die. But they would die taking a stand. They left nothing to fate. They knew the names of unit commanders who were sympathetic to the cause and attempted to coordinate them for when to join the rebellion.
In the crowd, we clustered around anyone with a radio. Knowledge is power, and we needed that knowledge for any feeling of power. We made a stand, but we lived for hope. I carried the spirit of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, with me. It was he who had said, “In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”
“Enrile and Ramos are moving across the street to Camp Crame,” we were told later that night. “For a last stand. Fighter planes and helicopters are on the way, and Camp Crame is easier to defend.”
We were so tired, emotionally as well as physically, but were afraid to leave. Afraid of deserting ship. Of missing history. Lois and I lay down and did our best, on the hard pavement, to take naps, using each other as pillows. Others did likewise. No one could sleep, but no one could stay awake. Catnaps were the best we could do to refurbish our energy.
“Helicopters,” some in the crowd cautioned.
“See the jet fighters,” a man said, as he pointed toward the sky. “I was in the Air Force. Look, they are not in combat fighting formations. And look at the men in the helicopters. They have their forefingers and thumbs forming an L-shape. That stands for Laban, Cory’s party. These aircraft are joining us. They are not here to destroy us. They are here for us.”
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br /> Many around us cheered.
Enthusiasm spread through the crowd. Not only were the aircraft not firing, they showed signs of joining the rebels, as the man with us had explained earlier. Then, like a line of standing dominoes, a chain reaction occurred. The last traces of loyalty to the dictator fell. The rebels swarmed the Presidential Palace, and all mass media fell into rebel hands.
The next day Marcos departed.
“I was one of three people in the Central Bank,” my friend of a high position told Lois and me a few days later, “who knew the codes to the vault where all the gold was stored. This gold was of our national treasury, but in the dictatorship, it meant it was the personal treasure of Marcos. You must tell no one this, what I am going to tell you. You are American, and I can tell no one here. I feel obliged to leave an account of things I have witnessed. You cannot use my name nor repeat where you got this information. But my conscience demands I tell someone, and you are the ones,” he said, looking at Lois and me, “that I trust the most of all the Americans I know. And you are in the Peace Corps. If I told an American official, word would get out.”
My stomach was getting queasy listening to my friend. I felt the most special person alive. I had known he was high up in the bank, but with no idea he had so much power.
My Central Bank friend continued, “I was ordered to give the vault’s code to the Marcos regime, so they could take all that gold away with them. I was informed, but I don’t know if it is true, that American special forces drugged President Marcos and flew him out of the Philippines to Guam and on to Hawaii. People in his regime took out the gold. Actually, not all of it, but a great amount, for him to live in exile. It was supposedly a small price to pay to free the Philippines of him. Even the Americans didn’t want to deal with him anymore, and now that it had come to a head, they wanted him out. I’m telling you this because, to be honest, I feel expendable. Something might happen to me. I need someone to know, my friends. Just in case. Even if you told someone, people would not believe you. But that’s why I’m telling you. Just for someone to know. Not for you to do anything. But just for you to know this. No one would dream I would tell a Peace Corps Volunteer. You are safe.”
I nodded that I understood. I was dumbfounded but felt honored. I was needed. In my own insignificant way.
When Marcos reached Hawaii, he claimed he had no idea he was being ousted. It was heroic, in a sense, that he did not order the troops to attack the crowds of protestors in the demonstrations. The order was out, but Cardinal Sin had intervened. President Marcos, knowing he had few options left, wanted to talk to the Cardinal, almost as a confessor. Cardinal Sin, so we were told, advised him of his legacy. How history would portray him as the one who shot down the nuns and the masses, just to hold on to power. Marcos told the troops not to shoot. Shortly after that, he was gone.
The streets were jubilant as the Philippines swore in a housewife as their next President. Everywhere, ribbons of yellow waved around the country. The American song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” spurred this significance.
With the radio and TV stations now able to broadcast freely again, it wasn’t Cory Aquino who appeared first. Nor was it Cardinal Sin, or General Ramos, or Minister Enrile. Filipinos turned to music for their inspiration. Freddie Aguilar was the first to appear on free television, where he sang, for all to hear, “Ang Bayan Ko.” My mind raced to my first night there. And I was still there. I had witnessed it all. Every bit of it. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in the rice paddies and barangays. And in the streets.
Chapter 18
There’s fulfillment in a relationship. Being with Lois all these years, I’ve been keenly aware of being a man, and of my role as such. I feel a satisfaction in my relationship with her and in being father to our children. And I feel appreciation for being with a woman as in being part of a whole. As if part of some divine plan. A beautiful plan with direction on a path that seems ordained. I feel at one with Lois and at peace with myself and my life because of it.
They call the Peace Corps the toughest job you’ll ever love. That hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned. I can’t think of anything I’m more proud of than my years in it. I did so much complaining and surviving then, in the Philippines of those days, that I didn’t have time to consider how much I loved what I was doing. I think about it a lot now.
I doubt we accomplished one tenth of what we set out to do in the Peace Corps. But I know I’m better off for having done all I did, and I bet the people I met are, too. There is happiness in my memories.
Lois and I often remind each other of that happiness. It’s where we met. It’s where we fell in love. It’s the honeymoon we had before we got married.
To my surprise as much as hers, Lois loves it in Vicksburg. She takes Interstate 20 over the bridge and across the bend of the mighty Mississippi River on her way to and from work in Louisiana as a real estate lawyer. She claims she has no regrets for turning down law school at Berkeley to marry me. She got her law degree from my alma mater, and we’re all rebels here in Vicksburg together.
At every opportunity, we share the vow we made at our wedding ceremony. It takes us back to its significance in Mindanao, and our experiences there. I will be the one. A statement of survival not just of the fittest person, but of the fittest protecting others and the species. King Arthur had his Camelot. Third World or not, we had our Mindanao, and it left us bonded with the Filipinos and with each other for life.
A few words from the author...
Born in Harlingen, Texas, on October 7, 1948, where I grew up and worked on a cotton farm, I graduated from Harlingen High School in 1966. I attended Texas A&M beginning in Summer 1966. In January 1970 I dropped out to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, where I served as an enlisted man, attaining the rank of Sergeant, with an honorable discharge after three years. I worked as a computer programmer afterwards in Houston and as a civil servant for a US Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany. I traveled and worked in Europe for two years, which included flying to Israel in October 1973 to aid the Jewish State in the Yom Kippur War. I was also in Greece in the summer of 1974 when the war between Greece and Turkey erupted over Cyprus. I was stuck on the Greek Island of Ios for part of that war, until I managed to catch a boat to Athens just in time to watch the Greek military dictatorship fold. I returned to Texas A&M in the Fall of 1976 to finish my Bachelor's degree in Business Management and returned to Europe afterwards, and then also to Israel, where I lived for almost a year. I later taught English in Taiwan before returning home to get a Master's degree in Agricultural Economics in 1980, which I received in 1982. I joined the US Peace Corps in 1984 and served for three years in the Philippines. In 1987 I began work for the Swiss government as a computer programmer until 1998. I have worked in the IT department of Texas A&M since 1998. I have three children, am presently divorced, and am Jewish.
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