'Cory is beautiful'

(The following essay was written by Mrs. Lourdes "Ma'am Gee" Gamutan, an
English and Literature professor at the Holy Cross of Davao College.)



Cory!

by Ma'am Gee

She held my hand in a warm clasp. I looked into her kind, lit-up face. While it was not yet my turn for her attention, I sized her up. Creamy skin. The kind that speaks of Chinese genes. Open, smiling face. The one that welcomes you without built-in reservation. Simple. Sans make up. In a person who hold number one authority in this land, it's a pleasant absurdity. There is no inclination to arrogance or meanness or claims to power in her aura. This is a wife of a hero. She herself a heroine to democracy in this corner of the earth.

Cory Aquino: Transformed by her times

Corazon Aquino was not the patriotic woman that we've come to know and love until her death. She was in her own words "a plain housewife"--a housewife who belonged to a wealthy land-owning family at that.

But like Lorenzo Tañada, another Marcos opposition stalwart, who, in Randy David's words, "belonged to that generation of aristocratic Filipino leaders—the legatees of a Filipino “ilustrado” class that imagined itself, in Jose Rizal’s words, “the brains of the country, within a few years … its entire nervous system” and whose "advocacy of civil liberties matured into a commitment to fundamental social rights"---like Lorenzo Tañada, Cory was transformed by her times.

From a plain housewife, she had become an icon of democracy.

Nery-ed

In his yesterday's Inquirer piece, John Nery said:

The reluctant symbol. Cory Aquino, the self-effacing politician’s wife, became a national figure only—but immediately—after the assassination. Perhaps we can consider her speech during Ninoy’s funeral Mass on Aug. 31, 1983, as the moment she assumed her new role as the true leader of the opposition.

***

“If my children and I appear to be brave during this, the most difficult period yet of our lives, it is because we know this is what Ninoy would have expected of us. It is also because of our faith in God, and the belief that he is now helping us in this, our greatest need.”

This idea of subordinating personal need (giving in to one’s fears, in those uncertain days) to something greater than one’s self (“what Ninoy would have expected of us”) is the true legacy of the Aquinos.

Haven't I said something like that in this piece?

If there’s one thing that Cory has taught us, it is that we have to rise above our petty concerns, above our predicaments, and indeed above ourselves.

But I hasten to add that this virtue is not solely Cory's or Ninoy's. It is also Rizal's and Bonifacio's and Mabini's and all those who have fought the conquistas.

This lesson was imparted to us a long time ago by our founding parents. Cory is merely re-echoing, by example, what Emilio Jacinto, the Brains of Katipunan, wrote as the first of the thirteen teachings in “Kartilla,” the primer of the Katipunan: “Life which is not consecrated to a lofty and sacred cause is like a tree without a shadow, if not a poisonous weed.”

Rising above ourselves

There will come a time in our lives that we have to make a big decision—a decision whose consequences we are uncertain of. It is not easy to make such a decision, so we’ve got to really admire those who have mustered a mammoth of courage and made that decision.

History is strewn with great men and women who bravely made a big decision even if that meant putting their lives and other people’s lives at grave risk. On a wintry day in December 1776, George Washington decided to cross the Delaware River. The supplies and provisions of Washington’s Continental Army were fast running out. The soldiers were hungry and destitute. Some of them were sick; others were dying. And many more would die, including their fight for independence, unless they would cross the Delaware River into the garrison of the Hessians where stores of food, clothing, blankets, and munitions, ran aplenty. On Christmas Day, Washington and his men embarked on a bold move that would, historians say, alter the course of the revolution the Americans waged against the British Empire. They valiantly crossed the river, swiftly defeated their enemies, and successfully resuscitated the revolution.

Corazon Aquino, “Cory” to many, made hers when her husband, the former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., was killed.