Yellow Revolution
Kara Mae Muga Noveda
I was days old when the Missis of a national hero became the first female president in Asia.
Cory, to me, belonged to a golden, however distant past—the decade of shoulder pads and big glasses, grainy documentaries and poignantly, just a three-paragraph mention in my history textbook. She, of the landed gentry’s family, appealed less to me when I grew up to be a student journalist who sat down with Hacienda Luisita farmers who had to get by with less than P20 daily wages. I also learned of the bloody coups, an aftermath of the same peaceful revolution that brought her to power.
Even her favorite daughter agrees. Her mother was far from perfect. She was no saint, but this did not make her less of a hero.
In my generation, the “contemporary” Cory we knew was popular for less historic contributions: the mother of headline-hugging celebrity Kris Aquino, EDSA II supporter (which, we would later find out, produced another unpopular president), but ultimately, a steady calm voice in national dissonance.
When I met her, she did not glow from the reflected glory of the 1986 People Power which stapled her as an icon. Yes, she wore a yellow dress, but like her simple dress, her ordinariness gleaned through. She had no entourage, only one assistant, whom she introduced later to me as a friend. When I asked her on-the-spot for an interview, she immediately obliged with a toothy smile. Since my cameraman had to fix his equipment first, I spent ten minutes in the ABS-CBN lobby, waiting with her.
If you had 10 minutes with a former president, one supposes you’d have a big talk. But she did not gab like a consummate politician. Instead, she spent the next 10 minutes talking with me about the nice weather, Kris, and Jun Lozada.
In testimonies, I came to know that this was a “very Cory” thing to do. She found time to do thoughtful gestures, like come unannounced in Barangay Luz to check on her micro-finance beneficiaries, open the car window to shake the hand of a supporter who chased her outside the Carmelite monastery and give her paintings to strangers.
And from the pages of our modern history, she leaps to us as the ordinary housewife who accomplished the extraordinary by choosing to do the right thing, even after her husband’s assassination and even when she had the option to live well in the shelter of her family’s wealth. Before being immortalized in stone and currencies, heroes make history by doing the right thing at a time of reckoning.
Death peppered with bullets sent her husband to a heroic status; her silent passing away in the hospital deathbed had us down with yellow fever, once more.
In this 2009-style yellow revolution—we relish the democracy she helped restore—we uploaded yellow ribbons, blogged and twittered away the patriotic sentiments she stirred within us with her passing.
In life and even in peaceful death, the one time math teacher has taught us another important lesson in history, that is, never to forget others and this country.
(Kara Mae’s primary residence in cyberspace is: www.dwata.multiply.com)