Memory, Martial Law, and Ninoy Aquino

THE WORD “memory” traces its roots to the Latin word “memoria” and “memor,” meaning “mindful” or “remembering.”

It is defined as the human mind’s ability to “encode, sort, retain, and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain.” The website human-memory.net also said that memory can be “be thought of in general terms as the use of past experience to affect or influence current behavior.”

Sociologists also talk about “collective memory” – coined by the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (“The Collective Memory”), which is defined as a construction of created narratives and traditions to give people a sense of community to understand an event or a “social phenomena.”

The declaration by President Ferdinand Marcos of Martial Law in the Philippines on September 21, 1972 is a social phenomena. The debate over his role and how society should judge the Marcoses who are still in power was renewed recently.

Some say that the country was better off under Marcos. They say we need need an iron fist for the Philippines to progress. Others believe that those who have not experienced or seen the horrors of Martial Law are the only ones who would favor it.

Some say, however, that the lack of understanding about Martial Law, especially those belonging to the young generation, is because the nation lack of a sense of history, a collective memory. Not much sense is made of the past, the horrors, sufferings, and hardships under Martial Law.

The most prominent victim of Martial Law was then Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., an opposition solon who was imprisoned by Marcos. He was placed in solitary confinement for more than seven years, suffered a heart attack, and was sent to the United States for treatment.

He returned August 21, 1983 and was gunned down on the tarmac of what was then the Manila International Airport that was renamed in his honor several years after his wife, Corazon Aquino, assumed the presidency through a military-backed people’s uprising in February 1986.

It was not only Aquino who suffered under the dictatorship. At least 9,000 more were imprisoned, tortured, and killed during what is now being called as the darkest days in Philippine history based on the records that TFD holds it in its files.

This is the collective memory that the Task Force Detainees want Filipinos to have to point the nation in the right direction.

This video short by PCIJ deputy producer Cong Corrales tells us about this museum as the death anniversary of Ninoy Aquino nears.

Indeed, as the movie says, without memories, there would only be “the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.”

Forgotten details from an old story

Ninoy at the tarmacBy Luz Rimban, VERA Files

THE photograph is 30 years old, but it provides startling details to an old, almost forgotten story.

Taken by a Japanese photographer, the picture came out in the Sept. 5, 1983 issue of Time Magazine. It showed the apparent lifeless body of former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. whose murder on the tarmac in broad daylight on Aug. 21 shocked the world.

“I saw it when I first saw the photo in 1983, and no one has really taken notice of it,” said a VERA Files reader who sent the photograph, referring to a crucial detail the picture reveals.

“It shows that Ninoy raised both his feet by about two to three inches above the ground (see the shadow of the raised shoes) indicating he was still alive,” he added. “All other photos taken by other journalists later show both Ninoy’s feet flat on the tarmac.”

The photo can be considered another piece of journalistic evidence, one among many that helped piece together what really happened moments after Aquino stepped out of the China Airlines plane that early afternoon.

Please click here (VERA Files) for the rest of the story.

Looting the Marcos loot

Imelda Marcos loves jewelry. Photo from http://imeldific2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/imelda-marcos-muse-of-manila-iron.html

Just because the Presidential Commission on Good Government would be abolished, it doesn’t mean that the hunt for the people’s money looted by the Marcoses and hidden in bank accounts abroad or in properties under the name of some friends, should also end.

As PCGG Chair Andres Bautista said, the job could be continued by the Department of Justice. The reasons he gave, one of which as that Marcos- loot- hunting by the 200-man agency is no longer cost effective, makes sense.

So far, in its 27-year existence the PCGG has recovered $4 billion (P164 billion), only a tiny fraction of what was estimated to be a $10 billion loot in 1986. Just imagine how much the unrecovered would be worth by now including the interests.

The executive order creating the PCGG was the first issued by President Cory Aquino on Feb. 28, 1986, three days after the Marcos fled early evening of Feb. 25, 1986 as millions of Filipinos rose in a bloodless revolution called People Power.

The PCGG was supposed to prevent the Marcos from spiriting money and other forms of wealth they had stashed during the more than 20 years that they were in power. The creation of the PCGG was the basis by the Swiss Federal Court to freeze some of the accounts identified to belong to the Marcoses.

The PCGG may have lost its luster by now, the fault of abuses and incompetence not only by its personnel but also by a number of the people who when placed in power post-Marcos turned out to be as greedy and corrupt.

One of the stories I remember was, as the Marcoses were rushing out of the Malacañang to the waiting helicopter parked at the Pangarap House grounds that would bring them to Clark Air Base where a C-130 was waiting that would bring them to Guam and to Hawaii, some of the documents and pearls fell on the floor while they were hastily stuffed in luggage. Two of those documents later turned out to be the “smoking gun” evidence that led to the recovery of the four buildings in New York worth $350 million.

The Bernstein Declaration of Trust: the smoking gun


The documents were the declarations of trust handwritten by Joseph E. Bernstein on a Manila Peninsula letterhead. The first declaration of trust dated April 4, 1982 stated that Bernstein, a New York real estate broker, would act as trustee for former president Marcos with respect to Lastura Corp. N.V., a corporation registered in Netherlands Antilles.

The second declaration of trust, dated April 5, 1982 stated that Bernstein was the trustee of Beneficio Investment Inc., a corporation registered in Panama which in turn owned Lastura Corp.

With the smoking gun evidence, the Bernstein brothers, Joseph and Ralph, admitted having fronted for the Marcoses in the purchase of the New York buildings.

But there were also accounts of looting of the loot in Malacañang of some members of the so-called yellow group.

One of the intriguing testimonies of Dr. Teresita Reyes, dermatologist of Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco, wife of Jose “Peping” Cojuangco, brother of Cory Aquino, during the 1991 trial in New York of the racketeering case against former First Lady Imelda Marcos, was about several Louis Vuitton valises containing jewelry that they took out from the bedroom of Imelda.

The valises were loaded into vans that drove to Reyes’ house in Dasmariñas Village in Makati.
Some members of the Reformed the Armed Forces Movement who saw the loading of the valises in the van reported to then Defense Minister Juan Ponce-Enrile, who led with Philippine Constabulary Chief Fidel Ramos,the coup de’etat against Marcos.

Enrile reportedly went to the Dasmariñas destination of the valises and saw the society matrons excitedly, like kids, trying Imelda’s jewelry.

Those jewelry (no one’s sure if everything was accounted for) are now with the Central Bank and referred to as the Malacañang collection. The Philippine government has been negotiation with the U.S. auction house, Christie’s.

Last November, there was a story in the New York Times about Imelda’s former aide, Vilma Bautista, accused of art theft. She was caught trying to sell off painting by the masters that used to be in the building occupied by Imelda Marcos. One of the painting she was able to sell was “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” (1899) by Claude Monet to a London gallery for $32 million in September 2010.

A lot of those unrecovered Marcos ill-gotten wealth are out there, if not in banks, in the hands of some people. They cannot stay hidden forever.

We hope they would surface and returned to the Filipino people in our lifetime.