Memories of Aquino:
Cort, John C
Assassinated Philippine leader MEMORIES OF AQUINO HE ALWAYS INTENDED TO RETURN THE REPORT of his assassination reached me while attending the first world congress of Christian socialists in...
...that Aquino described himself as a Christian democratic socialist...
...Assassinated Philippine leader MEMORIES OF AQUINO HE ALWAYS INTENDED TO RETURN THE REPORT of his assassination reached me while attending the first world congress of Christian socialists in Sweden...
...He defined himself as "a Christian democratic socialist in the tradition of Scandinavian socialism...
...He was willing to take his chances...
...JOHN C. CORT (John C. Cort is a free-lance writer and co-editor of Religious Socialism...
...We had lunch together, a delightful lunch...
...In this one meeting he persuaded them to loan his family $1,000,000 to improve their sugar plantation in central Luzon...
...He was knowledgeable enough to know that our Volunteers were not the most accomplished teachers of English or science...
...He prayed very hard that he might be allowed to see his family, and the next day they were granted permission to see him...
...Yes, I want them here...
...From 1964 to 1970 he was director of the Commonwealth Service Corps...
...He considered this an almost miraculous answer to his prayers...
...It was during this period that I read in a Filipino newspaper published in the U.S...
...I invited him to speak at one of our meetings of religious socialists at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge...
...They could serve as an excellent epitaph for his gravestone: "To submit, to yield, and to surrender to the forces of oppression is to give ourselves to despair...
...And to pray...
...He had not returned and I thought perhaps his resolution had weakened...
...Benigno Aquino would have felt at home here...
...I followed his career with great interest, rejoiced when I learned he was the Liberal candidate for president, lamented when Marcos, constitutionally barred from running again, tore up the constitution, vetoed the almost certain election of Aquino and, not content with that, threw him into jail, where he lay for years under sentence of death, much of it in solitary confinement...
...At the meeting, however, he spoke mainly about his religious conversion during the time in prison...
...I remember suggesting Michael Harrington's The Vast Majority...
...Months passed, several years passed...
...But to act, to resist, no matter how puny the resistance, still preserves for us a hope that we stand erect...
...We had a good talk...
...He wanted to know about books that might help his country solve its economic problems and still retain a democratic government...
...He spoke then of his intention to go back, even though he was still under sentence of death...
...He had tried and failed to kill himself...
...He was clearly proud of the accomplishment, and we were clearly impressed...
...My interest in him increased even further...
...He began to read, and reread, the Bible...
...I first met him in, I think, 1963, in the city of Tarlac, capital of the province of Tarlac, where he was governor, the youngest governor in the Philippines...
...I was a regional director of the Peace Corps and we were in Tarlac to determine if Aquino wanted Peace Corps volunteers assigned to his province...
...But he did return and the sentence of death was carried out...
...I like the words that he wrote from prison to his sister Lupita...
...He told us of the time when he was twenty-one-years-old and had traveled to New York to meet with the board of directors of Chase Manhattan or some equivalent money bags...
...His reason was interesting...
...I want them in Tarlac," he said, "because they can be a catalyst for our young people, an intellectual stimulant...
...After several years in solitary he said that he had almost been overcome by self-pity and despair...
...Before the meeting Harvey Cox and I had dinner with him and he spoke frankly about the influence of Maoists in the anti-Marcos opposition...
...Well, some were, some weren't...
...He had a kind of vision of the Virgin Mary...
...They can give our students some idea of the wider horizons that lie beyond Tarlac...
...Consequently, when Marcos, apparently afraid to kill him, permitted him to come to America for heart surgery, and Aquino wound up at Harvard working at its institute for international studies, I went to see him...
...I could not remember when I had met a more bright and charming man...
...He did...
...It was a serious concern...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
