By Victor and Adelle /On the Road, Again
This was first published August 5, 2009 in MindaNews as a tribute to President Corazon Aquino, whose death on August 3, 2009 stirred a nation’s collective bereavement and rekindled hopes that her passing would signal national action for governance reforms.
MANILA — In a patch of land trapped between the asphalt strip of Roxas Blvd., and the soggy green of Luneta Park, we waved our last farewell this noon to a woman everyone fondly calls Cory, who, if she were to be reckoned by what everyone was saying ever since she passed away, is nothing short of a living saint.
It was in this same area in late 1985 that that same woman took everybody’s breath away by agreeing to take on the Marcos monolith promising hope, something that for more than 20 years had eluded most Filipinos beguiled or benumbed by the siren song of iron rule.
Our minds are on auto-flashback, linking the day’s turnout of yellow throngs to those that rocked the streets of Metro Manila in the 1980s that eventually led to the People Power revolt in 1986. We talk of how, as journalists, we’ve chased both the story and the dream. Now, instead of press cards that would allow us easier access, we raise our hand-made placards instead, even though in the backs of our minds we knew those pathetic signs would be lost in the sea of yellow balloons and giant streamers. We just wanted to say goodbye and pay homage to someone who has deeply touched our lives without our exactly knowing why.
We stand in the rain, and not having the eloquence of a Teddy Boy Locsin when talking about his former chief in a touching eulogy the night before, we simply allow the moment to sweep us on winged feet, at a loss for words.
“Are you crying?” she asks. “No, it’s just the rain, and something must have gotten in my eyes, both of them.”
When we look around, we see smiling faces laced with tears and, daring to breach people’s solemn grief, ask a middle-aged man why. He just said, “because I have lost someone I love…someone who, though she personally doesn’t know me, had given me hope when she became president.”
Having spent the night before bravely trying to get into the cathedral to catch a glimpse of this magical person, and after a few hours in a queue eventually accepting the fact that faltering legs could not in any manner be made to move by willed spirit, we saw the same upturned, rapturous faces. I dare not say dolorous. The atmosphere was decidedly festive, as in EDSA 1, but there was something electric in the way people were solicitous, helpful, respectful, and caring even, I would say.
She looks at a giant tarpaulin billboard of Cory where people are scrawling their farewell messages and says, “When I lost my mom, I felt this deep sadness and overwhelming grief, but she had also taught me how to live and I think that’s what Cory did and what she is all about…she is mother to us all.”
This time we laugh and let our tears fall. We know what do…we just have to do it. (Victor and Adelle are the pennames of Red Batario and
Girlie Alvarez who now consider themselves occasional journalists. The On the Road column ran for more than four years in The Manila
Chronicle)
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/11 April) — That’s always the question Presidential Management Staff (PMS) personnel ask journalists during Presidential sorties in Mindanao.
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April 14, 2010 11:13 pm | 
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Imbued with a sense of authenticity that pleases old-fashioned tendencies and the post-modern discomfort with anything that claims more than an outsider’s political correctness, participatory photography teases the edges of documentary practice and poses some unique challenges and opportunities to photographers in the tradition.