Darling Cory, Corazon Aquino: First Woman President in Asia Passes Away

Her first name, Corazon, means Heart, her last name, Aquino, is often a name still bestowed in honor of the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctor of the church who was known for his down to earth rhetoric such as this one I recall from childhood Catholic school: God’s thought is pure, but it has to be passed through mud: Us.

They called her Cory affectionately and she ruled for 6 years during which time she raised up many souls out of the mud, amongst many, highlighting the issues of Philippino women’s, children’s and men’s enslavement by factories and multinational corporations… not to mention unifying and helping to uplift diverse people who had been so downtrodden and made fearful by the previous dictator Marcos.

President Aquino was one of eight offspring of a deeply ethnic family. Though some see her as the first female president of the Philippines, and the first female president in all of Asia– what may be more remarkable was that a ‘mixed blood Roman Catholic female who happened to be a strikingly beautiful and ace-smart and heartful’ as well– was ever granted office.

She is a meztiso, a mixed blood, like our own President Barack Obama. Like a lot of us. She is indigenous Tagalog from her mother’s family, and Kapampangan and Spanish from her father’s side…. and Chinese heritage from both her parents… a rich set of histories that seemed to give her interest in and warm appreciation of the many different ethnic groups in the Philippines.

She often spoke of herself as wife and mother, having brought four daughters and son into the world, but she was much more than that, much more than a woman with a university degree in French and mathematics. She also lived in a crouch with her children through the horrifying capture and imprisonment of her husband Benigno… when Ferdinand Marcos came to power and abolished the constitution, imprisoning and murdering everyone he could lay his hands on who spoke truth to his lies.

As you may remember, President Carter helped she and her husband and family flee the Philippines and gain sanctuary for three years in the USA, which Cory remembered as the best years ever …on peaceful US soil.

Corazon and Benigno’s happiness was cruelly slashed when Benigno felt he had to return to the Philippines to help re-take the beloved country from Marcos. He was assassinated on the tarmac at Manila International airport… which was later named after him. Cory, like another well known wife and mother two decades earlier, Jackie Kennedy, flew back to the Phillipines and led an enormous ceremonial mourning for the dead. Two million Philippinos attended Benigno’s funeral.

Corazon, slayed in spirit by the loss of her husband and father of their children… somehow gathering strength from sorrow, this diminutive woman ran against Marcos and his thugs. That she won is, again, perhaps not the main story. The fact of facing off, after her election, six (6) SIX armed uprisings by another militia and by Marcos’s followers, showed her mettle and her strategizing. And her immense strength of purpose to keep the Philippinos free.

That she led the country after two devastating natural disasters that killed and injured many thousands, also accrued to her efficiency of response as best can be made in such a wide area, and her compassion for her people… all of them… not just Chinese, not just Spanish heritage, not just Tagalog, not just Kapampangan, nor just US, nor any other National present in their nation… but all.

Today, her son said simple words to the press: Our mother peacefully passed away at 3:18 a.m.

There will be a week of mourning.

The current President of the Philippines and several of her former political critics and some of her greatest detractors and foes have asked that ‘the mother’ of our country be prayed for and remembered for helping to overthrow a dictatorship and preserve instead, a democracy.

In our little backwoods town where I grew up, we had this old rondo song called ‘Darling Cory,’ about a woman who was able to rouse men out of their minds but also back to their senses: There’s a couple verses I was hearing from far off in the distance tonight, someone maybe singing for Cory, Corazon Aquino, a complicated and amazing woman who lived and kept going during a time when it was not particularly alright for a woman to be or do any of the above.

Cain’t you hear those bluebirds a-singin’
Cain’t you hear that beautiful sound
against th’ preachin’ of darlin’ Cory’s funeral
in some lonesome graveyard ground…

Dig a hole, dig a hole in the pretty meadow…
Dig a hole in the cold cold ground,
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the flower meadow,
Gonna gently lay darlin’ Cory down…