Does the Filipino youth still know who Ninoy Aquino is? Or is he just a face that they see on the P500 peso bill? With all the problems that we face these days as well as the great digital divide between generations, it’s not hard to imagine young men and women more consumed by the drive to survive and going through the daily grind than to actually give a damn about the country. Let’s face it… I myself am only 26 years old and I come from a political family yet I’m not fully aware of what Ninoy was all about. All I know is that he “died” for the country. What more for the younger generations?
While writing this post, I made it a point to do more research on Ninoy. In my journey of getting to know him more, I stumbled upon this uploaded video on Youtube which really made an impact. It’s his last interview before he boarded the plane to Manila and eventually got shot when his feet finally touched the Philippines once again.
This is such a powerful interview. You can really feel the passion and love he had for the country and for the Filipino people. I remember watching this when I was still in Grade School but I really didn’t appreciate it back then. But now I fully understand what Ninoy was about.
He is something that we actually need now more than ever. Ninoy’s memory offers a solution to all the conflict happening in Mindanao, the blatant corruption in government, the constant killing of journalists, and the declining economy. It begins with all of us – by personally acknowledging that we are Filipinos and that this is indeed a country that we can be proud of. Bottom line is this: we need to teach the youth to give a damn about this country and not to teach them that the future to a good life is outside the Philippines.
In this day and age, we don’t need one hero to lead our nation into greatness. We all have to find that Ninoy in our own hearts and and we need to start believing. Ninoy Aquino believed that the Filipino was worth dying for. Do we feel the same way?
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I agree that the youth need to take time to look into the lives of such heroes like Ninoy. Getting to know such important people in our history isn’t just about fact-gathering and studying them academically. It’s about knowing the ideals behind their actions and implanting that love for country into the next generation, so that someday the youth may also strive to make as big a difference in the lives of our people as Ninoy and other heroes did. It’s that love for country that will ultimately make our nation stronger and better.
Welcome aboard, Carlo. Your Lolo Blas whom I recall so fondly am sure is proud, very proud of you, and your Tita Toots. :)
P.S.
A minor correction lang, Carlo, youth is a collective noun, so the proper title is ‘Do The Youth Still Know Ninoy Aquino?’ :0
I’ve heard of stories of Ninoy being a feared leader, ordering killings of criminals or parading them on stakes like lechon. Don’t know if its true.
I could never get myself hyped over Ninoy. All i know is that he died on the tarmac. I want to know who he was before he died, before he became an opposing force to Marcos.
There’s a nice article on Ninoy in the Inquirer today — about Marcos telling his generals that Ninoy was the best successor.
http://musingsofayoungeconomist.co.cc
Mich:
Wooo, thanks for the comment dear. :)
Ding:
Thanks for the kind words and the correction, hehe.
I am not so sure that the “youth” (or even the not so young) would really like to know everything there is to know about Ninoy Aquino. It’s much better to let him be the plaster saint he has become. I think it’s enough we see his great sacrifice as heroism and martyrdom. But I hope it is his example in the first instance that sticks and not necessarily that of the second. Just watch, it’ll be just like with Rizal whom we allow to be murdered and re-murdered annually by the Spanish Taliban whilst we sing Bayan Ko. Ninoy’s death has come to mean more to us than his life Which I find perverse because it’s so…Roman Catholic.
Great article!
Keep it up!
GM Tristan
http://gmtristan.com
“we need to teach the youth to give a damn about this country and not to teach them that the future to a good life is outside the Philippines.”
Can’t agree more. I’m tired of hearing Filipinos saying that “there is good life abroad” when if you ask those Filipinos abroad, they themselves will tell you to stay in the Philippines because it is not anymore a “good life” there.
Time has changed but Filipino mindsets still hasn’t. It is true a few decades ago, but it isn’t anymore today and much more not in the future.
Today is the era of East Asians like us. Opportunities are plenty and abound especially here in South-East Asia. We don’t need to go abroad and go back as corpses after we die.
Ninoy died in this country, for this country NOT abroad, unlike all the other Filipinos who died abroad, for that foreign soil and then was buried here.
Time to change Filipinos, time to change.
the very important step of invention is the beginning…
I do not know much of Ninoy except for the facts that he’s Kris’ dad and that he died at the airport because he was shot. At school, they do not talk much about him, unless a topic on History touches his name.
I agree that there’s no more good life abroad. My aunts want to go back here but they do not have money to purchase tickets back here.
Ninoy fought the Marcos Admin because he knows the Philippines was up to no good under that era.. I admire his courage to stand up and contradict a powerful man like Marcos. I wish Filipinos would appreciate him and his ideals.
The youth? if they are not spending most of their time in an internet cafe paying video games..you’d surely find them on the streets with the leftists…joining rallies and demonstrations organized by the leftists and/or oppositions or administrations…
The youth…they used to be branded as ¨the future of a country¨…our youth right now? they’re nothing but just another son/daughter of another pinoy.
Oh yeah..the sons and daugthers of a politician,..they are the worst kind of Filipino youth…sucking on their parents corruption money..
hahahaha
sometimes its not how much you know about the history for you to be able to make changes in the present,one doesn’t have to be a well educated person so as not to know where to properly dispose his cigarette filter or candy wrapper. in our own silent way we can be heroes, by starting in small things.
“do the youth still know Ninoy Aquino?”
well, the truth is, Yes and No. yes, due to the fact that they see him in the 500peso bill and they buy the different kinds of Ninoy Aquino merchandise etc. No, because the youth of today just know him as a hero who died for his country, the hero who fought with Marcos…that is sad right…
the truth is, im only 27yrs old but i know much about this great hero of our times. i have been an attentive student of our Philippine history. but more often than not, i have been teased by friends, cousins (sometimes even older relatives) saying that im “too makaluma”, “too involved in history whatsoever”…well, im proud of that…what iam today is because of the ideals that Ninoy and our other heroes have. the youth of today should just simply watch a few videos on the internet or talk to their parents if they don’t want to read books and articles…isn’t that a small thing as compared to the sacrifices of our Philippines heroes (and not only Ninoy)?… i sometimes feel iam a reincarnation of an old man/woman because of my beliefs…well i hope the death of Pres Cory Aquino changes everything…
yes, still we the youth know and recognizes the modern day hero, ninoy aquino.. We do know what ninoy has done to make this country free, even to the extend of shedding his blood. The danger whom he knows but still face and takes what are the consequences, just to free his co-filipino. Thank you Ninoy Aquino and Tita Cory Aquino.
WOW.
LABAN!
We LOve you NinOy!
I think the youth has to use their brains and hearts especially now that we are so much abused..we must try to look up at filipinos who lived and died for our country especially Sen.Ninoy and Pres.Cory…we must go back to what history did for our country…I think we must change ourselves and not to try, but to really change our Country and to oust the Leader/officials/president who abused us much…
we should not defend on one man we should defend in our selve.
what can one man do?
he have no army.
no following.
no money.
he only have his dominatable spirit
lets all become a LEADER and if were all leader lets do the things that we wanna do that we think is good for our country.
ninoy aquino? who is he?isnhe a doctor? or maybe an ordinary person,that is what children ask but me I know who he is and I will exactly tell you who he is.He is not a senator but a prson full of dignity and love for his country.I am a Grade 5 student even if I was born after so many years after Ninoy died I can proudly say that he is a man full of courage.Why did he come back?He came back to the Philippines to be with his people,to be one with them and not to stay at Boston sitting comfortably on his chair while his fellow Filipinos are suffering and some are dying because of the dictatorship of Marcos.Ninoy Aquino was born to be a hero,to show us that we must not only think of ourselves but also others.Maybe this article made by a Grade 5 student enlighten our minds.Ninoy may you rest in peace.
In the time of Rizal, Philippines was under control of Spain. It was transformed in s political sense for the history and the needs for their inhabitants. They introduced their own reforms in order to advance the events and impelled the violence by their patriotism for their own country. Not in surprisingly, all of these have been ordered up to present time – the times of Ninoy.
For a long suffering of the Philippines under Spain, it missed its liberty. Another generation comes, Philippines was suffered again from the presidency of former President Ferdinand Marcos by which dictating his own laws and creating his own rules and regulations and of course, his own government. It had been for 21 years that the Philippines have no liberty, no freedom in press, no voice in the court, no freedom of speech and even independence and feel the pain of tyranny by him.
History says: uprisings and revolutions have always occurred in many countries where human thought and human heart have been forced to remain silent.
The historical significance of Ninoy Aquino and Jose Rizal played a big part in our present time. The history happened in times of Rizal happened again in times of Ninoy. Rizal and Filipinos suffered so much from political ills of Spain. Ninoy and Filipinos suffered too from political ills of Marcos. Rizal became journalists and Ninoy too. Rizal was accused and considered guilty and condemn him while Ninoy prison 7 years, 7 months in London. He is also considered a guilty. Rizal caught in Singapore and brought home in the Philippines to shot him at Bagumbayan, 7:00 o’clock in the morning of the 30th of December 1896. He died in his own land that it is all he wants. Ninoy prisoned too in the other country. A modern Jose Rizal ( Ninoy) despite the threats he had received, he is still decided to return from exile to rally his countrymen in their choice of good leaders to replace the existing order. He wanted to go back in the Philippines, when the time he went back. He was shot before he step down from airplane on 23th of August 1983.
This would be the greatest injustice and the most abominable, infamy, unworthy for the two men offered their lives in the hazards of war. Rizal and Ninoy is innocent but how come that they were rewarded and sending them in prison in spite of their innocence and fought freedom for their loving country. They were shot in front of the masses.
The times of Rizal repeated in the times of Ninoy in different situations but similar aspects of conditions. It was repeated and in a new generations and upcoming generations, who knows?
It may repeat while there is a time. It is better to keep pace with a desire of a people than than to give before them. These and many other things may come to pass for about hundred years.
Their patriotism and their dignities relly influences us and made a big impact to our society. All this time we are not lacking generous and noble spirits among our foes. We are trying to struggle for the rights of humanity, justice and enthusiastic over the liberty of the country.
Their past is our history. Now, what will happen next? What will be in our future?
The political situation in the past and the situation at the present is not possible at the time can be now or even reverse. Filipinos are remain faithful, fighting for the liberty, for our independence, not loosing our hope, not compelling by the superiority of others by which we are ignorant. The masks have fallen apart from us. It has been that the love and piety in our past have come to resemble our future. The bitterness of the pass and the sweetness of the present have had its connections to make a good future.
Ninoy and Rizal help us to enlighten our mind that no one shouldn’t take our advocacy for the country, for the masses, for the rights, for the justice, for our own freedom in press and in speech and the love for ourselves.
Their historical significance did much good in highlighting many issues in our society in which the corruptions and immorality of the Spaniards and Marcos carried on its relentless. By them, we fall to analyze that peoples and governments have their distinct relations. Their government before have not far from the government today. Anomalies still exist today, a corruptions, a wise rulers and laws, ambitious politicians, terrible crisis in changing in the form of government and discontented in acquired position and power.
However, their differences seems a little. Rizal used his mighty pen as a weapon to fought among Spaniards. His Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo showed the evils of them. While Ninoy used his own dignity and principle for the loving country. Nevertheless, both of them love their fatherland because they hate all the kinds of corruptions, mistrust and injustice in our country. They did not let our country to lose hope, peace, freedom, independence, youth and the most important of all, the love which should remain in us. Their desire for freedom and peace took a long long time. They risked their lives in order to have justice, in order not to lead and manage our country by Spaniards and by Marcos too. The Filipino blood running from their veins gave them strength to have all of this.
I really don’t have a profound knowledge of Ninoy but I can be a hero like him and Rizal. I realize and made me think more deeply when I read from the book which have its core message of “the selfless giving of the best of ourselves for our countrymen and women and the advancement of the country as a whole.” I can be a Ninoy and Rizal in my own way because I always stand for the freedom and in my own dignity. I doing something worthwhile, something that would make a difference in uplifting the common people (sometimes). Even though I am not gifted as Ninoy, I can do as much good in my own simple way. I can sacrifice myself maybe, somehow.
I remember NINOY and on my high school years at that time. Proud to be a Filipino, and what the whole family did, for the freedom we enjoyed today. continue the works they started in our lives and beyond