Corazon Aquino

  b. 1933; d. 2009 | Filipino politician

At The Bottom

— 1983

Both Aquino and his wife Corazon knew he was a marked man and that it was entirely possible he would not survive the trip.

On August 25, a grieving, 50-year old woman sat quietly in her Manila home, looking down at the body of her husband, trying to ignore the bullet wound that had disfigured the lower half of his face.  Benigno Aquino, a leading opponent of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, had been living safely in exile with his family for the past three years in Boston, Massachusetts.  He had returned to Manila four days earlier, however, to plead with the government to restore democratic government before the political situation in the Philippines descended into chaos.  Both Aquino and his wife Corazon knew he was a marked man and that it was entirely possible he would not survive the trip.   During the 1970s, the former Philippine senator had been imprisoned for seven years by the Marcos government for his political activities, and he was viewed as a clear threat to the regime.  Shortly after the opposition leader stepped off his plane, a single assassin shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.  Corazon Aquino and her five children immediately flew back from Boston to Manila, where the heartbroken widow became the last of more than 100,000 mourners to pay their respects to their fallen hero.  She thought back to the years she spent waiting for his release from prison.  As she remembered years later, “Just when I was getting used to having him to myself — indeed, just when our youngest, who was a year-old when he was detained, was basking in the special affection he lavished on her to make up for the time he had lost —  I lost him again.”