Aquino Relishes ‘Sentimental Journey Home’

During the three years that she lived in the Boston area as the wife of a political exile and mother of five, Corazon Aquino recalled Saturday, she must have visited the John F. Kennedy Library at least 10 times.

“But I never dreamed in those days,” she added, “that someday I would be standing here with the Kennedys.”

Saturday, in the spectacular glass atrium of a library dedicated to one of her personal heroes, Corazon Aquino, now president of the Philippines, stood beside Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his niece, Caroline, and nearly a dozen other members of the Kennedy clan at a cocktail reception in her honor.

“If my brother were writing ‘Profiles in Courage’ today,” Kennedy told the assemblage, “he would have made a special chapter on this unique person who may be the most courageous woman of our time--Cory Aquino.”

As Aquino grinned broadly, the Massachusetts Democrat added, “Today, she has graced my brother’s library with her presence.”

It was that kind of day for Aquino, whose 24-hour stopover in Boston on her eight-day American visit marked the first time she has returned to the community where she and former Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. and their family spent 3 1/2 years that Aquino often calls “the happiest of our lives.”

“For me, this is a sentimental journey home,” Aquino told a standing-room-only banquet Saturday night in historic Faneuil Hall--the first time since 1852 that the city has broken with tradition and allowed a meal to be served in the building known as America’s Cradle of Liberty.

Saturday was a day for Boston to honor Aquino for a popular revolt that had its seeds in this area.

Honorary Law Degree

Within minutes of her arrival Saturday morning, she was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree at Boston University. Moments later, she dined with the president of Harvard University at his home, and then she stood at a podium at Harvard’s Saunders Theater in Cambridge and delivered this year’s prestigious Jodidi Lecture--a half-hour dissertation on nonviolence in which Aquino declared that she will protect her nation’s freedom “by arms when it is attacked by arms; by truth when it is attacked by lies, and by democratic faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma.”

When she finished, the audience of more than 1,000 gave her a five-minute standing ovation.

Aquino played to the town all day. In her speeches, she quoted from Martin Luther King Jr., who received his theology degree from Harvard, and from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in justifying her talk-then-fight approach to ending the Communist insurgency in her country: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

And at the Faneuil Hall dinner, Aquino showed publicly, for the first time since she helped drive Ferdinand E. Marcos from power last February, another side to her personality. A relaxed side. A comedian.

After Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn gave her the key to the city, Aquino in a light-hearted speech played to the heart of Boston--the Red Sox and the Celtics.

“For me,” Aquino said, “Boston was the plain loveliest city I have known, and, of course, the home of the Celtics. If sugar and liberty were our historic links, basketball is what brings your fair state to vivid life for many Filipinos, who are even more fanatic about the game than you are.

“Indeed, some people might want nothing better than for us to pirate Larry Bird to play in Manila.

No ‘Two-Front War’

“But the last thing we can afford at the moment is a two-front war--against the Communist insurgents at home and the Celtic fans over here.”

Aquino joked about Boston’s reputation for notoriously bad drivers. “The streets of Boston are laid out along 17th-Century cow paths,” she said, “and to drive around here you have to think like a cow.”

And a prediction: “Let me just conclude by saying that I believe the Boston Red Sox and Roger Clemens will continue to be on top of the American League. They will win the pennant, the playoffs and the World Series.”

The speech also was laced with references to Aquino’s slain husband.

It was in the Boston area, she said, that he spent his first years of freedom after nearly eight years in solitary confinement.

Benigno Aquino, a shrewd and charismatic politician who was always Marcos’ chief political rival, had been charged with murder and a dozen other offenses by the martial-law government Marcos created in 1972 to perpetuate his rule.

It was in his jail cell, Aquino said, that her husband read the works of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and began to develop his plan of protest--a Filipino brand of nonviolence aimed at overthrowing Marcos through peaceful demonstration.

In 1981, Marcos permitted the opposition leader to leave the Philippines for triple heart-bypass surgery in the United States. Afterward, he became a fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.

“It was in Harvard where Ninoy (her husband’s widely used nickname) found the leisure and atmosphere to reflect on the meaning of his prison years,” Aquino said. “And it was from our home in Newton, Mass., so close to Harvard that he made his final trip to bring home the fruit of his reflections.”

On Aug. 21, 1983, Benigno Aquino was shot to death at Manila airport as he stepped from the jetliner that took him home.

In her Harvard speech, Aquino read excerpts from the speech her husband had planned to deliver when he arrived in Manila, among them, “I have returned of my own free will to join the ranks of those struggling to restore our rights and freedoms through nonviolence.”

President Aquino added, “It was the hard-earned gift he was bringing home to his people when he was shot down at the airport.

“His assassins meant to steal that gift. Instead, they ended up playing their part in a chain of nonviolent events that was to purge our nation of dictatorship.”

She used the occasion to answer two of the most criticized policies of her government--her stand on the insurgency and the stability of her rule seven months after a military and civilian coup that overthrew an authoritarian leader.

“My government, you will say, faces an armed and determined Communist insurgency, an army impatient to get at them with military means and remnants of the right still loyal to Marcos.

“Faced with these, am I not going like a sheep to the slaughter by espousing nonviolence and harmony as methods of government?

“My political strength in the Philippines rests on my popular support. No traditional politician, let alone Communist leader, can come anywhere close to it.

Would Be ‘Ungovernable’

“The government is secure because its popular base is so strong that its overthrow from any quarter would make the country ungovernable.”

Through the day of sentimentality and academe, there was little mention of the economic issues that dominated much of Aquino’s earlier talks in New York and Washington.

Several of Aquino’s economic officials said Saturday that no agreement has been reached to reschedule the $26-billion Philippine foreign debt, as Aquino’s press secretary had suggested during a briefing Friday.

They added that no such rescheduling will take place for several weeks or months, until after the board of the International Monetary Fund votes in October on accepting an overall plan to restructure the Philippine economy. Aquino’s meetings today with several creditor banks in New York are merely to lay the groundwork for future negotiations, they said.

Aquino did speak to the issue during a Friday night speech at the New York Hilton that aides called “an important economic address.”

Among the guests were some of New York’s top bankers, and Aquino stressed that the huge foreign debt represents “plain theft, plain but incredible. Only a fraction of the $26 billion Mr. Marcos borrowed actually ended up in productive local investment.

“You have heard of capital flight. My predecessor broke the sound barrier.”