10 Women That Changed Philippine History (Part 2)

We con­tinue our series on the 10 WOMEN THAT CHANGED PHILIPPINE HISTORY.

The five listed so far are the following:

10. 2^nd Female and Present Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo
9. Actress and Super­star Nora Aunor
8. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Hero­ine Mel­chora Aquino
7. Fic­tional Char­ac­ter and Super­hero Darna
6. National Book­store Founder Soc­coro Ramos

PART 1 IS HERE.

5. Imelda Mar­cos [Born July 2, 1929]

The widow of for­mer dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos; is known to be the real power behind the throne. She has been called the “Steel But­ter­fly” due to her role as a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure not only in the Philip­pines but also around the world. In 1996, the Aus­tralian Mag­a­zine ranked her 58^th among “The 100 Most Pow­er­ful Women in the World”. Newsweek, mean­while, listed her as one of the “Greed­i­est Peo­ple of All Time”. Her exten­sive shoe–all 2500 pairs, gown, and jew­elry col­lec­tions have allowed her to gain noto­ri­ety worldwide.

In Decem­ber 1965, Fer­di­nand E. Mar­cos was pro­claimed as the 10^th Philip­pine Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines. That was the begin­ning of the leg­end that was Imelda.

Imelda Mar­cos was “snubbed” by The Bea­t­les, who were in the coun­try on tour, when they did not accept an invi­ta­tion to join the First Lady for break­fast. After the ‘snub’ was broad­cast on Philip­pine tele­vi­sion and radio, all of The Bea­t­les’ police pro­tec­tion dis­ap­peared. Brian Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while they were in the Philip­pines before being allowed back on the plane. Paul McCart­ney, speak­ing in the Anthol­ogy series, said that after he’d heard about what she had allegedly been doing, he took some belated pride in snub­bing her.

Imelda Mar­cos toured China, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet satel­lite states in East­ern Europe (Roma­nia, Hun­gary, Czecho­slo­va­kia, East Ger­many, etc.), the Mid­dle East, Libya, the non-Soviet dom­i­nated com­mu­nist state of Yugoslavia, and Cuba. To jus­tify the multi-million expen­di­ture of trav­el­ing with a large diplo­matic entourage using pri­vate jets, she would later claim diplo­matic suc­cesses that included secur­ing of a cheap sup­ply of oil from China and Libya, and in the sign­ing of the Tripoli Agree­ment. Imelda Mar­cos’ extrav­a­gant lifestyle report­edly included five-million-dollar shop­ping tours in New York, Rome and Copen­hagen in 1983, and send­ing a plane to pick up Aus­tralian white sand for a new beach resort. She pur­chased a num­ber of prop­er­ties in Man­hat­tan in the 1980s, includ­ing the $51-million Crown Build­ing and the $60-million Her­ald Cen­tre; she declined to pur­chase the Empire State Build­ing for $750m as she con­sid­ered it “too ostentatious”.

Her New York real estate was later seized and sold, along with much of her jew­els and most of her 175 piece art col­lec­tion, which included works by Michelan­gelo, Bot­ti­celli, and Canaletto. She responded to crit­i­cisms of her extrav­a­gance by claim­ing that it was her “duty” to be “some kind of light, a star to give [the poor] guidelines.”

Imelda was also crit­i­cized for spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on high-profile infra­struc­ture projects that did lit­tle to alle­vi­ate poverty and were beyond the reach of ordi­nary Fil­ipinos. These included the Cul­tural Cen­ter of the Philip­pines, Philip­pine Heart Cen­ter, Lung Cen­ter of the Philip­pines, Kid­ney Insti­tute of the Philip­pines, Nay­ong Pilipino; Philip­pine Inter­na­tional Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, Folk Arts The­ater, Coconut Palace, and the infa­mous Manila Film Cen­ter, a costly and impos­ing edi­fice built in 1982 to host Imelda’s short-lived inter­na­tional film fes­ti­val. By 1985, it was esti­mated that the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment had acquired more than $28 bil­lion in for­eign loans, much of it dur­ing Pres­i­dent Mar­cos’ 20-year rule.

She’s infa­mously influ­en­tial because dur­ing her reign (of ter­ror? this is hotly debated by her admir­ers), the Philip­pines was plunged into a debt so immense that this generation’s grand­chil­dren will still be pay­ing for it.

4. Teodora Alonso [Novem­ber 9,1827 — d. August 16,1911]

Teodora Morales Alonso Realonda y Quin­tos (Alonso is spelled with an S, as pointed out by good friend Aiess Alonso. See com­ments below.) mar­ried Fran­cisco Rizal Mer­cado and bore the Philip­pine National Hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal as their sev­enth child. The two resided in Calamba where they engaged and pros­pered in agri­cul­ture. Their pros­per­ity was achieved through the cou­ples’ indus­try, not to men­tion Teodora’s effi­cient man­age­ment skills. She was also man­ag­ing the family’s finances and their farm. She even built her own tex­tile busi­ness, a sugar and flour mill, and man­aged a small store at the ground floor of their house.

As mother and teacher of the young Rizal, she molded the spirit and thoughts of Rizal. When Jose Rizal grew up, he stood for the prin­ci­ples and lessons learned from his mother.

Teodora suf­fered the most from the Span­ish tyranny next to Jose. She was impris­oned on charges which were either pre­pos­ter­ous or tri­fling. She was charged of poi­son­ing her sister’s hus­band, but was defended by two of Manila’s most famous lawyer’s and was acquit­ted. The dam­age was done, she spent two and a half years in prison where she suf­fered and was pun­ished by the Spaniards. She was made to walk fifty kilo­me­ters to Sta. Cruz, Laguna, for the refusal to use her His­pani­cized sur­name, Realonda de Rizal. Her fam­ily was ejected from their lands in Calamba as a result of a land con­tro­versy between Domini­cans and the Fil­ipino ten­ants. They moved to Manila, but the Span­ish per­se­cu­tion still fol­lowed. She joined Jose in Hong Kong in 1891 and kept a house in Dap­i­tan where his son was in exile. She returned to Manila to visit her hus­band and made an appeal to the governor-general but was in vain. There was one inci­dent in Teodora’s life worth remem­ber­ing — the Philip­pine leg­is­la­ture offered her a life­time pen­sion as a token of grat­i­tude. She politely refused the offer and said:

“My fam­ily has never been patri­otic for the money. If the gov­ern­ment has plenty of funds and does not know what to do with them, its bet­ter to reduce the taxes.”

It would be safe to assume that with­out her own strong prin­ci­ples and her own brav­ery, our National Hero wouldn’t have grown into the per­son he did. For this rea­son, but also for her own strong Nation­al­is­tic ideals, Teodora Alonzo is on this list.

3. Cecilia Munoz Palma [Novem­ber 22, 1913 — Jan­u­ary 2, 2006]

Cecilia Muñoz-Palma was the first woman appointed to sit on the Supreme Court of the Philip­pines. She was appointed by Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos on Octo­ber 29, 1973, and served in the Court until she reached the then-mandatory retire­ment age of 65. She later served as the pres­i­dent of the 1986 Con­sti­tu­tional Com­mis­sion that drafted the 1987 Constitution.

The daugh­ter of a con­gress­man from Batan­gas, Muñoz-Palma earned her law degree from the Uni­ver­sity of the Philip­pines, and a Mas­ter of Laws degree from Yale Uni­ver­sity. She became the first woman pros­e­cu­tor of Que­zon City in 1947. Seven years later, she became the first female dis­trict judge when she was named a trial court judge for Negros Ori­en­tal. In the next few years, she was assigned as a judge to Laguna and Rizal until her appoint­ment to the Court of Appeals in 1968, the sec­ond woman ever to be appointed to the appel­late court. In 1973, she again made his­tory, this time as the first female Supreme Court Asso­ciate Jus­tice, pre­ced­ing by eight years San­dra Day O’Connor, the first female jus­tice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

After Aquino assumed the pres­i­dency in 1986, Muñoz-Palma called in vain for the reten­tion of the Batasang Pam­bansa. When Aquino cre­ated the 1986 Con­sti­tu­tional Com­mis­sion to draft the new Con­sti­tu­tion, she appointed Muñoz-Palma as one of its mem­bers. The Com­mis­sion would later elect her as its President.

Fol­low­ing the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the 1987 Con­sti­tu­tion, Muñoz-Palma faded from the pub­lic eye. She later emerged as Chair­per­son of the Philip­pine Char­ity Sweep­stakes Office under Estrada’s Pres­i­dency. She served in this capac­ity until 2000.

Muñoz-Palma died on Jan­u­ary 2, 2006, at the age of 92, hav­ing done her coun­try proud many times over and always bring­ing the integrity and dig­nity that made her famous in life.

2. Helena Ben­itez [Born: June 27, 1914]

Helena Z. Ben­itez was born in Manila on June 27, 1914 to Con­rado F. Ben­itez and Fran­cisca Tirona-Benitez, founders of the Philip­pine Women’s University.

She holds sev­eral uni­ver­sity degrees: Bach­e­lor of Arts, Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Edu­ca­tion, magna cum laude, Philip­pine Women’s Uni­ver­sity; and Mas­ter of Arts, George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, USA (1939); Post Grad­u­ate Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sity of Chicago and Iowa State Col­lege, USA.

Dr. Ben­itez is one of the con­tin­u­ing moti­vat­ing forces behind the Bayani­han Philip­pine National Dance Com­pany of which she is the founder. She orig­i­nally pro­vided Bayani­han with an insti­tu­tional base in her Philip­pine Women’s Uni­ver­sity (PWU). In the 1950s it was at PWU that Bayani­han gained its inde­pen­dent foot­ing and its own iden­tity. She has con­tin­ued to be its fore­most patron and pro­moter even as she pur­sues her career as life­long edu­ca­tor and stateswoman.

Before her career as a politi­cian, she became the first elected Fil­ip­ina chair­per­son of the United Nations Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women. Ben­itez served in the Philip­pine leg­is­la­ture as Sen­a­tor from 1968–1973 and she authored and co-authored laws on edu­ca­tion, man­power and youth devel­op­ment, fam­ily, hous­ing and envi­ron­ment. It was dur­ing her term in the Sen­ate when the Con­ven­tion for the Elim­i­na­tion of All Forms of Dis­crim­i­na­tion Against Women (CEDAW) was issued. She was a mem­ber of the National Assem­bly for more than a decade. She was also the first woman Pres­i­dent of the UN Envi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP).

Ben­itez has served as a mem­ber of the exec­u­tive board of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ties and chair of the South­east Asian Coun­cil of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of the Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dents. She has served as ambas­sador of the Philip­pines and has headed Philip­pine del­e­ga­tions to many inter­na­tional con­fer­ences includ­ing the UN Habi­tat Con­fer­ence in Van­cou­ver. She is the only per­son to have served on the Board of Trustees of Bayani­han con­tin­u­ously through­out its existence.

With a resume that spans arts and pol­i­tics and lead­er­ship, she deserves to be on this list.

1^st Fil­ip­ina, 1^st Asian, and 1^st woman inter­na­tional aca­d­e­mic and leg­isla­tive leader inducted into the Democ­racy Hall of Fame Inter­na­tional (2003)

1^st Fil­ip­ina chair of the UN Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women (1969)

1^st Fil­ip­ina and 1^st woman pres­i­dent of the Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil of the UN Envi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP, 1975)

Founder of the 1^st Fil­ipino dance com­pany, Bayani­han National Folk Dance Com­pany (1957)

1^st Fil­ip­ina and 1^st woman mem­ber of the Board of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Universities

1^st Fil­ip­ina to be con­ferred the Pres­i­den­tial Award of the Order of Sikatuna, Rank of Datu

1^st Fil­ip­ina to author the first law that pro­tects the Philip­pine Eagle

1. Cora­zon Aquino [Born: Jan­u­ary 25, 1933]

Cora­zon Aqunio was the 11^th Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines, serv­ing from 1986 to 1992. She was the first female Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines and was Asia’s first female Pres­i­dent. She is a world-renowned advo­cate of democ­racy, peace, women’s empow­er­ment, and reli­gious piety.

A self-proclaimed “plain house­wife”, Aquino is the widow of Sen­a­tor Benigno Aquino, Jr., a lead­ing fig­ure in the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion against the auto­cratic rule of Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. After her hus­band was assas­si­nated upon his return from exile in the United States on August 21, 1983, Aquino, who had no prior polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence, became a focal point and uni­fy­ing force of the oppo­si­tion against Mar­cos. She was drafted to run against Mar­cos in the 1986 snap pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. After Mar­cos was pro­claimed the win­ner despite wide­spread reports of elec­toral fraud, Aquino was installed as Pres­i­dent by the peace­ful 1986 Peo­ple Power Revolution.

Aquino par­tic­i­pated in many of the mass actions that were staged in the two years fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of her hus­band. On the last week of Novem­ber 1985, Mar­cos unex­pect­edly announced a snap pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to be held in Feb­ru­ary 1986. Ini­tially, Sen­a­tor Sal­vador Lau­rel of Batan­gas, the son of a for­mer pres­i­dent, was seen as the favorite pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of the oppo­si­tion, under the United Nation­al­ists Demo­c­ra­tic Orga­ni­za­tions. How­ever, busi­ness tycoon Don Joaquin “Chino” Roces was not con­vinced that Lau­rel could defeat Mar­cos in the polls. Roces ini­ti­ated the Cory Aquino for Pres­i­dent Move­ment to gather one mil­lion sig­na­tures in one week for Cory to run as president.

Aquino was reluc­tant at first to run for pres­i­dency, despite pleas that she was the one can­di­date who could unite the oppo­si­tion against Mar­cos. She even­tu­ally was con­vinced fol­low­ing a ten-hour med­i­ta­tion ses­sion at a Catholic con­vent. Lau­rel did not imme­di­ately accede to calls for him to give way to Aquino, and offered her the vice-presidential slot under his UNIDO party. Aquino instead offered to give up her affil­i­a­tion with her husband’s polit­i­cal party, the Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN), which had just merged with Par­tido Demokratiko Pilipino, and run under the UNIDO ban­ner with Lau­rel slid­ing down to the vice-presidential slot. Lau­rel gave way to Aquino to run as Pres­i­dent and ran as her running-mate under UNIDO as the main polit­i­cal umbrella of the opposition.

In the suc­ceed­ing polit­i­cal cam­paign, Mar­cos charged that Aquino was being sup­ported by com­mu­nists and agreed to share power with them, to which she responded that she would not appoint one to her cab­i­net. Mar­cos also accused Aquino of play­ing “polit­i­cal foot­ball” with the United States with respect to the con­tin­ued United States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Philip­pines at Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. Mar­cos also derided Aquino as “just a woman” whose place was in the bedroom.

The elec­tions held on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1986 were marred by the intim­i­da­tion and mass dis­en­fran­chise­ment of vot­ers. Elec­tion day itself and the days imme­di­ately after were marred by vio­lence, includ­ing the mur­der of one of Aquino’s top allies, Antique gov­er­nor Eve­lio Javier. While the offi­cial tally of the Com­mis­sion on Elec­tions (COMELEC) con­sis­tently showed Mar­cos in the lead, the unof­fi­cial tally of the National Move­ment for Free Elec­tions indi­cated that Aquino was lead­ing. Despite the job walk­out of 30 COMELEC com­puter tech­ni­cians alleg­ing election-rigging in favor of Mar­cos, the Batasang Pam­bansa, con­trolled by Mar­cos allies, rat­i­fied the offi­cial count and pro­claimed Mar­cos the win­ner on Feb­ru­ary 15, 1986. The country’s Catholic bish­ops and the United States Sen­ate con­demned the elec­tion, and Aquino called for a gen­eral strike and a boy­cott of busi­ness enter­prises con­trolled by Mar­cos allies. She also rejected a power-sharing agree­ment pro­posed by the Amer­i­can diplo­mat Philip Habib, who had been sent as an emis­sary by U.S. Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan to help defuse the tension.

On 22 Feb­ru­ary 1986, the Peo­ple Power Rev­o­lu­tion was trig­gered after two key Mar­cos allies, Defense Min­is­ter Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces Vice-Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos called on Mar­cos to resign and holed up in two mil­i­tary camps in Que­zon City. Aquino, who was in Cebu City when the revolt broke out, returned to Manila and insisted on join­ing the swelling crowd that had gath­ered out­side the camps as a human bar­ri­cade to pro­tect the defec­tors. On the morn­ing of 25 Feb­ru­ary 1986, at the Club Fil­ipino in San Juan, Aquino took the pres­i­den­tial oath of office admin­is­tered by Supreme Court Asso­ciate Jus­tice Clau­dio Teehankee.

For being truly WOMAN, and heed­ing the call to be Leader of a Nation, Cory Aquino deserves to be Num­ber One in this list of 10 Women That Changed Philip­pine History.