Ninoy, FPJ death masks on exhibit at HAU Kapampangan Center

Sun.Star: Angeles City -- The death mask of the late senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., done by National Artist Napoleon Abueva hours before the hero was buried 24 years ago, is on exhibit at the Holy Angel University's Center for Kapampangan Studies. The article was posted Tuesday as the country marked the anniversary of the assassination of Aquino, which happened on Aug. 21, 1983. The exiled senator and opposition leader was killed at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport - later renamed in his honor - upon his return to the country from exile during the Marcos regime. The family of the slain senator had the church closed and cameras barred when Abueva opened the coffin and applied plaster of Paris on Ninoy Aquino's face. The molding process took less than an hour. It was this original mold that Abueva used to create a fiberglass copy that he sent to the Center for Kapampangan Studies, together with the death mask of another prominent Filipino, national artist and former presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. "The death masks of these two great Filipinos are in the Center because it's our way of honoring them," said Robby Tantingco, director of the Center. "They both have Kapampangan blood. Ninoy was a full-blooded Kapampangan from Concepcion, Tarlac while Poe's maternal grandmother was a Kapampangan from Candaba," Tantingco said. "Ninoy's death mask bears the disfigurement suffered by the hero at the moment of his assassination," he said. "You can see the bullet's exit hole on his chin, and the bruises and contusions all over his face as he fell down the tarmac and was dragged into the Avsecom van. The serenity on Poe's death mask contrasts with the violence and horror that's evident on Ninoy's death mask," he added. Ninoy's martyrdom inspired the People Power Revolution in 1986, which toppled the Marcos dictatorship and installed Corazon Aquino as the country's leader. "If the Tagalogs produced a Rizal, Kapampangans gave the nation a Ninoy, a true patriot and martyr," Tantingco said. "Rizal articulated his brilliance through his writings, Ninoy through his speeches. Ninoy was the country's youngest mayor, youngest governor, youngest senator and already en route to being the youngest president, except that martial law was declared and he ended up in prison. It was there that he became ascetic and achieved a level of spirituality, which prepared him for his martyrdom," he said. "Rizal and Ninoy are larger-than-life figures who both altered history and continue to inspire Filipinos and animate the soul of the nation," Tantingco said. - Sun.Star