Improbable hero

Chino was the “the kid in dirty shorts who doubled as air raid warden,” Armando J. Malay recalls in the biography: “A Guardian of Memory”. Named Times publisher at 23, Chino became Malay’s boss.

Chronicle’s  Eugeno Lopez Jr deferred to Roces leadership, Raul Rodrigo writes in “The Power and the Glory.” Both were imprisoned by Marcos. Both had their newspapers seized. After People Power restored liberties, both returned to journalism.

“Shortly after Edsa, I was walking in Greenhills when Geny came by," now Inquirer columnist Armando Doronila recalls." He got down from his car and said: “Chino and I are talking about  reviving the Manila Chronicle. Would you like to run the paper?”

“Yes, by all means,” Doronila replied. “Because with Geny and Chino together, you can  not go wrong.”

“I was in charge of page one,” recalls Rodolfo T. Reyes who went on to ABS-CBN . “Not even once in the 370 issues (that) I handled did Chino ever suggest that I suppress or play down a story.”

“He never gave orders,” Malacañang Press Secretary Crispulo Icban adds, “You just had to sense his point…Yet, no one had any doubt that he was behind everything happening at the paper.”

That ranged Benigno Aquino negotiating the surrender of Huk supremo Luis Taruc, now publisher Danny Gozo reporting on Ilocos politics and arson to helping the only woman copyeditor on Daily Mirror’s desk: 20-year-old Jullie Yap Daza. Most fondly called him “Tatang”.

Chino didn’t speak much. President Ferdinand Marcos casually mentioned about plans to clamp on martial law. Just as casually, Chino said he’d resist.

“All he wanted was to publish a good newspaper,” Santos recalls. In so doing, he  provoked  the dictatorship by ensuring that  the paper performed “its social role as watchdog on government.”

Chino began his fight with "perhaps no more than a vaguely compelling sense that something had to be done”. The wish galvanized into resolve as the ex-publisher stared  at the bloodied remains of his former reporter: Benigno Aquino.

Soon, he was a fixture at protests. He walked  across five cities as marshall for the murdered  Evelio Javier’s funeral. “You saw the old man, left alone holding his ground,  emerge from the  tear gas.”

Family and friends tried to protect him from reprisals. Chino was a “simple minded man who could be ignored", they told the dictatorship. Chino’s response was true to form. “Simple minded? True. I’m incapable of complicating things for myself.”

One who agreed was Ferdinand Marcos. Read Marcos diaries. Following the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing, Marcos pinpointed Roces as key to the “media distortion”. They “hew to the communist line: Everything that Marcos does is wrong.”

It was Chino and Ateneo student Gerardo Esguerra who masterminded the peaceful 1978  “Noise Barrage”, recalls activist leader Charlie Avila. Chino understood what George Orwell, author of “1984”, wrote: “Every joke is a small nail in the coffin of  dictators.” Like Cardinal Jaime Sin, he was a repository of  the latest wisecracks against the regime.

While others dawdled, he launched the one-million signature campaign to convince a  reluctant Corazon Aquino to contest the snap elections. “Chino,” Cory phoned. “Tama na ‘yang  kalokohan ninyo (Stop all that foolishness of yours).” Instead, he came back with over a million signatures.

The rest, as the threadbare cliché goes, is history.

“He was perfect for the signature campaign,” recalls Karen Tañada. “He had moral power and no agenda. People just  gravitated toward him, specially the unorganized.”

At 75, Chino lay dying from cancer. “After risking life and limb in street battles, he was a hero dying an unheroic death.“You  can die and lose everything  in one instant, say be run over crossing the street,” he’d quip. “You have better chances in a street than alone.”

He refused to go to Stanford Cancer Center. He went home – to newspapers. “The smell of paper and ink, at three-hectare Capitol  Publishing  compound  gave Chino and brother  Ramon “the perfect feel of home.”

“If victors of the 1986 drama show the slightest sign that we, too, adopt one standard for the wrongdoer who is poor, and another for the criminal who is rich, Filipinos will never forgive us,” Chino responded  on being accorded the Legion of  Honor:

“It hurt when he said it,” President Corazon Aquino said. Yet, “if  any man had the right to say it, that was Chino.” His  response  led to reviews by government.

Chino asked for Jaime Cardinal Sin to administer the last rites. “Cory put into his hands the rosary that Sister Lucia of Fatima had sent at the beginning  of his presidency.

“Will everything be all right?” Chino asked those around his deathbed. “Yes. Tatang. Everything will be all right.” He was “spared the future,” Santos says.