Word: manila
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...past 18 years, Communist guerrillas of the New People's Army have made Philippine soldiers and policemen their main targets. Last week they turned their guns on Manila's main foreign backer: the U.S. In one well-coordinated 15-minute burst of violence, pistol-wielding assassins killed two active-duty U.S. service members, a retired U.S. sergeant and a Filipino businessman. The attacks occurred within three miles of Clark Air Base, the largest overseas U.S. Air Force facility. All bore the signature of the N.P.A.'s sparrow-unit death squads, so called for their small size and great mobility. Persons...
...Manila alone, some 50 killings have been attributed to the sparrows this year. The N.P.A. had threatened to target American personnel after the U.S. announcement of increased military aid to Manila following the August coup attempt. Indeed, the guerrillas boasted that they would kill one American for each of the ten armored personnel carriers that the Reagan Administration delivered to the Aquino government last week. U.S. military officials ordered service members and their families at both Clark and the Subic Bay naval base to restrict travel outside the camps to essential trips and to avoid using side roads...
Speaking to a gathering of 1,300 supportive but nervous businessmen in Manila, Aquino was feisty, sarcastic and uncommonly firm. Said the President: "The question you all really want to ask is Can she hack it? Isn't she weak?" She proceeded to argue that she was strong. "Henceforth, I shall rule directly as President," said Aquino. "To the ad hoc committees and commissions created to inform me on their special areas, I add one more: an action committee of one member...
...Some Manila newspapers that had been foretelling doom since the August rebellion had a change of heart. "This could be the turning point of the Aquino presidency," wrote the Manila Chronicle. Other papers rushed to publish Aquino's full text. Despite her rightward swing against labor and the Communists, even some of the President's supporters in the moderate left applauded the speech's implications. Indeed, many had felt that her aura of saintliness had got in the way of her politics for too long...
...Aquino was to be the target of an uprising this month led by prominent Right-Wing Politicians Gregorio Honasan, the fugitive colonel whose August mutiny nearly toppled Aquino, and Ferdinand Marcos. One crony reportedly even had a six-seater plane ready to spirit the exiled Marcos from Hawaii to Manila...