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Educated at private Philippine schools run by Roman Catholic nuns and at New York City's College of Mount St. Vincent, where she earned a degree in French and mathematics, Aquino originally dabbled with the idea of a career in law. Eventually she decided to concentrate on being a helpmate to her spouse. But while raising five children during 28 years of marriage, she was exposed to the rough-and-tumble of backroom politics. For most of that period her husband was considered the second most important political figure in the country, after Marcos.
In 1972, after Marcos invoked martial law, Benigno Aquino was arrested on charges of murder and subversion. Many Filipinos believe that his most serious crime was to be a virtual shoo-in to win 1973 presidential elections that were scheduled but never took place. During Aquino's 7 1/2 years of imprisonment, his wife was the sole link between the Philippine opposition leader and his followers. In 1980, when Marcos freed Benigno so that he could have heart surgery in the U.S., she accompanied him in a three-year exile in Boston. She later said it was one of the happiest periods of her life.
That idyll ended on Aug. 21, 1983, when Benigno was shot while getting off a China Airlines Boeing 767 jetliner at Manila International Airport. The killing was initially blamed by the regime on a lone, allegedly Communist gunman, whom government security guards shot instants later. The majority of members on a Marcos-appointed commission of inquiry later said that the evidence pointed to a far-reaching military conspiracy that might have included Chief of Staff Ver. But after an eight-month trial tainted by questionable legal procedures, Ver and 24 other military defendants were acquitted.
Out of the tragedy Corazon Aquino attained the status of a national saint. She first threw that prestige openly into the political fray in the 1984 National Assembly elections, when she stumped the countryside on behalf of the splintered opposition. A deeply devoted Roman Catholic, Aquino finally decided to run for the presidency after repeated consultations with Jaime Cardinal Sin, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, who encouraged her decision. Sin also brokered an alliance between Aquino and her running mate, Salvador ("Doy") Laurel, 57, head of the well-organized United Nationalist Democratic Opposition.
Reserved and moralistic by nature, Aquino has shown that she also has a steely streak. Unrelentingly stubborn concerning the alleged injustice of the Marcos government's investigation of her husband's murder, she can also crack the whip among her sometimes fractious followers. More than once, she has demonstrated a street-wise familiarity with the grittier ins and outs of Filipino politics, such as fund raising, that she learned at her late husband's side.
As a public speaker, Aquino strikes few sparks. Her voice is high pitched and lacks inflection. She seldom gestures with her hands. Nonetheless, she has the capacity to hold her audiences through simple, unaffected recitation of the sufferings of her family at the hands of the Marcos regime, and her blunt accusation that "Mr. Marcos is the No. 1 suspect in the murder of my husband." She also charges Marcos of being, because of his authoritarian methods, "the most successful recruiter for the Communists."