Positive Passions

Aquino-Cojuangco documentary goes viral

ZAMBOANGA CITY: A documentary video of the political dynasty of the Aquinos and Cojuangcos has surfaced in the popular video sharing website YouTube, telling stories of the reign of two of the Philippines’ most wealthy and powerful clans.

The 15-minute documentary starts out with Antonio Luna, a general who fought in the Philippine-American war in 1899, and left a huge fortune believed to be the “wealth of the revolution” in Tarlac where he was assassinated by General Emilio Aguinaldo’s men, but his cache of gold and silver coins were never recovered.

The documentary entitled “Aquino Cojuangco: Facts they don’t want you to know,” was uploaded recently and can be accessed on http://www.you–tube.com/watch?v=gevTmy–WtHVo&feature=youtu.be&hd=1.

The fortune was said to have been with Luna’s girlfriend Ysidra Cojuangco, who established her empire in the 1900, buying lands from farmers in Tarlac and nearby provinces. The documentary also relates how the Cojuangcos spread its landholdings in Central Luzon, where they also established vast business empires in the following decades; and so was the issue of the controversial Hacienda Luisita, a huge estate being claimed by farmers as theirs.

Ysidra had four sons and one of them was former President Corazon Aquino’s father.

The film showed how the clans held an iron grip over the political landscape from mayors, governors, congressmen, senators and up to the presidency over the decades. It also noted the huge number of cases of extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances of political activists