Fact: For over a decade, the Guinness Book of Records featured the Marcoses in its section on “Crime.” One edition brackets the salting away of $860.8 million between the theft of the Mona Lisa painting in 1911 and the robbery of Germany’s Reichbank in 1945. Later, the crime ranked with entries for deposed dictators like Africa’s Mobutu Seseke.

Real heroes, like Lorenzo Tañada, Joaquin Roces, Jose Diokno and Benigno Aquino, among others, deserve a Libingan grave. But neither they nor their families demanded that honor. They understood that integrity and nobility of spirit -- not honor guards -- consecrate a burial ground in truth. Horse-drawn hearses cannot redress poverty of the spirit. “El sitio nada importa” ["Where is of no import"], Jose Rizal writes in “Mi Ultimo Adios.”

In an open letter to then President Estrada, Victoria Mansueto (an aunt now dead) wrote:

“When World War II started, my younger brother was a fighter pilot. Lt. Salvador Manlunas and others fought in obsolete P-26 planes against modern Japanese Zeroes. He was killed in action.

“Bading never had a Swiss bank account. Nor did he own vast lands. All he has is a quiet tree-lined street, named after him, in Villamor Air Base and a Libingan grave. Now, you’d bury next to him, as a hero, someone whom the Guinness Book of Records credits for massive theft.”

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