What they did for love

They say money can’t buy you love. But for many, it pays to have money.

And there are many ways of getting rich: Either you work for it, you inherit it or you marry it.

A fourth one, in modern times is to be corrupt. Successful businessmen, on the other hand, want us to invest, although investing, allegedly, is paved in scuttlebutt. That is why in this season of love and loving, the advice is don’t fall in love with money.

Sounds like a good one. But how about scuttlebutt? If you think about idle talk, tall tales, gossip, rumors and intimations, that’s it. They’re all synonymous.

Scuttlebutt is a nautical term for the cask once used to serve water back in the early 1800s. The term corresponds to the colloquial concept of a water cooler in an office setting which at times becomes the focus of congregation and casual discussion. Hence, the title of this column.

Filipinos, by nature, love to hear gossip. It is a passive pastime in every place. In small villages by the sea, at a rather early time of day, housewives, some even while breastfeeding their babies, gather together while chatting and sharing the latest gossip in the neighborhood. In the workplace or in schools, you have it in the form of a grapevine.

Nowadays, office workers catch up on the latest scuttlebutt around the water cooler and when they do, they are continuing a long-standing, albeit not necessarily honorable, tradition. That kind of gossip sharing probably also occurred on the sailing ships of yore. By the early 20th century, the term for the water source was also applied to the gossip and rumors generated around it and the latest chatter has been called scuttlebutt ever since.

We are not here to gossip, but to share with you the latest scuttlebutts around town. In the corporate, political and celebrity world. The juicier, the better.

And hey, haven’t you noticed, the more popular, the more moneyed the subject of the scuttlebutt is, the more it has the makings of being the talk of the town? It gets passed on from people to people until it becomes an urban myth before finally graduating as an urban legend. And sometimes a full-blown scandal.

While researching on crazy things people did for love, we uncovered the interesting secret love affair of the late General Antonio Luna and the subject of his romance, Ysidra Cojuangco, she of the famed Cojuangco clan that has been lording it over Philippine politics due to their wealth and influence.

The Cojuangcos will always be a fun subject for tittle tattles.

Urban legend has it that today’s Cojuangco-Aquino wealth can be traced to the millions worth of treasures entrusted by Gen. Antonio Luna to his girlfriend Ysidra Cojuangco. As we all know, Luna was assassinated in 1899, leaving all the money to Ysidra who never returned it to its rightful owner — the First Philippine Republic.

The same intriguing tale, although much more detailed, appeared in the book Some Are Smarter Than Others: The History of Marcos’ Crony Capitalism by former National Archives director Ricardo Manapat.

The said revolutionary funds, on which the First Philippine Republic depended upon, was ordered by Luna to be transferred to Tarlac “where the revolutionary government planned to establish its capital.”

He then allegedly turned over the treasures to his then 32-year-old sweetheart, Ysidra Cojuangco, before going to Cabanatuan where he met his bloody end.

For some historians, however, the legendary affair is not supported by documentary evidence and therefore will always remain a historical myth. Prof. Ambeth Ocampo, for instance, said the Luna-Cojuangco love story is proof that “when there is little or no material, the historical vacuum can be filled with malice and conjecture.”

Ysidra died of acute pulmonary edema in 1960 at the age of 93, but the legend of her love affair with the slain general and the mystery of the lost treasure still haunt her clan up to these days.

It may or may not have happened, with the evidence already lost to history. But the scuttlebutt continues and the Cojuangco clan will have to bear with people perpetuating the story for their own selfish ends.

Heard but not confirmed — The heirs of Don Emilio T. Yap are selling their shares in the Manila Bulletin, Manila Hotel, Philtrust and Euro-Med estimated to have a combined value of P160 billion.

The self-made billionaire, whose formidable business interests include shipping (Philippine President Lines), pharmaceuticals (Euro-Med Laboratories), publishing (Manila Bulletin), banking (Philtrust) and education (Centro Escolar University) passed away in 2014.

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