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Corazon Aquino, the self-described "plain housewife" who overcame a dictator to become president of the Philippines, died early Saturday in Manila at age 76, after a battle with cancer.

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Corazon Aquino at a gathering of civic groups in Manila on Sept. 6, 2003.

Filipinos revered Mrs. Aquino for rebuilding the country's democratic institutions and surviving a series of military coup d'etat attempts to hand over power to her elected successor. But it was the heady images of 1986 -- when Mrs. Aquino rose on a wave of popular protest against the leadership of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda -- that seared themselves into the imagination of millions of people around the world.

The "People Power" revolt showed that ordinary people could mass together to topple authoritarian leaders, influencing a series of similar pro-democracy upheavals from Eastern Europe and Taiwan in the late 1980s to South Korea and South America.

The Philippines' uprising began in 1983, when Mrs. Aquino's husband, opposition leader Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., shrugged off death threats and returned from exile in Boston to join a growing movement against Mr. Marcos, under whom the country had fallen into a quagmire of corruption and poverty.

Mr. Aquino died in a hail of bullets as soon as he stepped off his plane in Manila's international airport, in circumstances that have never been fully explained. Two million people escorted his body to the cemetery where he was buried, in a startling show of popular resentment. Mourners continued to show their support for Mr. Aquino and the opposition's cause by tying yellow ribbons on anything they could find.

The swelling opposition movement still needed a uniting figure to push for lasting political change. That person was the unassuming Mrs. Aquino, a widowed mother of five. As local and international pressure on Mr. Marcos grew, he called elections in February 1986, pitting himself against Mrs. Aquino, who took to wearing yellow dresses on her campaign stops.

Both Mr. Marcos and Mrs. Aquino claimed to win the vote, which was followed by widespread allegations of fraud, prompting some military leaders to revolt against the dictator. A standoff in Manila followed, as more than one million Filipinos, including Mrs. Aquino, took to the streets to protect the rebels from pro-Marcos forces. As defections within the armed forces accelerated, Mr. Marcos fled the country. Mrs. Aquino was sworn in as president on Feb. 25.

In later years, the "yellow-ribbon" movement gave way to other color-coded revolts, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and current movements in Thailand and Iran.

Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a supporter of the democracy movement in the Philippines, recalls traveling to Poland in the late 1980s, where Solidarity union adviser Adam Michnik asked him and the U.S. to help do for Poland what Mrs. Aquino did for the Philippines.

"It was obvious what had happened in the Philippines was a real source of inspiration to the leaders of Solidarity and the Polish people," Mr. Solarz said. "If democracy could succeed in the Philippines, they though it could succeed in Poland, too."

After Mrs. Aquino's election, her subsequent victories as president were less decisive. She rebuilt democratic institutions that had been emasculated under Mr. Marcos. But an agrarian program wasn't comprehensive enough to end a communist insurgency and restore prosperity to many rural areas, and the country still labors under the burden of corruption.

Throughout her presidency, Mrs. Aquino showed a steely streak which often went unnoticed by her many admirers, some of whom produced "Cory" children's dolls in her likeness. While she did little to discourage the idea that she was elevated to the presidency by fate or divine intervention, Mrs. Aquino also dug in her heels to stay in office.

She faced down a wave of military coup attempts in her first three years in office. She sued newspaper columnist Luis Beltran for suggesting she hid under the bed in the presidential palace during a failed 1987 putsch, even going as far as to show journalists that she couldn't fit under the bed in question. And when it was time to step down -- as current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is scheduled to do next year -- Mrs. Aquino didn't hesitate.

Franklin Drilon, who served as chief of staff and labor and justice secretary under Mrs. Aquino and who later became Senate president, recalls that during the final year of her presidency, a number of people close to her suggested she consider extending her term by running in the presidential elections to be held in 1992. Mrs. Aquino would have none of it.

"Whenever the idea was mentioned in her presence, Cory would simply look out of the window to the right of her desk, ignoring the suggestion," Mr. Drilon says. Mrs. Aquino left no room for misinterpretation. "She knew that after more than two decades under the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, the last thing we needed was another leader desperately clinging to power," Mr. Drilon recalls.

She stepped down in 1992 after free elections elevated her successor, Fidel Ramos, to the presidency, and departed his inauguration in her own Toyota sedan -- a pointed move to demonstrate that she was returning to life as a private citizen.

Until diagnosed with colon cancer last year, Mrs. Aquino continued to take part in the Philippines' fractious politics, underscoring the unfinished nature of the revolution she helped lead. In 2001, she joined a second uprising to chase former President Joseph Estrada from office for graft -- a charge for which he was convicted and later pardoned by Ms. Arroyo.

Mr. Estrada and Mrs. Aquino since made up, joining forces in calling for Ms. Arroyo to step down.

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