Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes

Garcia

To my parents

and the people of the Philippines

Introduction

Has it really been thirty years already? It seems like only yesterday that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and company were dispatched from their self-insulated cocoon of Malacañang Palace in Manila into the real paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. Yet, here we are today, thirty years later, and possibly seeing another attempt by their spawn to regain entry to the old homestead (or at least line up to be the Next Pretender).

It is 2016 and this will be an especially significant and pivotal year in the history of the Philippines, the only predominantly Christian and heavily Western-influenced nation in Asia. It will mark the seventieth anniversary of the nation as an independent, self-governing republic after 350 years of colonial rule by Spain and the United States. It will be the twelfth legitimate presidential election of the post-war Republic.

These elections will once again be a test of the intelligence, or lack thereof, of the Filipino people, who, as of 2014, just became the 12th nation on the planet to pass the 100,000,000 population mark, thanks to the centuries-old negligence of the Roman Catholic Church. I write this book to help remind the Filipino people, especially the new, young voters, of the dangers of the Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos, Jr. or Jejomar Binay candidacies and the waste and turmoil left behind by the illegitimate, twenty-year rule of Junior’s parents.

Early Exposure to the Marcoses

My first brush with the Marcoses and their kin was in seventh grade in elementary school at St. John's Academy in my hometown of San Juan, Rizal, when a tall, very fair, puff-cheeked lass named Margarita Romualdez became my classmate. She supposedly was the niece of the then-to-be-senate president Ferdinand Marcos. Being in seventh grade, and not coming from a particularly politically active family, I found no meaning in this fact other than here was this rather attractive gal, campaigning for her uncle in our elementary school.

It seemed rather odd at the time, but the impropriety of those politicking actions did not become significant to a seventh-grader until later years, when her uncle and her entire clan had shown their true colors. So, even at a very young age, Imelda’s family was using people to advance their causes, so they could dip their hands into the public till.

(This niece of Imelda Marcos was supposedly her favorite, being the prettiest, but in the final years of the Marco-kleptomania regime, when Margarita had fallen on hard times, she was supposedly sidling up to her Lothario uncle, the president, in far more ways than in an innocent uncle-niece relationship. Of course, it was all done behind the back of the aunt, Imelda, who seemed to be too occupied with her own fantasy world.)

Sheer Volume of Material

The biggest obstacle and dread I faced in writing this book is the sheer volume of material and the multi-layered nature of it. Just as the prose-cutors in New York failed to present a focused picture of the many corporate shell games in the sensational 1990 racketeering trial of Imelda Marcos (more in Chapter V) and thus had the jury acquitting her—one gets mired in the sheer density of material—if an author is to get thorough about the subject at hand. It's as if the devious mind of Ferdinand Marcos itself had actually planned the massive, sleight-of-hand scale and layer upon layer of shell corporations that would obfuscate the common man's understanding of the fraud he had created. Marcos made master US embezzler Bernie Madoff look like a rank amateur.

Another issue of integrity with which I had to grapple while writing this book was what to call Mr. Marcos after his one and one-half terms of legitimate presidency, pre-martial law. Truthfully, he was no longer an honestly elected president of a democracy but the full dictator of a police state. I really had to struggle with it—so I beg the reader to forgive me if I still called Marcos president at times when he no longer legitimately was.

Finally, I attempted to make this book as comprehensive as I could, and I had access to some sources who could share first-hand accounts of their experiences with the Marcoses; they chose, however, not to comment, and just moved on—thus, a loss for history.

Feeling of Violation

And then there was the feeling of dirtiness and violation one experiences after wading through the voluminous material, giving one the sensation that somehow you had participated in the mass deception and wholesale sham perpetrated upon an unsuspecting people. I often wanted to cleanse myself and my psyche somehow of the misdeeds of these larger-than-life crooks and scoundrels. If there were a way to run my mind through a shower and still be true and faithful to my objectives as a journalist at the end of the day, I would have done so.

Sometimes, coming upon a new topic was only the tip of the iceberg. No one, probably not even the principals, Ferdinand, Imelda, and their closest conspirators, probably knew the total scope of all their crimes and larcenies. (I wouldn’t use the term misdemeanors as that would be a disservice to all the honest people of the Philippines, and it would be wholly disingenuous.) If they had not been stopped dead in their tracks in February, 1986, who knows how much more fraud, deceit, and plunder the whole corrupt Bonnie-and-Clyde gang would have perpetrated?

A Quick History of the Marcoses

Ferdinand Marcos (1917-89) was an ambitious, self-made politician from the so-called Solid North (the Ilocano region) of the Philippines, so-called because that region tends to vote 95% or so for their native sons and daughters, more so than any other region of the country. He rose from the ranks of being an attorney, a congressman, senate president, and finally elected president of the Republic in 1965.

Imelda Romualdez was the poor relation of a politically prominent clan from the Visayas, the middle part of the country. She came into Marcos’ life in 1954 when the young, charismatic congressman wooed, dined, and won the provincial lass’ heart and hand in a mere eleven days. In Imelda, Marcos saw an invaluable asset in his larger plans for national office.

Their marriage had its early hiccups when the new Mrs. Marcos suffered a nervous breakdown because she could not adjust to the breakneck speed of her husband’s campaign plans. This could not derail Ferdinand’s overall blueprint. Being a successful lawyer, he quickly fixed that temporary bump by sending Imelda for some R&R and psychiatric treatment in New York City around 1956-57. That was Imelda’s first taste of life in the financial capital of the world. She quickly got cured, got back on track with the Marcos program, and became his biggest asset at that time. When they waged a successful assault on the presidency in 1965, the fates were sealed. Marcos and Imelda created a formidable team that deftly maneuvered the demands of power with its hidden rewards in a little over two decades.

Inevitably, much of this book will be about Imelda Marcos and her highly visible shenanigans (e.g., her travels and trials, her material artistic acquisitions, her ostentatious lifestyle), and that is only a natural consequence of Imeldiana lore just being more visible than the boring, invisible scheming and financial shell-games that Marcos played with their stolen billions. As such, the visible appurtenances of Imelda make for greater press and more interesting copy.

Ultimate Indictment

Ultimately, in hindsight and given the perspective of time, there is no recourse but to indict the Marcoses and their accomplices for the crimes they perpetrated in the name of peace and order, staving off the so-called challenges of the communists and anarchists who were out to disrupt the capitalist system and old order—and so, a new oligarchic order instituted by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos could then fill the vacuum.

This book will try to reveal dirty linen and many scandals previously unknown to the general population – and some previously exposed in two limited edition publications: The Conjugal Dictatorship by Primitivo Mijares, Union Square Publications, San Francisco, California, USA, 1976; and Some Are Smarter than Others by Ricardo Manapat, Aletheia Publications, New York, NY, 1991. They were limited edition publications set up primarily for the purpose of exposing and sharing these very anti-Marcos screeds to a few hundred or thousand readers. Conjugal Dictatorship, however, has suddenly become available in eBook format.

If I do seem biased and judgmental here, I do hope the reader will forgive me. This is the only way I know of fighting back against the destructive efforts of a massive, almost unstoppable gang that raped, pillaged and plundered the land where I came from, loved at one time and still feel for.

While I never personally suffered at the hands or because of the decrees of the Great Plunderer escaped just in time as the nation was led down a ruinous path, economically if not morally, by the crooks, I feel for those who were less lucky and am still outraged at how people who were supposed to be trusted with the care and leadership of a land fooled and betrayed the very people he entrusted to lead them. May we never forget the heinous crimes and plunder of unimaginable proportions foisted on an unsuspecting populace.

I tried to make this volume as complete and comprehensive on all the crimes and injustices perpetrated during the Marcos regime as possible. But due both to the enormous scope of criminalities committed during that time, and space limitations, it becomes possible only to pick and choose, of which I hope I have given a fair and representative sampling.

Operation Thought Control

The Conjugal Dictatorship was published by a San Francisco Bay Area opposition publisher and was available only via a post office box, generally not available in bookstores, unless a buyer special-ordered it. Remember, this was in the pre-Internet and pre-amazon.com days. Mijares was a former insider in the Marcos administration who became extremely dissatisfied with the wholesale corruption of the regime.

In retribution for the exposé, author Mijares' son was tortured, brutally mutilated, and killed; and Mijares himself was lured back into some trap, ostensibly on some hunting trip to a remote island and, rumor goes, taking a page from the Argentinian colonels and KGB operatives, was pushed overboard alive from a helicopter into the open ocean. (How he could have fallen for such a trap is quite mystifying, but a story for another day.)

Smarter than Others is a comprehensive, exhaustive listing and exposé on the wholesale rape of Philippine corporate structure during the dark years. It was initially based on a pamphlet nicknamed The Octopus Report and, like Dictatorship, was circulated underground in Manila while the Marcoses sat in power. The softcover edition became available in 1991, five years after the whole thieving cabal were booted out but while most of the loot had already fallen through the sieve.

Previous to the attempts to eradicate Conjugal Dictatorship from the public memory banks, the Marcoses had practice in damage-information and thought control. In 1970, The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos by Carmen Navarro Pedrosa first came out in Manila. It was a frank, intimately researched biography of the new Philippine first lady’s real past, humble beginnings and all. It did not sit well with the Asian Zeus and Hera who were now ruling with a solid mandate from their for-the-most-part honest 1969 re-election bid.

While there was no such thing as outright banning of publications then in 1970, the Marcoses first tried to discredit the biography by seeking retractions from three of the most intimate resources of the book: the maid who raised Imelda, her early music teacher, and Imelda’s own first cousin, who was not intimidated by her relation to the new, now powerful Evita Peron-copycat. When none of that worked, the Ruling Couple bought out all existing copies of the book from Manila bookstores and harassed the author to no end, so much so that Pedrosa ended up fleeing to London with her family.

Yet the power couple and their machinery failed to execute a clean sweep since hundreds of copies had already been bought, mostly by Manila’s intelligentsia. Once the book came out and its summary disappearance from the capital’s bookstore shelves, it turned into a hot, underground commodity and was cycled and recycled among educated Manilans. (A year after the Marcoses fell, an updated version was reissued and simply called Imelda Marcos: The Rise and Fall of One of the World’s Most Powerful Women. It is also one of the sources for this book.)

Cosmopolitan, You’ve Gone Too Far

When Cosmopolitan magazine came out with its December, 1975, issue naming Imelda Marcos as one of the planet’s wealthiest women, the couple who were this time overstaying occupants of Malacañang Palace by virtue of the unfounded declaration of martial law in 1972 sent out their agents, minions, and friends across the US to buy up as many copies of the magazine as they possibly could from US newsstands. To some degree they succeeded in denying casual buyers of the magazine the explosive information, but for the most part, it was a laughable Keystone Cops-type effort. In any case, this attempt at implementing damage control on foreign soil, served as a dry run for when The Conjugal Dictatorship came out.

And when the far more revealing and damaging tome by Mijares came out a few months later in mid-1976, the Marcos smother-machine went into overdrive and put in as many mail orders as they could to corner the market for new copies going into circulation. Next, the Marcos minions hit US public libraries that had copies of the book by either actually ripping the book off the shelves and/or borrowing the book under fictitious names and never returning the same. So it seemed like Krystal-nacht, Asian-Manila style, all over again but carried out half-a-world away from the crime scene.

By the very nature of those nefarious actions, lies the heart of the matter. Why would anyone go to such great, sneaky lengths to conceal, obliterate, smother, or delete those works if they obviously did not reveal even a grain of truth? Why hide something if there isn’t a kernel . . . a grain of truth to be ashamed of? Thus, even from the mid-1970s, the Marcoses knew the immorality of their actions, not to mention the severity, scope, downright betrayal of public trust. But did they care? Of course not.

About the Author

I spent the first twenty-four years of life in the Philippines. I am first and foremost a Manila boy (OK, the suburbs). As already mentioned, I grew up in the small, leafy Manila suburb of San Juan, Rizal—the same suburb where Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos made their Manila home, and which eventually five Philippine presidents (Elpidio Quirino, two Macapagals, Marcos and Joseph Estrada) also called home at one time or another.

As a matter of fact, so tied up with Philippine presidential history is the town that in 1965 (when I was still not eligible to vote), the three leading candidates for the presidency (whose surnames all happened to begin with the letter M) were all one-time residents of San Juan. There was the incumbent Macapagal; the challenger, Marcos; and the third, Senator Raul Manglapus, had lived there a few years before moving to Makati. Manglapus was the choice of Manila intelligentsia; but unfortunately, without an established party apparatus, came in a distant third in 1965.

Because I spent the first twenty-four years of my life in Manila, in the very milieu I cover in this book, I feel uniquely qualified vs. other foreign journalists, to write about this chapter in history with a great deal of authenticity, distilled with the perspective of time and distance.

Parentage and Early Life

My beloved mother was a general physician in San Juan who, in fact, had one time attended to an emergency call at the then-Congressman Ferdinand Marcos’ residence, administering a flu shot to Imelda. My father was from an old-time Ermita family. (Ermita was a once fashionable neighborhood in the old part of Manila, laid out grid-like, which came into prominence during the first decades of American rule, where many Spanish, American, and intellectual-class families settled. Many streets were named after the US states. Because my grandfather, Arturo F. Garcia, Sr., earned his medical degree as a 1904 illustrado (Distinguished Promising Young Men) from the University of Colorado, Manila city planners named the street he lived on after the state of his US alma mater. My father, who had one engineering degree from the University of the Philippines (U.P.), also happened to secure his mining degree from the Colorado School of Mines.

By my father’s side of the family, we were also distantly related to president number three, Ramon Magsaysay. He and my father came from the same provincial town, Iba, Zambales, and of the same del Fierro clan. I believe they were third or fourth cousins. But my father never traded on that relation and he never even entered government service until Marcos’ time in 1965. The Garcias were just proud to have Ramon Magsaysay, the small-time boy from their hometown, a legitimately elected leader of the country.

The only time I ever visited Malacañang, the presidential palace, was when we went to pay our respects to the fallen president when his remains lay in state there after Magsaysay was killed in a plane crash in March 1957. And my father and I lined up like the rest of the other folks who came to pay their respects. No special lines or entrances were set up for the slain president’s kin.

I had what was considered to be an ‘elite’ Philippine education. I took my high school at the Ateneo de Manila, one of the two or three prestigious private boys’ schools in the country; had Jesuit scholastics from the New York-New Jersey area as my teachers; and where I learned Latin as part of the required curriculum. I then proceeded, like my parents, to the University of the Philippines (U.P.), where I earned my bachelor of arts in broadcast communication (the first male graduate of the institution, in that field) in 1969. U.P. is the primary university in the country established in the American era and along American educational lines.

My social life pretty much centered on the Manila-Makati axis: books, movies and TV shows from the US; local stage productions of American Broadway musicals in faraway Manila, etc. My parents treated us to a US- European trip in 1968—while I just used to read and dream about these places, I actually experienced the two centers of western civilization first-hand on that trip.

After college at U.P., my first jobs were at advertising agencies in Manila and as a television production assistant before moving to the US in late 1972—providentially, about a month before infamous martial law was declared on September 21, 1972.

But before that, I first voted in the local 1967 mid-term election. I was only seventeen when Marcos first ran in 1965, but didn't really care for him even then. There was something sinister and phony about his look in his campaign posters. But then superficially, from his first legal presidential term (1965-1969), transitioning into the second, he (and his wife) seemed to do a good job. But I was also young and naive and altruistic then.

So that is the milieu in which I grew up—not heavily political but nonetheless, because we lived in the capital and were raised to be well-informed and well-read, I became quite aware of what was happening around me politically. So I do have a lot of firsthand exposure and familiarity with all the shenanigans and showboating of the Marcoses.

Early Brush with the Marcoses

Finally, my first distasteful interaction with the Marcoses—which I have never shared with anyone before, but which I suppose left an indelible dent in my psyche—was my father’s attempt to secure the top job of the Gold Mining Assistance Subsidy Board (GMASB) of the Philippines, around 1968-69. As a matter of fact, it was Senator Benigno Aquino’s older brother, Billy, a Colorado School of Mines co-alumnus of my father, who headed said office at the time he was encouraged to join it. After a few years there at the GMASB, the older Aquino was ready to retire, and so there was a scramble to fill the top spot. And because