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A Marcos-Era Glossary: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z, Bibliography

A Glossary of the Marcos Era (1965-1986) of the Philippines (Q-Z)

Quintero, Eduardo T.  Delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention, representing the first district of the province of Leyte, Quintero—then seventy years old, one of the oldest delegates, a former ambassador to Japan—dropped a bomba before fellow Convention delegates on May 19, 1972, alleging that he had received envelopes containing some 11,000 pesos from Imelda Marcos for his vote. Quintero was accused of perjury and graft and corruption, his house raided by the National Bureau of Investigation (Bantayog.org 2016).  He died in penury in San Francisco, California in 1984.

Rolex 12   Also known as the “Twelve Apostles.” Collective moniker for twelve powerful advisers who “occupied the operational positions critical for seizing and maintaining power under martial law” (Greitens 2006, 128).  Supposedly rewarded for their loyalty by Ferdinand Marcos with gifts of Rolex (some say Omega) watches, they are: Juan Ponce Enrile (Secretary of National Defense), Romeo Espino (Armed Forces of the Philippines [AFP] Chief of Staff), Rafael Zagala (Chief, Philippine Army), Fidel Ramos (Chief, Philippine Constabulary), Jose Rancudo (Chief, Philippine Air Force), Hilario Ruiz (Chief, Philippine Navy), Fabian Ver (Head, Presidential Security Group), Ignacio Paz (Chief, Intelligence Services of the AFP Joint General Staff, Tomas Diaz (Commander, First PC Zone and Vice-Chief, Philippine Constabulary [PC]), Alfredo Montoya (Commander, PC-Metropolitan Command), Romeo Gatan (Provincial PC Commander, Special Projects Officer), Eduardo Cojuangco (“recalled to active duty in the Armed Forces for Special Projects”).  Five of them (Espino, Zagala, Rancudo, Ruiz and Ver) were Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) graduates; two (Ramos and Ver) were Marcos cousins, plus one other Ilocano (Diaz) (ibid., 130).  Two (Cojuangco and Espino) were Marcos buddies.  Six of them (Ver, Enrile, Gatan, Montoya, Cojuangco, and Diaz) were part of the “Magic Seven” group (also known as the Inner Seven, with Marcos as the seventh member) with whom Marcos had discussed plans for declaring martial law in July 1972 (ibid., 129; see Oplan Sagittarius).

Salvage  (from the French salvage, derived from salver, “to save”; also from the Tagalog salbahe, derived from the Spanish salvaje, “wild” or “savage” [McCoy 2006, 244])  A Marcos-era term for extra-judicial killing, “salvaging” often takes place in secret (for example, in “safehouses”—also called “production rooms”—that are not “safe” for the victims, but rather, “safe” for the perpetrators, who are shielded from public scrutiny, oversight, or accountability), but may follow interrogation and entail the dumping of corpses bearing signs of torture along roads or other public places.  Task Force Detainees of the Philippines documented 2,255 cases of extra-judicial killings between 1973 and 1985 and 334 disappearances from 1977 to 1983 (Schirmer and Shalom 1988, 319). Other estimates put the total number of people killed at 3,257, of which 2,520 (77%) were salvaged (Kessler 1989, 137).  Canadian author Margaret Atwood adopted this Filipino term in her feminist novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986, Chapter 14), set in a dystopian present and future where selected women are conscripted to serve as incubating machines for the ruling class of Commanders in charge of the totalitarian, fundamentalist-religious, patriarchal government of the Republic of Gilead.  There is a scene in the novel in which the women attend a district-level “Salvaging, for women only.” In this ritual of state-endorsed and -engineered public lynching, a clutch of women participates in beating to death and tearing apart with their own hands a male Guardian who may have been a member of the resistance movement but who is accused by the state, without due process, of having committed rape. See also Torture

Seven (number 7)   Ferdinand Marcos’ lucky number.  At the second balloting of the 1964 National Convention of the Nacionalista Party, Marcos secured 777 votes, beating Emmanuel Pelaez to become the party’s standard bearer at the 1965 presidential election.  The hull number of the presidential yacht, renamed RPS The President and later BRP Ang Pangulo during Marcos’ tenure, was TP-777 (Bueza 2017). Malacañang Palace was renovated to include a resin window above the main stairs featuring 7 lunettes (Quezon, Alcazaren, Barns, and Tysmans 2005, 105, 279).  Imelda Marcos’ Cadillac limousine bore an IRM-777 license plate (Torregrosa 1992, 92, 94), one of many vehicles.   A 777 Corporation was among the many companies (including Sadlemi, or “Imelda” spelled backwards) set up by the Marcos family and/or run by their cronies to launder the Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth (Gerth 1986). Marcos was known to schedule important events on dates that either included the number seven or were divisible by seven.   Proclamation 1081 declaring martial law was either postdated or backdated to September 21, 1972 (and publicly announced at 7:15 p.m. on September 23), more than three months before Marcos was to begin his seventh year in office as president, and lifted on January 17, 1981.   Cabinet Bill no. 7 proposing the “snap election,” originally scheduled on January 17, 1986 but moved to February 7, proposed a campaign period of fifty-seven days.  Asked about the preponderance of number 7s, Political Affairs Minister Leonardo Perez admitted: “We are superstitious” (Russell 2005).  On September 7, 1993, nearly four years after his death on September 28, 1989 and seven years after he began his exile in Hawai’i in the wake of the People’s Power Revolution, Marcos’ remains were flown back to the Philippines for burial.  Coincidentally, the Plaza Miranda Bombing occurred on August 21, 1971; Benigno Aquino, Jr. was jailed for more than seven years and seven months before Imelda Marcos arranged for him to go into exile in the United States on May 8, 1980; and Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on August 21, 1983 (see also the “Magic Seven” in Rolex 12).  The Marcoses’ good friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s schedules were similarly guided by Nancy’s personal astrologer.  For example, the astrologer stated that January was a “bad month” for the president to deliver the State of the Union Address (Regan 1988, 70) and that the president should not deliver his speech on the findings of the Iran–Contra report and hold a press conference on March 9, 1987, suggesting instead that March 4 and 5 (the dates of the Reagans’ wedding anniversary) were “good” (ibid., 367). Reagan delivered his speech on March 5.   See United States, Presidents of

Sex tour   Travel package arranged by foreign travel agents and Filipino tour operators for foreign (predominantly male) visitors to the Philippines (the following discussion is indebted to Neumann 1984, excerpted in Schirmer and Shalom 1987, 182-87). The sex tour involves a “night-life tour” of Manila and includes the cost of spending a night with a prostitute.  In the early 1980s, some 150,000 Filipino women worked in the tourism-related sex industry, receiving as little as US$5 out of the total charges of $60 dollars, the rest of the money being divided up among club owners, tour guides, tour operators, and police.  Hotels also collected US$10-dollar “joiner’s fees” for allowing women to spend the night in their guests’ hotel rooms (ibid., 182).  In 1981, sixty-six percent of foreign visitors to the Philippines were male; twenty percent were from Japan, and out of 200,000 Japanese visitors, eighty percent were male (ibid., 1983).  Sex-trafficking extended also to men and children, with as many as 5,000 children involved (ibid., 186).  Coordinated protests mounted by women’s groups from the Philippines, Japan, and other countries during and after Japanese prime minister Suzuki Zenko’s visit to Manila in 1981 spurred Japanese authorities to curtail sex tourism from Japan (ibid., 184-86). The region-wide coordinating body for the women’s movement against prostitution tourism, Third World Movement Against the Exploitation of Women, was founded on December 10, 1980 and is headquartered in Manila.  

Shoes   Some 1,220 pairs of women’s shoes—along with jewels, designer gowns and bags, and gold coins—were left behind in Malacañang Palace after the Marcoses fled the country on the night of February 25, 1986 at the climax of the People’s Power Revolution (Philippine Star 2005).  Often referred to by global popular media as “3,000 shoes” (also, mistakenly, as “3,000 pairs of shoes”), Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection became a symbol of her and the Marcos family’s ostentatious extravagance and ill-gotten wealth.  The Marcoses and their relatives and cronies were estimated to have pilfered between US$ 5 to 10 billion during the Marcos era, using part of the money to purchase costly paintings, jewelry, and real-estate and fund Imelda’s shopping sprees, parties, and lavish trips abroad, while stashing the rest in Swiss and other international bank accounts. As of 2017, the Presidential Commission on Good Government had recovered about 171 billion pesos of the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth (Bajo 2018).

Softdrink beauties   Umbrella term coined by manager Rey dela Cruz for “bold stars” Coca Nicolas, Pepsi Paloma, and Sarsi Emmanuelle, who starred in bomba/bold films like Celso Ad. Castillo’s Brown Emmanuelle (1981), Virgin People (1984), and Snake Sisters (1985), Boots Plata’s Naked Island (1984), Peque Gallaga’s Virgin Forest (1984), Efren C. Piñon’s Bomba Queen (1985), and Tikoy Aguiluz’s Boatman (1985).  Emmanuelle garnered critical acclaim and a Gawad Urian Awards Best Actress nomination for her role in Boatman.  Paloma accused comedians Vic Sotto (member of VST&Co., see Manila Sound), Joey de Leon, and Ricardo “Richie D’ Horsie” Reyes—stars of the popular sitcom Iskul Bukul (1978-1988) and T.V. variety show “Eat Bulaga!” (premiered 1979)—of rape; the three men publicly apologized on TV and in print in 1982.  Paloma committed suicide on May 31, 1985. Other bold stars adopted stage names based on streets (Aurora Boulevard, Brandy Ayala, Epifania delos Santos) and elite surnames (Brandy Ayala, Claudia Zobel, Lampel Cojuangco). 

Sugar   The sugar industry had been largely dependent on privileged access to a protected U.S. market during the American colonial and post-independence period, an arrangement that benefited a small clique of planters (such as the Lopez family) whose wealth translated into political power (Dohner and Intal 1989, 461; McCoy 2009b).  In the early 1960s, devaluation and import decontrol, along with the suspension and reassignment to other countries of Cuba’s sugar quota following the Cuban Revolution, largely favored the export sector, leading to an expansion of land acreage planted with sugar and the operation of sugar mills (ibid., 461-62).  Following the 1970 devaluation of the peso, in an effort to stabilize sugar prices and prevent hoarding, the Philippine government took control of sugar trading (ibid., 462). The Philippine National Bank, which financed the industry, was responsible for purchasing the sugar crop, while its subsidiary, the Philippine Exchange Company (PHILEX) was in charge of exporting the crop. Although the expiration of the Laurel-Langley Agreement and its sugar quota arrangements in 1974 exposed the sugar industry to the volatility of the world market, the American decision to reinstate the sugar quota in 1981 shielded the industry for a time from slumping sugar prices.  Sugar prices, which had experienced major spikes in 1974 (owing to the commodities boom triggered by the 1973 oil crisis) and in 1980 (owing to the energy crisis triggered by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the decline in global production of sugar), fell in 1982. The National Sugar Trading Corporation, of which Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto served as president, had taken over from PHILEX in 1977 and was able to secure contracts to deliver half of the Philippine sugar exports at 23.5 cents a pound between 1981 and 1984, at precisely the time when sugar prices were already falling (to as low as 5 cents a pound in 1982 and 1984).  The shrinkage of the U.S. sugar quota and expiration of NASUTRA’s favorable long-term contracts in 1984, however, coupled with the continuing decline in the world price of sugar, meant that NASUTRA was unable to maintain the domestic support price for sugar (at 14-15 cents per pound, well above the world price) and pay the producers for the 1985 crop year (ibid., 465).  The collapse of the sugar industry caused widescale famine and malnutrition: nearly three-quarters of the population of the Western Visayas were living below the poverty line in 1986 (Riedinger 1993, 191).  See Oligarchy

Tadhana: History of the Filipino People   Ambitious history-writing project bearing Ferdinand Marcos’ byline, ghostwritten by a group of noted scholars (mainly from the University of the Philippines, the leading members of the group of editors and authors included Serafin Quiason, Samuel Tan, Zeus Salazar, Rodolfo Paras-Perez, Benjamin S. Austria, Alex Hufana, and Cesar Hidalgo), and projected to run to nineteen volumes, Tadhana: History of the Filipino People purported to “show the evolution of the Filipino people from a glorious beginning in precolonial times, moving towards progress but passing through a period of colonial trial and travail, before finally achieving a triumphal blend of the old culture and new civilization” (Tan 1993, 86; Marcos 1976b; see the account in Curaming 2020, chapters 2 and 3) under the New Society (see Kilusang Bagong Lipunan).  The project offered a new periodization of Philippine history by stressing the important role of pre-history in creating a common base indigenous culture that linked Filipinos to each other and to the larger Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian world, even as its account of the Philippine Revolution tended to stress the “convergence of all the classes in Philippine society” while glossing over class, regional, and factional differences, contradictions, and conflicts  (Curaming 2020, 73, 84).  Four volumes (Vol. 1, pt. 1 “Archipelagic Genesis,” 1980; Vol. 2, pt. 1 “Encounter,” 1976;  Vol. 2, pt. 2 “Reaction,” 1978;  Vol. 2, pt. 3 “Transition,” 1979) were published by 1980.  The first volume of a two-volume abridged version was published in 1982; the second volume was completed before 1986 but not published. 

Tasaday     The existence of the a “food-gathering and stone tool using” Manobo group of “forest people” in South Cotabato, Mindanao, was first publicized in 1971 by Manuel Elizalde, Jr., head of the Presidential Assistant on National Minorities (PANAMIN) through a data paper (Elizalde 1971) published under his name by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-Lived Phenomena.  The group consisted of only twenty-six men, women, and children (the following discussion is indebted to Hyndman and Duhaylungsod 1990, 41).  Elizalde’s main informant was a Manobo man named Dafal who had supposedly encountered the Tasaday in 1967 while on a hunting trip and introduced them to the use of metal implements and hunting techniques (ibid.). The Tasaday became an international sensation and were featured in newspaper articles and documentaries, including a National Geographic cover story and documentary in 1972.  Elizalde played up his status as the “white” god of the “gentle [Stone Age] Tasaday” (Nance 1975), the Momo Dakal Diwita Tasaday whose coming was supposedly foretold in their lore (ibid., 42).  University of the Philippines professor Zeus Salazar (1971, 1972) questioned the claim that the group had “originally” lived in “effective isolation”, citing Tasaday vocabulary (“grain”, “grind” [Salazar 1972, 105]) that indicated knowledge of farming or borrowing and (in the case of “diwata” [ibid., 99]) contact with neighboring tribes.   Proclamation no. 995 (Official Gazette 1972e) reserved 19,000 hectares of public-domain land in the municipalities of Surallah and Kiamba for a PANAMIN-administered Tasaday protected zone, followed two years later by a Presidential Decree no. 407 creating a 130,000-hectare T’Boli municipality (Official Gazette 1974).  Critics charged the PANAMIN office and Elizalde (who by 1979 had mining claims in the municipality and mining operations in Bukidnon) with exploiting the laws to gain control over the land and resources of the area (Hyndman and Duhaylongsod 1990, 43).  A South Cotabato Commission for National Integration inspector reported that the Tasaday were Manobo whose ancestral home was Kulaman. Most residents of South Cotabato did not believe in the authenticity of the Tasaday (ibid.). When Elizalde fled the country in 1983, PANAMIN staff reported that he had stolen between US$35-45 million and had “attempted to take twenty-five indigenous young women with him” (ibid., 45).  Swiss journalist Oswald Iten visited the Tasaday in 1986 and found them wearing T-shirts and using metal knives and wooden beds (Bower 1990).  A member of the Tasaday later said that the group had been forced to “sit in the caves almost naked” (quoted in ibid., 46).  The Tasaday had always had contact with the T’Boli and Manobo communities, and were allegedly paid by Elizalde to pose as cave dwellers and armed to ward off outsiders and participate in counter-insurgency programs (ibid., 48).  On October 14, 1987, the House of Representatives began an inquiry into the issue of the manipulation of the Tasaday. Jerome Bailen, chair of the U.P. Department of Anthropology, testified that the issue was not just “a matter of proving the group’s authenticity as a separate ethnolinguistic group. What is more vital is to establish if public funds were used to project an image of a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship protecting the interests of ‘gentle primitives’” (quoted in ibid., 50).  Two T’Boli recanted their earlier statements, claiming instead that they had been promised money and land and timber concessions and forced at gunpoint to say that the Tasaday were a hoax (ibid., 51).  While academic conferences organized by U.P. in 1976 and by the American Anthropological Association in 1988 concluded that the Tasaday were T’Boli and Manobo but not a living paleolithic people, the congressional committee’s 1988 report confirmed the authenticity of the Tasaday (ibid., 52).  In 1988, a group of Tasaday, with the aid of Elizalde, filed and won a lawsuit against the two U.P. scholars for claiming the Tasaday were a hoax. Corazon Aquino confirmed the congressional committee’s report that they were a “legitimate Stone Age tribe” (Deseret News 1988).  “Tasaday consciousness” was more likely created (Hyndman and Duhaylungsod 1990, 38) rather than “discovered”.  

Theology of struggle  Term coined by Edicio dela Torre as a refinement of the concept of liberation theology. Liberation theology had been formulated by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez as a means by which “theology should strive to reflect on and speak to the context of the poor and the marginalized” (Humphrey 2011, 4). Liberation theology influenced many progressive Filipino priests and lay people, sparking the Base Ecclesial Communities (also known as Basic Christian Communities, first introduced in Brazil) movement in the 1960s and forming one base of opposition against the Marcos dictatorship. The BEC movement sought to bridge faith and community by affirming and amplifying the Church’s commitment to securing justice, a commitment that entailed the immersion of faith-based workers in villages or small communities and “the defense of human rights, and the liberation of its peoples in the perspective of evangelization” (Segundo Galilea and Mary Rose Battung, cited in Asedillo 2021, 68-69). Dela Torre further distinguished the theology of struggle from liberation theology by highlighting the importance of thinking through the process (“on the way”), rather than just the ultimate goal, of struggle by which liberation theology could be achieved (ibid., 69).

Thrilla in Manila   The third and final heavyweight-championship bout, promoted by boxing impresario Don King, between two undefeated legends, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, was held at the Araneta Coliseum on the morning of October 1, 1975.  Frazier had beaten Ali in the “Fight of the Century” in Madison Square Garden, New York City, U.S.A., on March 8, 1971. That match had political overtones as Ali’s statements against the Vietnam War and refusal of army induction (“I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong”) made him an anti-establishment symbol (George 2011). Frazier was taken up by pro-establishment conservatives, even though Frazier had vocally and financially supported Ali when the conscientious objector was stripped of his title and barred from boxing for three years (Ozanian 2016; Burnton 2011).  Ali beat Frazier in their “Super Fight II”, also held at the Madison Square Garden, New York City, on January 28, 1974.  With a guaranteed US$ 4.5-million purse for Ali and $2 million for Frazier (Ozanian 2016), “Thrilla in Manila” was “the most brutal confrontation of their five-year rivalry” (Anderson 2016), compounded by Ali’s pre-bout trash-talking, during which he rapped “It’ll be a killa and a thrilla and a chilla when I get the Gorilla in Manila” (Boxing Hall of Fame Las Vegas 2018).  On a five-point scoring system, Ali won the match, 66-60 (referee Carlos Padilla, Jr.), 67-62 (judge Alfredo Quiazon), 66-62 (judge Larry Nadayag).  On a rounds basis, Ali was ahead 8-3, with three even (Quiazon) and 8-4-2 (Padilla and Nadayag) (Anderson 2016). Trainer Eddie Futch stopped the match before the fifteenth round because an exhausted Frazier could no longer see out of his right eye (ibid.).  Ali won by a technical knock-out.  Ali later said that “We went to Manila as champions, Joe and me, and we came back as old men,” and apologized for insulting Frazier (Burnton 2011).  Sportscaster Ronnie Nathanielz, the government-appointed liaison officer for the event, commented on the publicity value of the match for the Martial-Law regime: “It was a big deal for the Philippines, especially for Marcos, who had said ‘we’re doing this fight because we want to show the whole world there is law and order, the people are happy’” (quoted in McKirdy 2013). See Miss Universe Pageant

Toning   Alternative healing method performed live over DZBB radio by popular host Johnny Midnight (Hegina 2014).  Bacolod-born John William Xerez Burgos Joseph, Jr. had worked for ABS-CBN’s “Radyo Patrol” in the 1960s. For his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the victims of the August 2, 1968, 7.3-magnitude Casiguran earthquake that saw the collapse of the six-storey Ruby Tower in Binondo and the loss of 270 lives, Johnny Midnight received the Presidential Humanitarian Award of the First Order.  When martial law was declared, he lost his job at ABS-CBN and worked as dishwasher, waiter, and later manager, of Alba restaurant in Makati.  He returned to the airwaves in November 1980 with “Midnight Connection,” a program that ran from midnight to 5 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays and was responsible for introducing the “pyramiding” techniques of meditation and self-healing through “toning.” At exactly twelve midnight, Johnny Midnight would recite Arabic-sounding incantations for fifteen minutes. Listeners were encouraged beforehand to do breathing and stretching exercises; wear loose clothes; eschew metallic ornaments; purge negative emotions; and visualize health, wealth, and happiness. They would then drink a glass of water that had been “energized” by the incantations and turned into “toning water” with healing powers. Adopting “Bulaklak” (lyrics by George Canseco) as his theme song, Midnight released a “Toning” album (Dyna Records, 1981) where he explained that toning is the “art of tuning in to the harmonious vibrations ng kalawakan ng universe” as a way of connecting, through “genetic recall,” to one’s “divine self” (Midnight 1981).  On September 28, 1981, Midnight organized the “First Connector’s Live Toning Session” at the Araneta Coliseum, an event attended by an estimated 30,000 people (Marquez 1981). The toning phenomenon inspired Mike Relon Makiling’s paranormal-mystery spoof “Mag-Toning Muna Tayo” (1981), starring comedians Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon (see Manila Sound and Softdrink Beauties). Following protests by the Catholic Church and Born-Again groups, “Midnight Connection” was taken off the air.  Midnight went on to establish the “Temple of Man.”  A shooting incident involving a patient resulted in his wounding in 2005 (Hegina 2014).

Torture   Some 35,000 Filipinos were tortured during the Marcos regime (Kessler 1989, 137).  Scholars debate whether the torturers may have been trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and were conversant with the techniques laid out in CIA interrogation manuals (McCoy 2006, 77; McCoy 1999, 190).  The rise in torture cases dates back to the imposition of martial law (McCoy 1999, 207). Some of the torturers drew from their own experience of hazing as cadets in the Philippine Military Academy and waging brutal campaigns against Muslim insurgents in Mindanao (ibid., 203); an Armed Forces of the Philippines officer charged with torture argued thus: “But, sir, I did no more to this NPA [New People’s Army] suspect than had been done to me as a plebe” (quoted in ibid., 202).  Including rape, sexual molestation, mutilation, binding, beating, freezing, burning, and psychological torture, torture techniques were coded in doublespeak.  Torture involving the use of water was called a “NAWASA [National Waterworks and Sewerage System Authority] session” while those applying electrical shocks were called the “MERALCO [Manila Electric Company] treatment” (ibid., 81).  A person subject to “water cure” had water poured onto the cloth covering his or her mouth and nose to simulate the sensation of drowning.  A “wet submarine” meant the victim’s head would be submerged into a bowl of excrement, a “dry” one meant suffocation using a plastic bag over the head.  Clapping the ears simultaneously to produce a ringing sound was called a “telephone” (Schirmer and Shalom 1987, 319). Notorious torturers—a number of whom would become members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement—included Rolando Abadilla, Robert Ortega, and Panfilo Lacson of the Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group and Rodolfo Aguinaldo, Billy Bibit, and Vic Batac of the Fifth Constabulary Security Unit (McCoy 1999, 135, 206, 211-17).  See People’s Power Revolution and Assassinations and massacres

Tuta   Filipino word for “puppy,” translation of the Chinese “running dog” (zougou, 走狗).  “Running dog”—meaning hunting dog—appears in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji, 史記, completed c. 94 BCE) by Han-Dynasty official Sima Qian (司馬遷, c. 145- c. 86 BCE), Chapter 41, “Genealogies” section 24, “The House of King Goujian of Yue”: “When the birds are gone, the bows will be put away; when the hares are dead, the hounds will be stewed and eaten” (Fei niao jin, liang gong cang; jiao tu si, zougou peng, 蜚鳥盡，良弓藏；狡兔死，走狗烹), i.e., people who outlive their usefulness will be kicked out or killed.  The term occurs in several of Mao Tse-tung’s speeches and writings, notably “Revolutionary Forces of the World Unite, Fight Against Imperialist Aggression!” (November 1948): “If there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”  This passage commemorating the thirty-first anniversary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution was reprinted in The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Mao 1948, vol. 4) and included in the Little Red Book of Quotations from Mao Tse-tung (Mao 1966).  The Little Red Book circulated in intellectual, literary, and activist circles in the Philippines and other countries. Events in China, particularly the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), attracted the interest of Filipino student-activists, several of whom visited China in the mid-1960s. Jose Maria Sison brought back four volumes of Mao’s Selected Works and arranged for their Tagalog translation (Jones 1989, 24).  Among the most memorable activist slogans was “Marcos Hitler Diktador Tuta,” plastered by demonstrators on bulletin boards and building walls in the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus (notably the Student Center, Wenceslao Q. Vinzons Hall).  Under martial law, poet, journalist, and union-organizer Jose Maria “Pete” Flores Lacaba, then a fugitive, published the poem “Prometheus Unbound” under the pseudonym Ruben Cuevas in the July 14, 1973 issue of FOCUS Magazine.  Inspired by similar literary stratagems in Tagalog poetry (Lacaba, quoted in Melendez 2018), and paying homage to Greek tragedian Aeschylus and British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s classic works about “a god who dared to resist” (Lacaba 2008), “Prometheus Unbound” is an acrostic poem, the first letter of each line of which spells out “Marcos Hitler Diktador Tuta.” 

United States, Presidents of the   [1] U.S. President Lyndon Johnson arrived in Manila on October 23, 1966 (and stayed in the hotel suite recently occupied by the Beatles) to attend the seven-nation Manila Summit Conference on October 24 to discuss the conflict in Vietnam. Attendees included Park Chung Hee of Korea, Harold Holt of Australia, Keith Holyoake of New Zealand, Thanom Kittikachorn of Thailand, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu of the Republic of Vietnam (Berman 1979, 17). The leaders signed a joint communiqué stating their “determination that the freedom of South Vietnam be secured” (Manila Summit Conference 1966, 1) and demanding that the leaders of North Vietnam “abandon their aggression” (ibid., 2).  The communiqué also stated that the allies would withdraw their troops within six months if Hanoi withdrew its troops to the north.  Johnson’s “Manila formula,” which was supposed to enable the U.S. to disengage from Vietnam, ended up committing the U.S. to an open-ended war (Johns 2020, 64).  Ferdinand Marcos sent army troops and civilian workers to Vietnam—charging an average of US$26,000 for each of the 2,200 noncombatant troops of the Philippine Civic Action Group (the Filipino casualties include five soldiers killed by Viet Cong action, a dozen suicides and others by booby traps [Almonte and Vitug 2015, 62])—as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Many Flags Program, initiated in 1965 to support South Vietnam (Schaller 1997, 200).  [2]  In his visit to Manila on July 26, 1969, Richard Nixon announced his intention to “initiate a new era in Philippine-American relations, not returning to the old special relationship, because the winds of change have swept away those factors, but building a new relationship, a new relationship which will be based on mutual trust, on mutual respect, on mutual confidence, on mutual cooperation” (Official Gazette 1969). This recalibration of the Philippines-U.S. relations away from the rhetoric of “special relationship” to one of “mutual” trust, respect, confidence and cooperation (without special preferences) was intended to deal with the rising tide of Filipino nationalism (Kissinger 1969, 407).  Aside from anti-American demonstrations and protests against Philippine participation in the Vietnam War, killings by U.S. servicemen of Filipinos (an estimated 36 to 40 cases in the period 1947-1969 [cited in Enrile 2012, 263]), including the killing of a farmer, Glicerio Amor, by American naval petty officer Michael D. Moomey on June 10, 1969, inflamed public opinion against the military bases.  The presidents discussed the broadening of the Philippines’ economic relationships beyond America, the review of the military bases agreement, and U.S. material help to deal with internal subversion in the Philippines. [3] Gerald Ford visited Manila on December 6-7, 1975 to discuss the status of the American military bases in the Philippines in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. The December 7 joint communiqué stated that “negotiations on the subject of United States use of the Philippine military bases should be conducted in the clear recognition of Philippine sovereignty” (Joint Communiqué of President Marcos and President Ford 1975, 866-67).  The Philippine flag would be flown singly at the bases, and, to lessen contact between Filipino civilians and American servicemen on official duty involving security (which had led to incidents of shootings), the Philippine government would be responsible for perimeter security (ibid., 884).  [4] The Jimmy Carter administration endorsed the April 1978 Batasang Pambansa elections, even as Vice-President Walter Mondale met with members of the anti-Marcos opposition and discussed with Marcos the Carter administration’s concerns over human rights abuses (Steinmetz 1994, 169).  [5] A good friend of the Marcoses, Ronald Reagan was convinced that the only alternative to Marcos was communism, and publicly stated so. U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz persuaded the president to distance himself from that original remark (Bonner 1987, 361, 368).  On February 11, 1986, publicly commenting on fraud committed during the February 7 snap election, Reagan declared that “both sides” (Marcos and Aquino) could have committed fraud and violence. On February 15, Reagan finally pinned the blame for electoral fraud and violence on Marcos, but said nothing about the action America would take in response to the situation (New York Times 1986).  Shultz had to persuade Reagan to issue a February 15 statement acknowledging this time that the widespread fraud and violence was largely perpetrated by Marcos and his supporters (Solomon 2007, 38).  Shultz, who had been photographed kissing Imelda Marcos on the lips during his 1983 visit to the Philippines and who would boast (1993, 623), after the People’s Power Revolution, that “the President and I were given credit for [applying] critical pressure on a dictator,” was a late convert to the cause.  Noting Reagan’s “instinctive loyalty” to Marcos (ibid., 615) and the fact that Reagan wanted “Marcos to change, not leave”, Shultz felt that “[w]e have to wait for events to happen; we cannot move the president under present circumstances. The Filipino people will have to throw Marcos out. Ronald Reagan will not push out a friend” (ibid., 629).  Foremost in the minds of the high officials in Reagan’s administration was the bad experience that the U.S. had had in its handling of revolutions elsewhere in the world. According to Shultz, “the U.S. has, historically, been badly damaged by the way we have been involved in tidal shifts like this [People’s Power Revolution]—most recently the fall of the shah [of Iran]. We paid a heavy price for our past handling of these affairs. We have gotten the worst of both worlds: we have gotten on the wrong side, and we have appeared disloyal to our friends. So we have a big stake in decent treatment of Marcos the person” (ibid., 633-34).  Shultz apparently sought the advice of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who had already concluded that Marcos had to go (ibid., 634).  While it is true that Washington had knowledge of the existence of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement and its coup plans (McCoy 1999, 240) and allegedly even secretly funded RAM (Bonner 1987, 368) and provided advice and intelligence to the rebel troops during EDSA, Ronald Reagan himself had to be persuaded to support the People’s Power Revolution. When the People’s Power Revolution broke out, Shultz called an emergency meeting in his Bethesda (Maryland) home, where he was joined by Caspar Weinberger, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William James Crowe, Jr., Central Intelligence Agency deputy director Robert M. Gates, National Security Advisor John Poindexter, and State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Paul Wolfowitz (Bonner 1987, 437).  Shultz finally succeeded in persuading the White House—the last holdouts were Weinberger and Reagan–to release a statement on February 24 (Day Three of the Revolution) saying that the solution to the crisis can only be achieved through peaceful transition to a new government” (Shultz 1993, 636).  See People’s Power Revolution

Voltes V  The Japanese robot animation series, “Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V” (Chōdenji Mashīn Borutesu Faibu, 超電磁マシーン ボルテスV, 1977-1978), dubbed into English, premiered on Friday, May 5, 1978, at 6 p.m. on GMA Channel 7 (Dancel 2014). Ushering in the first wave of Japanese animation in the Philippines, “Voltes V” tells the story of the invasion of Earth by the Boazanian empire, from a planet in which a horned aristocracy enslaves its unhorned people, and the successful resistance led by the unhorned Boazanian prince-turned-slave-turned-rebel-exile Dr. Ned Armstrong, with the help of the volt-in robot built by him on Earth and operated by a team composed of his three mestizo (earthling-Boazanian) sons Steve, Big Bert, and Little John, along with Mark Gordon and Jaime Robinson.  “Voltes V” was part of a weekly lineup of robot cartoons that included Mekanda (Mechander) Robot (Mondays), Daimos (Tuesdays), Mazinger Z (Wednesdays), and Grendizer (Thursdays). “Voltes V” and other robot series were abruptly taken off the air in April 1979 by Marcos, citing their “excessive violence” (Sison 2015). Years later, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. sought to justify his father’s decision by citing parental concerns that such “violence…would influence their children in a negative way” (ABS-CBN News 2012). The ban was reportedly motivated by the high TV ratings of the “mecha” (mechanical) animé, which trounced those of a children’s show then airing on a rival channel owned by Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto.  There has been speculation as well that the ban was motivated by the “Voltes V”’s depiction of dictatorship and revolution, a depiction that drew uncomfortable parallels and associations with martial-law Philippines (Bravo 2012, 48). For fans, the banning of “Voltes V” became a “symbol” of the Marcos regime’s “oppression of freedom” (ibid., 48).   Aside from “Martial Law Babies” born during the martial law period (1972-1981), the people who grew up during the Marcos era have been called the “Voltes V Generation” (Mendoza 2014).

War medals   Ferdinand Marcos had built his political career and reputation in part on his wartime accomplishments as the “Audie Murphy of the Philippines”, the Philippines’ most decorated war hero. Two of his record-breaking thirty-two medals were for his guerrilla activities, the rest for his activities before the American surrender to the Japanese in 1942 and after the American return to the Philippine islands in 1944 (Gerth 1986, A1).   Marcos, who had been a lieutenant in the armed forces and had been part of the Bataan campaign, claimed that he was leader of Ang Mga Maharlika, a guerrilla force active between 1942 and 1944 (the strength of that unit varied between 300 and 8,300 men, according to Marcos). The U.S. Army had recognized the claims of 111 men listed as members of the unit for their services alongside the Americans during the invasion of Luzon in 1945, but dismissed Marcos’ and twenty-three other members’ services as being “of limited military value” (ibid., A8). Marcos’ two requests for official recognition of his unit were rejected by the U.S. Army (the last ruling was made in 1948), which concluded that the unit was fictitious. The United States Veterans’ Administration, with the help of the Philippine Army, found in 1950 that men claiming to be members of the Maharlika unit were responsible for “‘atrocities’ against Filipino civilians” (ibid.)  Former military intelligence officer Bonifacio Gillego [see Bombings], the opposition journal We Forum, and American researcher Alfred W. McCoy were among those who helped expose Marcos’ fake war medals (McCoy 1999, 174).

Writ of habeas corpus   Dating back to the twelfth century, the phrase habeas corpus (“produce the body”) was originally used in judicial writs (court directions issued in the name of the English king) to get a person into court to give evidence or respond to a claim (Endicott 2018, 5). In the fourteenth century, the writ developed into an order issued by a judge to an official to explain why a person was being detained; failure to provide a lawful reason for detention could result in a court order to release the detainee (ibid.).  Ferdinand Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ thrice (counting the 1983 amendment to Proclamation 2045). Marcos issued Proclamation no. 889 (amended nine days later to 889-A) on August 21, 1971, in the immediate aftermath of the Plaza Miranda bombing. The writ was restored on January 11, 1972 (see Bombings). Citing the 1971 Supreme Court decision upholding the legality of the suspension, he suspended the privilege of the writ again through Proclamation no. 1081 (dated September 21, 1972), which imposed martial law.  Although the writ was technically restored after the lifting of martial law on January 17, 1981 through Proclamation no. 2045, the suspension of the writ remained in effect in “the two autonomous regions in Mindanao” then facing Muslim insurgency (created through a 1979 referendum plebiscite, these two regions covered ten of the original thirteen provinces and nine cities in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan to which the government had initially pledged autonomy as part of the  Tripoli Agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front) and “in all other places…with respect to persons at present detained as well as others who may hereafter be similarly detained for the crimes of insurrection or rebellion, subversion, conspiracy or proposal to commit such crimes, and for all other crimes and offenses committed by them in furtherance or on the occasion thereof, or incident thereto, or in connection therewith” (Official Gazette 1981). The amended Proclamation no. 2045-A (Official Gazette 1983), signed on July 23, 1983, expanded the scope to “all other places with respect to persons at present detained as well as others who may hereafter be similarly detained for all cases involving the crimes of insurrection, rebellion, subversion, conspiracy or proposal to commit such crimes, sedition, conspiracy to commit sedition, inciting to sedition, and for all other crimes or offenses committed by them in furtherance or on the occasion thereof, or incident thereto, are in connection therewith, such as but not limited to offenses involving economic sabotage, illegal assemblies, illegal associations, tumults and other disturbances of public orders, unlawful use of means of publication and unlawful utterances, and alarms and scandals, or with respect to any person whose arrest or detention is, in the judgment of the President, required by public safety as a means to repel or quell the existing rebellion in the country” (italics added). The suspension was lifted by Proclamation no. 2, signed by Corazon Aquino on March 2, 1986.

X, Y, Z    Pseudonym bestowed upon three Marcos cronies (Honorio Poblador, Potenciano Ilusorio, and Jose Yao Campos [Salonga 2001, 136]) who served as front men for the Benguet-Bahamas Deal, which involved a US$ 150-million swap deal in which American businessmen Wallace Groves, owner of the Grand Bahama Island (operated by mobster Meyer Lasky), and Herbert Allen, who owned substantial shares in Benguet Mines, converted 92.5% of the Grand Bahama Port Authority to that of Benguet Consolidated. On paper, Benguet Consolidated acquired the Port Authority in 1969.  The Americans who owned 97.5% of Benguet Consolidated then extracted their holdings, so that the Benguet mines ended up under the control of presidential brother-in-law Benjamin Romualdez. See Beams, Dovie; Cronies and crony capitalism; and Conjugal dictatorship   

Yamashita’s treasure   Fabled treasure, consisting of gold bullions, platinum, precious gems, and other luxury items, looted by the Japanese Imperial Army from twelve countries and allegedly hidden by General Yamashita Tomoyuki in the tunnels, caves, and mountains of Luzon.  Over decades, various attempts have been made by treasure hunters—mainly Filipino and American—to locate the so-called hidden wealth in the Philippines.  Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos sought to explain away their unaccounted, hidden wealth and the systematic looting and shipment overseas of the gold and silver reserves of the Philippine national treasury during the Marcos era by claiming that Ferdinand had found Yamashita’s gold (Seagrave and Seagrave 2003, 1, 155; Manapat 1991, 444-54).  

Yoling, Super Typhoon   International name Patsy, one of seven super typhoons of the 1970 Pacific typhoon season, and one of the deadliest to hit Manila, Yoling made landfall in Luzon with sustained winds of 210 km/hr. on November 19, claiming 141 lives in the Philippines (including lives lost at sea) (Daly 2016, 33).  Yoling was one of four major typhoons—Oyang (Severe Tropical Storm Fran, Luzon and Visayas, forty-two killed), Sening (Super Typhoon Joan, second only to 2013’s Super Typhoon Haiyan [Yolanda] in terms of strength, Cagayan, Central Luzon, Visayas, 575 killed, thousands displaced), and Titang (Super Typhoon Kate, Western Visayas, 631 killed, 230 missing)—to devastate the Philippines that year, wreaking extensive loss of lives, displacement, damage, and destruction (ibid.). Other major natural disasters to hit the Philippines during the Marcos era include: the July 1972 flood (Luzon, 775 dead, more than 350,000 displaced); the August 17, 1976 magnitude 7.9 earthquake and tsunami (Moro Gulf, 8,000 dead, more than 10,000 injured, up to 100,000 displaced); 1984 season’s Typhoon Maring (June, Northern Luzon and Pangasinan, more than 100 killed) and Typhoon Nitang (Ike, Visayas and Mindanao, 1,400 killed, more than 300,000 displaced) (ibid., 33-34). See El Niño of 1982-1983

A Marcos-Era Glossary: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z, Bibliography

A Glossary of the Marcos Era (1965-1986) in the Philippines (L-P)

La Tondeña strike   Some 400 permanent workers and 100 temporary workers belonging to the Kaisahang Malayang Manggagawa ng La Tondeña staged a strike on October 24, 1975 to protest working conditions and employment criteria and procedures at La Tondeña Incorporated, the country’s largest distillery.  Both skilled and unskilled workers’ real wages had been declining from 1962 to 1986, with urban workers’ wages falling more sharply to converge with agricultural workers’ wages (Boyce 1993, 27). The Labor Code of 1974, promulgated to align labor laws with the martial-law government’s developmentalist program of promoting export-oriented and labor-intensive industries, allowed employers to pay 75% of the basic minimum wage to new employees during their six-month probationary period; companies exploited this provision by firing their workers after this period (Bello, Kinley, and Ellinson 1982, 143). General Order no. 5, which originally banned all strikes and other forms of public assembly, was amended to ban strikes in “vital industries” (Villegas 1988, 61).  The Tondeña workers took advantage of the loophole that allowed them to organize a strike in a “non-vital” industry. Their demands included the promotion of casual workers to permanent positions, granting of maternity leave to women workers, payment of workers’ compensation, and ending of illegal firings (Hess 2013, 136). The strike was the unang putok (first explosion), the “first open protest action to break through the authoritarian wall of silence under martial law, provoking a chain reaction of open protest in its wake” (Franco 2001, 142).  The Communist Party of the Philippines, initially hesitant over the possible negative effects of an open strike, endorsed the strike and offered behind-the-scenes tactical advice and logistical support (ibid.).  The strikers also obtained the support of students, members of the Church, and other sectors (ibid.).  The strike was broken up, the workers arrested, but were released a day later. Company owner Antonio Palanca met with union leaders on October 27 (ibid.) and agreed to grant permanent status to 300 casual workers, cancel a number of employment requirements, and review the cases of workers who had been laid off (Hess 2013, 137).   A week later, Ferdinand Marcos signed Presidential Decree no. 823 banning all strikes in vital and non-vital (under which the distillery business had been classified) industries.  The workers’ slogan “Tama Na! Sobra Na! Welga Na!” would be taken up by protestors during U.S. President Gerald Ford’s visit to Manila (Franco 2001, 143; see United States, Presidents of the) and adopted by the anti-Marcos opposition.  Within a year of the strike, labor protest actions took place in 150 factories involving 130,000 workers (ibid.).  

Land reform   Just four days after declaring martial law, Ferdinand Marcos signed Presidential Decree no. 2 (September 26, 1972) proclaiming the “whole country” as “a land reform area” (Official Gazette 1972a) to prepare for agrarian reform.  Presidential Decree no. 27 (signed on October 21, 1972) launched the most ambitious land reform program ever attempted in the country at the time.  The presidential decree identified the “old concept of landownership by a few” as a source of “valid and legitimate grievances that gave rise to violent conflict and social tension,” and stated that redressing such grievances was one of the “fundamental objectives of the New Society” (Official Gazette 1972b).  Ferdinand Marcos staked the fortunes of the New Society under martial law on the viability of the land reform program: “If land reform fails, there is no New Society” (Philippine Daily Express, September 22, 1973, quoted in Wurfel 1988, 166).  Only rice and corn lands—which had the highest rate of tenancy (at 46% and 50% respectively, according to the 1960 census [Wurfel 1988, ibid.])—were subject to transfer and to conversion to leasehold. In 1970, more than two-thirds of all tenants in the country were share tenants, and most of them had to surrender half of their annual crops to their landlords, in violation of the 1954 Agricultural Tenancy Act that set the tenants’ share at 70% (ibid., 166, 167).  (Sugar and coconut farms were exempted from land reform. Cronies like Roberto Benedicto, Eduardo Cojuangco, Juan Ponce Enrile, and Maria Clara Lobregat and other clans acquired substantial tracts of land and gained control over the sugar and coconut sectors through their control over government monopolies [Putzel 1992, 150; see Coconut levy fund and Sugar]). Modeled on land reform in Taiwan and also inspired by similar programs in Japan and South Korea, Operation Land Transfer was conceived as a redistributive program that allowed landowners to keep seven hectares on condition that these lands were self-cultivated. Landowners were compensated for the rest of their holdings at two-and-a-half times the average value of the three normal crop years preceding the decree, rather than at market value. Tenants acquired five hectares of non-irrigated land or three hectares of irrigated land by paying fifteen annual amortization payments at six percent per annum; they were required to join agricultural cooperatives that would be responsible for any defaults in amortization payments (ibid., 127, 124).  Operation Leasehold sought to provide a measure of tenure security by converting share-tenants to leasehold.  Land transfer (which was also done under the old Resettlement and Landed Estates program) and leasehold were complemented by an agricultural productivity program that included cooperative, credit and irrigation projects (ibid., 138, 125-126).  Samahang Nayon (Barrio Associations) were established as “pre-cooperatives” in April 1973 to introduce tenants and small owner-cultivators to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) technology, prior to the launching in May 1973 of the Masagana 99 program.  Savings collected from members of these associations were used as capitalization for Cooperative Rural Banks and Area Marketing Cooperatives, which would assume responsibility for defaults in amortization payments. The OLT was meant to transfer some 759,000 hectares of land to 394,000 tenants, but at the end of the Marcos era in 1986, the National Economic Development Authority found that only three percent of the targeted tenants had received official titles to land that represented a mere 1.3% of the total area covered by land reform (ibid., 125, 138). In 1985, the Department of Agrarian Reform reported that 645,808 tenants had leasehold contracts for 690,207 hectares (representing a 122% success rate in terms of tenants), but on-the-ground surveys in the late 1970s and early 1980s showed that landlessness and share-tenancy remained widespread (ibid., 138; Wurfel 1988, 174-75).  Land reform was most fully implemented in Central Luzon, where Marcos was able to secure grassroots support (Timberman 1991, 110).  A total of 62,209 hectares of land were purchased from 264 owners who had more than 100 hectares, leaving some 1.8 million hectares belonging to 3,200 owners of farms over 100 hectares untouched (Putzel 1992, 147). In 1975, researchers found that 57% of tenants farmed the land of people who owned less than seven hectares (Wurfel 1988, 168).  Marcos’ initial hesitance on reform and his own record of increasing his landholding (as well as that of his relatives) bolstered the resistance of medium-sized landowners (Putzel 1992, 147).  Agricultural growth during the Marcos era proved to be uneven: between 1973 and 1979, the country’s total gain in agricultural production surpassed that of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, but between 1980 and 1985, the Philippines fell behind these three countries, plus Burma and Vietnam (National Economic and Development Authority, cited in Timberman 1991, 111). 

Letter of Instruction no. 270   On April 11, 1975, Ferdinand Marcos issued LOI 270, “Naturalization of Deserving Aliens by Decree,” paving the way for the mass naturalization by administrative fiat of qualified foreigners, chiefly Chinese. Presidential Decree 836, signed on December 8, 1975, subsequently expanded the coverage of mass naturalization to include spouses and children of the principal petitioners.  Until then, the process of acquiring citizenship had been protracted, difficult, and expensive (legal and extralegal expenses ranged from 20,000 to 50,000 pesos); because it depended on judicial interpretation (i.e., judges deciding on individual applications), it was also susceptible to bribery and corruption. The 1973 Constitution had revised some of the articles of citizenship, allowing Filipinas married to Chinese to keep their Philippine citizenship and enabling offspring of Filipino-Chinese intermarriages to elect Philippine citizenship. (The 1987 Constitution would automatically grant Filipino citizenship to children with at least one Filipino parent.)  The demographic profile of the ethnic Chinese had undergone changes in the postwar era: those who came of age in the 1960s constituted the largest group, the majority of them Philippine-born, and also the first group to lack direct contact with mainland China and the first to receive a university education and have wide social contacts with the non-Chinese Filipinos (Hau 2014, 97).  LOI 270 (Official Gazette 1975) stated that aliens “permanently residing in the country who, having developed and demonstrated love for and loyalty to the Philippines and affinity to the customs, traditions and ideals of the Filipino people, as well as contributed to the economic, social and cultural development of our country, may be integrated into the national fabric by grant of Philippine citizenship.”  The oil shock of 1973, coupled with the internationalization of the Bangsa Moro conflict, had stoked fears that Philippine access to oil would be blocked by members of the Organization of Islamic Conference and Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that were sympathetic to the plight of the Filipino Muslims (the following discussion is indebted to Benito Lim, interviewed by Aguilar 2012a; see also Jabidah Massacre and, for the impact of the energy crises of the 1970s on the Philippines, Bataan Nuclear Power Plant). Ferdinand Marcos looked for alternatives, including entering into negotiations with Western oil-exploration companies to drill for oil and gas in the South China Sea, and importing oil from Communist or Socialist countries. Moreover, Marcos worried over mainland China’s claim over the entire South China Sea, which included portions claimed by the Philippines and which were not covered by the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the United States. He also wanted to put a stop to China’s support for the armed struggle of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (evident in the interception of a shipload of arms aboard the MV Karagatan in July 1972 and the sinking of the Andrea on its way to China in July 1974). The problem of “overstaying Chinese” (refugees granted political asylum after 1949) and the challenges of Filipinizing “Chinese schools” also figured in the calculations, as did the anticipated decline of Philippine trade with the United States following the expiration of the Laurel-Langley agreement in 1974 and the need to gain access to markets other than the American one (see Oligarchy). Marcos opted for a diplomatic solution, establishing relations with China in 1975.  There are allegations that Marcos received US$ 12 million (with Ralph Nubla, former president [1966-1970] of the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce, serving as conduit) for his services in enabling mass naturalization (Tiglao 1990, 7-71).  Mass naturalization had a largely positive impact on Chinese Filipinos, improving their legal and social standing, enabling them to become licensed professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers, and affording them greater participation in Philippine political, cultural, and social life. 

Liberation Theology  See Theology of struggle

Love Bus    One of the first air-conditioned buses to operate in the capital.  A brainchild of Imelda Marcos, the blue-and-white buses had heart-shaped “Love Bus” and “Save Gas” signs and a no-standing policy. They plied the routes between Escolta and Rustan’s Makati and between Escolta and Ali Mall (via Quezon Boulevard and Quezon Memorial Circle).

Manila Sound   Coined by supergroup Hotdog’s bassist and songwriter Dennis Garcia to characterize the “new sound” of Philippine pop music, comparable to Motown’s “The Sound of Philadelphia” (Gil 2013).  In 1975, the Hotdog band (Dennis and Rene Garcia and Ella del Rosario) had the number-one-selling 45RPM single, “Pers Lab,” and the New Minstrels released “Buhat.”  Garcia’s “Manila Sound” would be appropriated by Vicor Music executive Vic del Rosario, Jr. to brand the musical style—colloquial-Tagalog and Taglish lyrics, catchy melodies, and young, urban (mainly Manila-based), cool performers—of Vicor’s Sunshine label, with which Hotdog, as well as The Juan dela Cruz Band, the Apolinario Mabini (Apo) Hiking Society, Rico J. Puno, VST&Co, Cinderella, Circus Band, Rey Valera, Sharon Cuneta, and other music acts, signed on (ibid.).  The broader (not necessarily Sunshine label or Manila-based) musical phenomenon and movement include songs like Hotdog’s “Manila,” “Bongga Ka Day,” “Panaginip,” “O, Lumapit Ka,” “B.A.D.A.F. Forever,” “Ikaw ang Miss Universe ng Buhay Ko”; Cinderella’s “T.L. [True Love] Ako Sa Yo,” “Bato sa Buhangin,” “Ang Boyfriend Kong Baduy”; Hagibis’ “Legs,” “Babae,” “Katawan”; VST&Co.’s “Awitin Mo at Isasayaw Ko,” “Rock Baby Rock,” “Disco Fever,” “Magsayawan”; The Boyfriends’ “Sumayaw, Sumunod,” “Araw-Araw”; Rey Valera’s “Ako si Superman,” “Kumusta Ka”; Apo Hiking Society’s “Pumapatak ang Ulan,” “Batang-Bata Ka Pa,” “Kabilugan ng Buwan,” “Panalangin”; Rico J. Puno’s “The Way We Were (Alaala sa Luneta),” “Macho Guwapito,” “Sorry Na, Pwede Ba,” ; Freddie Aguilar’s “Anak”;  Mike Hanopol’s “Laki sa Layaw-Jeproks”, “Mr. Kenkoy,” “Awiting Pilipino”; Wadab’s “Pag Tumatagal Lalong Tumitibay,” “Iniibig Kita”; Yoyoy Villame’s “Mag-Exercise Tayo,” “Butse Kik”; Celeste Legaspi’s “Ako’s Bakyang-Bakya,” “Mamang Sorbetero,” “Saranggola ni Pepe”; Geraldine’s “Pangako”; Leah Navarro’s “Ang Pag-Ibig Kong Ito”; Sharon Cuneta’s “Mr. DJ” and “Kahit Maputi na ang Buhok Ko.” A cousin of Manila Sound, Gapô Funk (for example, The Advisors’ “Yugyugan Na”) was inspired by music brought by African-American GIs to the Subic Bay Naval Complex in Zambales (where Olongapo [known colloquially as Gapô] City is located).    See also Jingle Songbook/Chordbook Magazine

Martial Law  Ferdinand Marcos publicly announced the proclamation of martial law over the crony(Roberto Benedicto)-owned television-and-radio station at 7:15 p.m. on September 23, 1972.  Accounts differ on whether Proclamation no. 1081 was actually signed on September 17 or 23 and was either postdated or backdated to September 21 (Official Gazette n.d.).   Marcos had instructed Secretary of Justice Juan Ponce Enrile and Executive Secretary Alexander Melchor to initiate a feasibility study of the declaration of martial law as early as December 1969 (Enrile 2012, 275; Almonte and Vitug 2015, 77). Lifted on January 17, 1981, in time for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Manila, martial law lasted nearly eight years and four months. Marcos exploited the following provision in the 1935 Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Section 11, 1(1), to declare martial law: “The President shall be commander-in-chief of all armed forces of the Philippines and, whenever it becomes necessary, he may call out such armed forces to prevent or suppress lawless violence, invasion, insurrection, or rebellion, or imminent danger thereof, when the public safety requires it, he may suspend the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, or place the Philippines or any part thereof under martial law.”  Declaring martial law enabled Marcos to concentrate power in his own hands. A January 10-15, 1973 plebiscite held under the strict supervision of the authoritarian government ratified a new Constitution. Promulgated on January 17, 1973 (on the 1971-1972 Constitutional Convention, see Quintero, Eduardo), the new Constitution introduced a parliamentary system of government, with six-year terms for members of a unicameral National Assembly who elected a President and a Prime Minister from among their peers.  Among the provisions of the Constitution were the ones that allowed a person, under specified circumstances, to claim Filipino citizenship if either parent (rather than just the father) is a Filipino citizen; mandated the Batasang Pambansa “to take steps towards the development and formal adoption of a common national language to be known as Filipino” while adopting Pilipino and English as “official languages.”  Amendments to the Constitution included extending martial law and creating an Interim Batasang Pambansa with the president as president of the legislative and allowing the President to exercise legislative powers “when there exists a grave emergency, or a threat or imminence thereof” in 1976; extending the retirement ages of judges and justices in the judiciary to seventy years of age in 1980; modifying the parliamentary form to a semi-presidential system that restored executive power to the President (instead of the Prime Minister), reforming the election process, and granting former natural-born Filipino citizens permission to be transferees of private lands for residential purposes in 1981; and creating the Office of the Vice-President in 1984.   See also Kilusang Bagong Lipunan

Masagana 99   From the Filipino term for “bountiful,” this rice production program was introduced in 1973 in response to the decline in rice production on the heels of the initially successful introduction of Green Revolution technologies in the late 1960s and early 1970s (owing in part to a series of devastating typhoons [see Yoling, Typhoon]). The “Green Revolution” was a package of modern farming practices that combined the use of high-yielding varieties of rice with modern inputs like fertilizer and improved irrigation. In 1966, Ferdinand Marcos created the Rice and Corn Production Council as the coordinating body linking government agencies and the private sector in the project to increase rice and maize production. The International Rice Research Institute, established in 1960 and headquartered in Los Baños, spearheaded in 1966 the development of the IR8 “miracle rice,” a cross between the tall tropical Indonesian strain and the Taiwanese short variety that bore heavy grains and was resistant to tropical disease. The Masagana program, which aimed to increase rice yields to ninety-nine cavans per hectare (or 4 tons per hectare), had four elements: credit, technology transfer, price support, and provision of low-cost fertilizer (the following discussion is indebted to Chandler 1979, 125-27, Tadem 1986, and Davidson 2016). The government created a credit system of 420 rural banks, 102 branches of the Philippine National Bank, and twenty-five offices of the Agricultural Credit Administration. The government guaranteed eighty-five percent of loans (maximum US$100 per hectare) extended to farmers enrolled in the program. About 900,000 farmers joined the program. Some 3,200 technicians were sent to the villages to offer technical advice. The government increased its price support for paddy from $97 per ton in 1972 to $170 per ton in 1976 and subsidized urea (fertilizer) by twenty-one percent (increased to twenty-five percent in 1976).  By 1979-1980, some three-fourths of the country’s rice acreage had been planted with high-yield varieties (Boyce 1993, 62, cited in Davidson 2016, 107).  Masagana rice yields, however, remained at the same level, while national average rice yields continued to increase in the years 1975-1980. Another problem was the declining rate of repayment of loans, from ninety-one percent in 1973-1974 to seventy-six percent in 1974-1975 to thirty-five percent in 1975-1976, with some 800 rural banks going bankrupt (Chandler 1979, 126-27; Carlos Dominguez, quoted in Reyes, Ariate and Del Mundo 2020). Rice production increased from 109.3 million sacks of unmilled palay in 1970 to 162.43 million sacks in 1982 (Tadem 1986, 2).  Between 1977 and 1983 (with some exceptions made for the negative impact of bad weather on the harvest), Philippines exported rice, mainly to Indonesia and Malaysia.  A bad drought (see El Niño of 1982-1983) and typhoons, complicated by “low usage of fertilizer…low palay prices,…and NFA [National Food Authority] inefficiency” (S. J. Rundt and Associates report, quoted in Tadem 1986, 52), forced the government to import rice from Thailand and China in 1984 and 1985.  In response, Marcos introduced the Intensified Rice Production Program, which, during the 1985 bumper-crop year, yielded a harvest of 5.4 million metric tons of milled rice, though the figure fell short by 100,000 tons of the annual national consumption of rice (Tadem 1986, 59). In 1986, there were reportedly900,000 tons of rice in government warehouses (World Bank Report cited in Bello 2009, 56).   

Miss Universe Pageant   Eighteen-year-old St. Scholastica’s College business student Gloria Diaz was the first Filipina to be crowned Miss Universe on July 19, 1969 in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S.A. (Sorilla 2019). To pageant host Bob Barker’s final question, “In the next day or so, a man will land on the moon. If a man from the moon landed in your hometown, what would you do to entertain them?,” Diaz responded, “Oh, just the same things I do. I think if he’s been on the moon for so long, I think when he comes over he wants a change, I guess.”  Four years later, on July 21, 1973, eighteen-year-old Maryknoll (now Miriam) College student Margarita Moran took the crown at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. Asked by Barker what she would buy if she had a million dollars, she responded: “A house and lot because it’s the most expensive thing and I can’t afford it. If I had a million bucks I’d buy a house and lot and live by myself and other people, of course.” In anticipation of the pageant and the global attention and tourism it would attract, the government rushed to build the venue, the 10,000-seat capacity Folk Arts Theater (now Tanghalang Francisco Balagtas), in a mere seventy-seven days, and inaugurated it on July 4, 1974 with a “Kasaysayan ng Lahi” ceremony that recruited 20,400 citizens and fifty tribal groups to stage a big parade along Roxas Boulevard of outdoor tableaux vivants showcasing the government-sanctioned version of history and local-color ethnic and cultural heritage (Espiritu 2017b, 217, 419; see PANAMIN and Edifice complex). The Miss Universe contest was held on July 14, 1974, with some sixty-five countries participating.  Amparo Muñoz of Spain took home the crown. Along with Thrilla in Manila, hosting the Miss Universe was part of the martial-law regime’s efforts to promote the Philippines as an international tourist attraction. 

National Artist Award (Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining)   Proclamation no. 1001 (April 27, 1972) created the category of National Artist as a “national expression of gratitude and appreciation” and awarded the title posthumously to painter Fernando Amorsolo (died April 24, 1972), whose “years of creative activity have defined and perpetuated a distinct element of the Nation’s artistic and cultural heritage and won universal acclaim for our country and people” (Official Gazette 1972e).  At first, the power to decide who would be declared National Artist lay solely with Marcos, albeit “upon the recommendation of the Board of Trustees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines” (CCP).  On May 15, 1973, the power to select National Artists was transferred to the CCP.  Presidential Decree no. 208 (June 7, 1973) granted the following privileges to the National Artists: a cash award of 10,000 pesos, a life pension of 2,000 pesos per month, medicalization and hospitalization benefits, a lifetime insurance worth 50,000 pesos, “a place of honor in state functions, national commemoration ceremonies and all other cultural presentations,” and a state funeral arranged and paid for by the government (Official Gazette 1973a).  Seventeen other artists in fields ranging from the visual arts, dance, and literature to music, theater and film, and architecture—Amado V. Hernandez (posthumous), Jose Garcia Villa, Nick Joaquin (who accepted the award in order to secure the release from prison of writer Jose “Pete” Lacaba [Tabora 2017; on Lacaba, see Tuta]), and Carlos P. Romulo for Literature; Carlos V. Francisco (posthumous), Victorio C. Edades, and Vicente S. Manansala (posthumous) for Visual Arts-Painting; Lamberto V. Avellana and Gerardo de Leon (posthumous) for Film and Theater; Antonio J. Molina and Jovita Fuentes for Music; Guillermo E. Tolentino and Napoleon V. Abueva for Visual Arts-Sculpture; Francisca Reyes Aquino and Leonor Orosa-Goquingco for Dance; and Pablo Antonio (posthumous) and Juan Nakpil  for Architecture—were conferred the award during the Marcos era.  

Nayong Pilipino Cultural Park   Touted as a “miniature replica of the Philippines” (Official Gazette 1970), this 55-acre “Philippine Village” cultural theme park (nested in a 155-acre property) was completed in 1970, in time for the November 27 visit of Pope Paul VI, who was taken on a tour of the premises.  Presidential Decree no. 37 created the Nayong Pilipino Foundation on November 6, 1972 to manage the park and promote tourism, research, and related activities (Official Gazette 1972c).  Inaugurated on June 11, 1970, the park featured six “regions” (Ilocos, Cordillera, Tagalog, Bicol, the Visayas, and Mindanao/Sulu) and contained a miniature map of the Philippines, a man-made lagoon, “Datu” and Samal houses, a Spanish colonial plaza complex, a mosque, the Ifugao Rice Terraces of Banaue, Mayon Volcano of Bicol, the Chocolate Hills of Bohol, and Magellan’s Cross (Cabalfin 2014-2015, 27-28). A Museum of Philippine Traditional Culture displayed the indigenous artifacts collected by PANAMIN.  On December 7, 1972, Imelda Marcos was presiding over the awarding ceremonies of the National Beautification and Cleanliness contest at the Nayong Pilipino when she was attacked by bolo-wielding Carlito Dimailig (Durdin 1972).  The 27-year-old Dimailig, a geodetic engineer from Sinisian, Batangas, was shot dead; Marcos required 75 stitches on the wounds on her arms and hands (New York Times 1972).  The Nayong Pilipino was an inspiration for Indonesian First Lady Siti Hartinah “Bu Tien” Soeharto’s Taman Mini Indonesia Indah project (“Beautiful Indonesia” Miniature Park) (Jusuf 2012, 90)–opened on April 20, 1975—which provoked student-led protests and criticism for its ahistorical stereotyping of ethnicity for touristic and national myth-making purposes (for example, Pemberton 1994). Nayong Pilipino was closed down in 2002 to make way for the expansion of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. A smaller cultural theme park, Nayong Pilipino sa Clark Expo, opened in Pampanga in 2007 and was rebooted as Nayong Pilipino Clark in 2014.  The new integrated resort city, Nayong Pilipino Cultural Park and Creative Hub, is located in Entertainment City, New Seaside Road, Parañaque.

Nutribun   Containing 500 calories and 17 grams of protein and described as looking and tasting like a “large, slightly sweet hamburger bun,” the nutritionally fortified, ready-to-eat snack was developed by experts connected with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help malnourished and underweight Filipino children, as part of the five-year Operation Timbang (initiated in 1971). Made in local bakeries or on school premises, Nutribun used local ingredients (such as coconut flour) along with flour and dried milk supplied by USAID’s Food for Peace Program to the Department of Education’s Philippine School Nutrition Program. The bread was distributed among children as part of school feeding and, later, young children’s health programs (War on Hunger 1976, 14). By 1977, it served as the supplemental daily meal for some 1.5 million schoolchildren in 3,000 schools. Nutribun was also distributed among victims of natural disasters like typhoons and floods (ibid., 14-15).

Oligarchy   From the Greek oligarkhia (ὀλιγαρχία) (oligos  ὀλίγος “few” + arkhía ᾰρχῐ́ᾱ “to rule”), a form of government in which political power is wielded by a minority (Indridason 2008, 36).  There have been recent attempts to redefine “oligarchy” as a “politics of wealth defense by materially endowed actors” (Winters 2011, 7), but such a narrow definition cannot account for the fact that accumulating and preserving wealth may not be the only (or even the principal) motive for accruing political power, nor is economic clout automatically transmutable to political power.   The Philippine oligarchy (a term that is often used interchangeably with “the Filipino elite”) is defined by Alfred McCoy (2009a, xii) as “a cluster of families, knitted together by ties of blood and marriage, that combines political power and economic assets to direct the nation’s destiny.”  In the nineteenth century, as a result of the Philippines’ integration into the global economy through trade and cash-crop production, there arose an “entrenched elite”–not just native, but also mestizo (mainly Chinese) and creole–made up of traders, money-lenders, landowners, professionals, and lower-level colonial bureaucrats (Larkin 2001, 39). Literacy, access to higher education (particularly university education), and professional credentials were also important, as suggested by the term ilustrado.  Snobbery about higher education or the lack thereof had been a factor in the power struggle between the Magdalo and Magdiwang factions at the 1897 Tejeros Convention, when Daniel Tirona of the Magdalo group had questioned Andres Bonifacio’s election as Director of Interior on the grounds that the latter was not trained as a lawyer (Bonifacio walked out of the convention).  The expanded system of national, provincial, and local elections introduced during the American colonial period was instrumental in creating a national, networked elite with power bases in their respective local and provincial bailiwicks and in the nation’s capital.  In the post-independence period, the country engaged in import-substitution industrialization, which allowed elite families to diversify their economic activities by venturing into manufacturing and forming conglomerates. The Americans enacted the Rehabilitation Act, which provided US$620 million in war-damage payments but made the payments of claims exceeding $500 conditional on the passing of the Bell Trade Act of 1946. The Bell Trade Act effectively delimited Philippine sovereignty by extending the newly independent country’s economic and political dependence on its erstwhile colonizer. It set preferential tariffs on American imports to the Philippines; fixed the exchange rate at two Philippine pesos to one US dollar and ensured that the exchange rate could not be revised without the permission of the US president; set quotas and duty-free time limits for Philippine sugar and other export commodities such as rice, rope, cigars and tobacco, buttons of pearl and shell, and coconut oil; and granted parity rights to American citizens and corporations (the Philippine Constitution was amended to allow Americans the rights of 100-percent ownership of Philippine corporations, development of public utilities, and exploitation of natural resources). The 1955 Laurel Langley Agreement abrogated the US authority to control the exchange rate; expanded the sugar quota of the Philippines and extended the time limit for reducing other quotas and progressively applying tariffs on Philippine export goods to the US; and made parity rights reciprocal but granted Americans full parity rights in all areas of the Philippine economy.  Chinese citizens who had been shut out of the retail trade sector by the 1954 Retail Trade Nationalization Law and excluded from parity rights reserved for Americans shifted to light industry (see Letter of Instruction no. 270).  In the postwar period, Filipino politicians relied on their access to state power to extract “rents” (Tullock 1967 and Krueger 1974) by using laws and regulations, controls and allocations (funding, quotas, licenses or permits), and selective wielding of violence to advance their personal, familial, or business interests.   Ferdinand Marcos’ wealth and power derived initially from the perks and privileges of (as well as graft and corruption made possible by) being a politician rather than being a big landholder or businessman. As a congressman, he made millions from “commissions” he charged as head of Import Control Board to approve import licenses and support government deals (Chaikin and Sharman 2009, 157; Manapit 1991, 80-81 states that in the early 1960s, Marcos collected a US$ 5,000 commission from each businessman who needed an import license).  Marcos exploited the martial-law provision of the 1935 Constitution to gain monopoly over both state and political power.  He justified the imposition of martial law as a move against a reactionary, corrupt “native oligarchy” that controlled politics, mass media, state, and economy (Marcos 1977a, 90-93).  Marcos’ treatment of oligarchs was highly selective, however: “[t]hose who bent with the wind and eschewed politics for the pursuit of gain were mostly left undisturbed” (Anderson 1998, 215). Upon declaring martial law, Marcos had his political opponents (Senators Benigno Aquino, Jr., Ramon Mitra, Jose Diokno, Francisco Rodrigo, and publisher Joaquin Roces, among others) and members of the media critical of his administration (Joaquin Roces, Maximo Soliven, Teodoro Locsin, Sr., Amando Doronila) arrested.  Eugenio “Geny” Lopez, Jr. and Sergio “Serge” Osmeña III were imprisoned on charges of conspiracy to assassinate the president. Marcos put pressure on Corazon Cojuangco’s family branch to sell their stakes in the First United Bank and Manila Management Corporation to their estranged cousin Eduardo Cojuangco and to Imelda’s brother Benjamin Romualdez (Thompson 1995, 58-59). The Osmeña clan’s 500-hectare hacienda was subjected to land reform. The Lopezes’ media empire (Manila Chronicle and other sister newspapers and the ABS-CBN television and radio network) ended up in the hands of Marcos relatives. Marcos got Eugenio Lopez to sign over the Manila Electric Company on the false pretext of releasing son Geny. Geny Lopez and Serge Osmeña escaped from Fort Bonifacio in 1977.  At the same time that he was specifically targeting his oligarch enemies, Marcos sought to fob off criticism that his regime had merely replaced the old oligarchy with a “new oligarchy” of cronies and relatives (and technocrats) by declaring that the latter were risk-taking “managerial and entrepreneurial talents” (Marcos 1976a, 209; see Coconut levy fund; Cronies and crony capitalism; Dewey, Dee; Sugar; Voltes V; and X, Y, Z).   

Oplan Sagittarius    Top-secret military plan, exposed by Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. in his September 13, 1972 privilege speech, to place Metro Manila and outlying areas under the control of the Philippine Constabulary as a prelude to the declaration of martial law (see Rolex 12).  Aquino’s informant was allegedly General Marcos Soliman, then head of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency.  Copies of the plan—to enable tracking, the plan was code-named using different zodiac signs that corresponded to the initial letter of the intended recipients’ first or family names—had been distributed by Primitivo Mijares (1976, 143; see Conjugal dictatorship) to high-ranking military and intelligence officials. Soliman reportedly died of a heart attack in 1972, but he was believed to have been murdered (Rosenberg 1984, 26).

People’s Power Revolution   The “EDSA Revolution” (also known as “People Power Revolution” and “Yellow Revolution”) unfolded in Manila over three-and-a-half days in 1986.  The February 7, 1986 snap presidential election had been marred by large-scale fraud and violence. Juan Ponce Enrile met with Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) members Gregorio Honasan, Navy Captain Felix Turingan, Navy Commander Rex Robles, and Constabulary Lt. Col. Victor Batac on February 16, 1986, to assess the political situation (ibid. 543). The RAM activated their plan to stage a coup d’état, to take place at 2 a.m. on February 23 (ibid. 544), but before this could happen, news reached the conspirators that General Fabian Ver had gotten wind of the plot and was preparing to move against them.  Enrile (2012, 558-559) reached out to Fidel V. Ramos, who was not a member of RAM but who was sympathetic to their calls for reform and agreed to join them. (Ferdinand Marcos’ promotion of Fabian Ver as Chief of Staff [over Fidel Ramos] and Ver’s partiality to Reserve Officers Training Corps officers were resented by Philippine Military Academy [PMA]-trained officers. At the PMA graduation exercises in 1985, members of PMA Class of 1969 in the Air Force boycotted the alumni parade to protest the promotion of an officer over more senior candidates. Three hundred alumni from the Class of ’72 to ’84 lined up behind Class of ’71 as the latter, wearing “We Belong” T-shirts, approached the reviewing stand and waved a banner proclaiming “Unity Through Reforms.”  Leading members of RAM, formed in the early 1980s, included PMA Class of 1971 graduates Gregorio Honasan, Enrile’s aide-de-camp, Eduardo “Red” Kapunan, and Zosimo Paredes, Jr.   Enrile, himself increasingly at odds with Ver, met with RAM members on April 24, 1985 and reported their concerns about the Aquino assassination and graft and corruption and favoritism in the upper ranks of the military to Marcos. Fidel Ramos accompanied the leaders of RAM, with Batasang Pambansa member Paredes serving as spokesperson, to a meeting with Marcos on June 1, 1985.  Marcos promised to look into the abuses [recounted in Enrile 2012, 530-33]).  At 6:30 p.m. of February 22, Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces of the Philippines Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, supported by members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) and the Philippine Constabulary Special Action Force, called a press conference in Camp Aguinaldo to announce their resignation from their posts and their withdrawal of support for the government (see Rolex 12). Responding to appeals by Agapito “Butz” Aquino (Benigno Aquino, Jr.’s brother) and Jaime, Cardinal Sin (the latter aired over Radio Veritas) to help the rebels, nuns and priests as well as a large number of civilians—growing to an estimated 1.9 to 2.5 million people (Stuart-Santiago 1995, 132)—gathered along the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) near Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, and also near Malacañang Palace. On February 25, both the incumbent president, Ferdinand E. Marcos, and opposition candidate Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, claiming victory in the presidential election, took their respective oaths of office, Aquino in Club Filipino and Marcos in Malacañang an hour later. At 3 p.m. on February 25, Marcos had a conversation with United States senator Paul Laxalt, who, relaying the message from the White House, advised Marcos to “cut, and cut cleanly” (Bonner 1987, 440). Around midnight, Marcos and his family boarded American helicopters and planes that flew them to Clark Air Base and then Guam and finally to exile in Hawaii. Despite a series of tense confrontations between rebel and government troops, the casualties were low: fifteen killed and sixteen injured (Joaquin 1986).  The People’s Power Revolution stands out for being relatively bloodless, for its dramatic resolution, for the pioneering, blow-by-blow, worldwide coverage of the event using the new format of 24-hour cable news, and for having effected regime change without depending on the initiative of the ruling authoritarian government (Thompson 1995; Hedman 2006, 157, citing Chinoy 1996, 28). Individuals such as Juan Ponce Enrile, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and Corazon Aquino, and organizations and institutions such as the Church, the military, and the business community, members of the so-called “middle classes,” and even the United States State Department, have claimed credit for the success of the revolution.  Up to now, there is no consensus on “what EDSA actually was and what it means” (Kerkvliet and Mojares 1991, 1). While civilians remember EDSA as a “potent and good” event, a “peaceful, democratic transition that succeeded because of the mass mobilization of civilians,” military leaders remember People Power as “weak and bad,” an “aborted coup that succeeded because of the military’s withdrawal of support from President Marcos” (Montiel 2010, 182).  The Left had a limited presence in EDSA, even though it was the Left against which most of the players who saw themselves as key actors in the drama—Marcos, the middle-class segments of the opposition, and the American State Department–defined EDSA. The Left—which had been gathering strength by the end of martial law, in part owing to abuses by the state and military that drove ordinary people into joining the radical movement—had been deeply divided over the issue of boycotting the 1986 election. The Communist Party elected to boycott the election, declining to officially endorse or campaign for the opposition candidates, even though they allowed the opposition candidates to campaign among their organized mass base (Joma Sison, quoted in Almendral 1988, 195). In later assessments, some members of the Left would argue that the boycott was an error that cost the Left dearly (Rosca 1988, 89). The EDSA Revolution had a “ demonstration effect” on neighboring countries such as South Korea (where “people’s power” was invoked by opposition leader Kim Dae Jung when he called for constitutional change and democratization in Korea [quoted in Huntington 1991, 103]), Taiwan (Roscoe 1986, 16), Indonesia, and Bangladesh, and less successfully in Burma and China, as well as on Eastern European countries such as the former Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and Serbia (Huntington 1991, 101-103; Thompson 2004, 1). The term “people’s power” has been used in discussions of the Arab Spring (Inayatullah 2011, 44, 46).

Presidential Assistant on National Minorities (PANAMIN)   A Commission on National Integration (CNI) had been established in 1957 to promote the “integration” of  non-Christian,  cultural minorities in business, agriculture, education and training, credit, and other areas, but the Commission, poorly funded, failed to improve the lives and livelihoods of non-Christian Filipinos (May 2003, 150). Instead, the philosophy of integration “provided cover for loggers, miners, agribusiness and migrant settlers to exploit tribal lands” (ibid.).  Manuel “Manda” Elizalde, Jr. (see Tasaday) was appointed head of the Office of the Presidential Assistant on National Minorities, with cabinet status, in 1967. The private, non-profit PANAMIN Foundation was established in 1968. With the abolition of the CNI in 1975, PANAMIN took over as the official agency in charge of dealing with non-Muslim “cultural minorities.”  Presidential Decree no. 1414 (1978) expanded the scope and mandate of PANAMIN by granting it “the exclusive authority to issue certifications attesting to bona fide membership in a tribal or ethno-linguistic group considered as National Minorities.” While the decree affirmed the State’s policy “to integrate into the mainstream of Philippine society certain ethnic groups who seek full integration,” it simultaneously sought to “protect the rights of those who wish to preserve their original life-ways beside that of the larger community” (ibid.)  PANAMIN stoked controversy because of the manipulative and repressive practices of its development programs, its role in the controversial Chico River Dam Project, and the displacement and forced relocation of indigenous people (including the Kalinga and Bontoc of the Cordillera region and the T’Boli and Manobo of South Cotabato) from their ancestral homelands, its deployment of National Minorities in the government’s anti-insurgency campaigns, and Elizalde’s financial malfeasance, sexual abuse of T’Boli and Manobo women, and abuse of PANAMIN powers to grant himself as well as loggers, miners and agribusiness access to tribal lands (Rocamora 1979; Thomas 2000, 77, 79; Baleva 2019, 138-140; May 2003, 150; Hyndman and Duhaylungsod 1990, 50).  Elizalde’s mining claims and operations led critics to nickname PANAMIN “PANAMINES” (Hyndman and Duhaylungsod 1990, 43).  Elizalde fled the country in 1983, following an alleged falling out with Imelda Marcos (Thomas 1997), returning in 1987. PANAMIN was dissolved in 1983, replaced a year later by the Office of Muslim and Cultural Communities, an agency whose objectives included being “actively involved in the counter-insurgency program within the framework of attraction and reconciliation” (Okamura 1987, 14). See Nayong Pilipino Cultural Park

A Marcos-Era Glossary: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z, Bibliography

A Glossary of the Marcos Era (1965-1986) in the Philippines (D-K)

Dangerous Drugs Act of 1972   The April 2, 1972 Republic Act no. 6425 (Congress of the Philippines 1972, subsequently amended by Presidential Decree no. 44) mandated the creation of a Dangerous Drugs Board and laid out penalties of life imprisonment to death for the sale, administration, delivery, distribution, transportation, maintenance of drug dens, or manufacture of prohibited drugs that are found to be the “proximate cause of the death of a person”.  The same year, Presidential Proclamation no. 1192 declared every second week of November every year as Drug Abuse and Prevention Week. The newly established Constabulary Anti-Narcotic Unit obtained evidence of some three-million-pesos worth of heroin seized from the laboratories of businessman-druglord Lim Seng (also known as Gan Suo So) in a drug-raid operation codenamed Oplan Dama de Noche.  Lim was executed by firing squad at the KDR Range on Fort Bonifacio on January 15, 1973, before an estimated crowd of 5,000 (plus 10,000 outside the gates), the first and only public execution by musketry during the martial-law era. In 1973, action star Joseph Estrada’s JE Productions won the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) award for Best Picture for the film “Kill the Pushers” (1972), which chronicles the Marcos administration’s war on drugs leading up to the capture of the businessman-druglord. The other judicial executions under martial law were semi-private affairs involving a select group of witnesses and employing the electric chair in Muntinlupa (Ocampo 2016).  A notable case of capital punishment during the Marcos era was the electrocution on May 17, 1972 of Jaime Gomez Jose, Basilio Pineda, Jr., and Edgardo Payumo Aquino (the fourth defendant, Rogelio Sevilla Cañal, died of an overdose in prison in 1971), convicted of the June 26, 1967 forcible abduction and rape of actress Maggie de la Riva (Supreme Court 1971). 

Dee, Dewey   A Chinese-Filipino businessman and prominent player in the textile and apparel industry, Dewey Dee fled to Canada in January 1981, leaving behind some US$ 90 million (roughly 635 million pesos) in debts.  Dee’s flight triggered a domestic financial crisis, the “Crash of 1981” (Lopez 2002, 129). The Central Bank responded by extending emergency funding to bail out affected financial institutions, many of them crony-owned. The favoritism shown to cronies angered members of the business community.  In his letter the Asian Wall Street Journal, Jaime Ongpin (1981)—younger brother of Finance Minister Roberto Ongpin (see Binondo Central Bank) and later Minister of Finance under Corazon Aquino—pointed out that, rather than blaming the country’s financial problems on the “Dee caper,” “[a]ll that Dee can be ‘credited’ for is accelerating the day of reckoning for the ‘victims’ [crony-owned businesses] who have been ailing for sometime.” Ongpin blamed the “avarice and incompetence” of the “self-proclaimed victims” (as opposed to the “silent majority” who were the “true victims” of the crisis) and their “gross exploitation of political connections and unbridled access to government financial institutions” for deepening the economic crisis that hit the Philippines in the early 1980s.  While decreasing textile tariffs were the immediate reason for Dee’s financial problems (Broad 1988, 112), the larger debt crisis that would go on to swamp the country was triggered by the October 6, 1979 decision of Paul Volcker, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, to raise the federal funds rates (the rate peaking at 21.5% in 1980, just after Ronald Reagan won the U.S. Presidential election) in an effort to fight inflation by tightening the money supply. From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, inflation had been increasing rapidly, owing in part to the huge American spending on the Vietnam War.  Normally, when governments spend to stimulate demand in their economies, there would be more employment, as well as increases in prices (inflation). The oil shocks in the 1970s heightened inflation levels, but the rate of unemployment also rose.  This era is now known as the era of The Great Inflation, and the term “stagflation” was used to characterize the phenomenon of slow economic growth with persistently high rates inflation and unemployment.  The 1979 Federal Reserve Board decision, which raised interest rates and triggered a global economic recession, seriously affected developing countries like Mexico and the Philippines that faced declining commodity prices (see El Niño of 1982-1983) and falling exports, and were unable to make debt service payments. An example is the mining industry, where the price of copper dropped from US$ 0.93 per pound in 1974 to $0.67 in 1982 and $0.62 in 1986; in 1983, Philex Mining Corporation, the country’s oldest mining company, and other copper mining companies failed to generate enough revenue to pay their workers and meet their international loan obligations, and the share of mining exports fell from 21.33% to 12.3% in 1985 (see Camba, Tritto, Silaban 2020, 4-5).  Some of that debt had been taken on in an era of negative interest rates in the late 1970s, when the two major oil shocks (see Bataan Nuclear Power Plant) had brought huge profits to the Arab petroleum-exporting countries, which then deposited their petrodollars in European and American banks on short-term deposit. These banks then lent freely to developing countries. Facing the credit crunch, many of the developing countries turned to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for help. The IMF and WB extended financial-rescue packages that came with “structural adjustment” conditionality clauses–cut government expenditure, impose inflation-control measures, liberalize trade and capital account, and restrict external debt–policies that in the long run arguably exacerbated income inequality in borrowing countries (Forster, Kentikelenis, Reinsberg, Stubbs and King 2019).

Edifice complex   Coined by Rafael Salas, former executive secretary to Ferdinand Marcos, to describe the state-sponsored, high-profile, high-budget building projects of the Marcos era (Sicat 2014, 417-18; Lico 2003).  These reclamation, building, and urban development projects include the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Folk Arts Theater, the Philippine International Convention Center (where the International Monetary Fund-World Bank conference was held on October 4-8, 1976), the National Arts Center, luxury hotels, medical institutions, and the Tondo Foreshore and Dagat-Dagatan urban development project (see Miss Universe Pageant, Presidential Assistant on National Minorities, and Chico River Dam Project).  Between 1972 and 1977, the government invested some 19-billion pesos in infrastructure, with the view of making “Greater Manila” a regional hub of the headquarters of international companies and a tourist hub (Letter of Instruction no. 73, s. 1974, cited in Lico 2003, 52).  Imelda Marcos often spearheaded these projects and would eventually be appointed Governor of the Metro Manila Commission in 1976 and Minister of Human Settlements in 1978.  Imelda Marcos’ vision of “The Birth of the City of Man” entailed “development…aimed at the wholeness of the nation, the wholeness of the individual” (Metropolitan Manila: Towards the City of Man, Total Human Resource Development 1985, 35).   Technocrat (and, later, Prime Minister) Cesar Virata’s resistance to Imelda’s plans—which ate into the limited budget of the national development program—earned him the moniker of “Dr. No,” after the James Bond villain (Sicat 2014, 420).

Education Act of 1982   Batas Pambansa bilang 232 provided for the establishment and maintenance of an integrated system of education in the Philippines, applied to and governing the formal and informal systems of public and private education in all levels of the educational system. Recognizing the contribution of private higher education, the law removed legal barriers to providing state aid for private education. It also laid down measures for accreditation at various levels as the basis of privileges and freedom from supervision (Levels 1-4).  The Act allowed private schools to “determine [their] rate of tuition and other school fees and charges” and repealed Presidential Decree no. 451 mandating that sixty percent of the tuition fee hike be allocated to teachers’ salaries and benefits–a provision that, critics say, laid the groundwork for the commercialization of education (Kabataanpartylist.com 2012). Presidential Decree no. 285 (September 3, 1973) authorized the emergency measure of “compulsory licensing or reprinting of scientific, educational or cultural books and materials” (Official Gazette 1973b)—this reprint law made expensive and scarce, especially foreign-published, textbooks available for local purchase and use by Filipino students and scholars.  Presidential Decree no. 49 (November 12, 1972) had previously defined the scope and limitations of copyright, allowing libraries to reproduce out-of-stock published work for research purposes and photocopy unpublished work for preservation purposes (Official Gazette 1972d).

El Niño of 1982-1983   Derived from the Spanish term for “boy,” specifically “Christ child,” because of its advent in December, and classified as a “very strong” event (cf. similar events in 1997-1998 and 2016-2016), this was an unusual El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle in which the eastward movement of the inter-tropical convergence zone in the western Pacific region was not preceded by warm, wet conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific.  As a result, the region covered by drought expanded beyond parts of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific to include the Philippines (and Hawai’i) (Philander 1990, 38-40). The drought conditions devastated the agricultural sector, particularly on Negros island. In the second half of the nineteenth century, eight of the nine famines that affected Negros and other parts of the Philippines had coincided with El Niño events (Davis 2001, 254).  The Philippines also experienced “strong” El Niño events in 1965-1966 and 1972-1973 (part of the world food crisis of 1973-1975) during the Marcos era.  “Strong” La Niña events, characterized by lower sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean and bringing heavy rains and flooding, were recorded on 1973-1974 and 1975-1976.

Experimental Cinema of the Philippines   Agency established by Executive Order 770 (January 29, 1982), just after the Manila International Film Festival (see Film Center tragedy), to provide government support for the “promotion of the growth and development of the [local] film industry” (Official Gazette 1982).  Presidential daughter Imee Marcos, who served as Director-General, “half-jokingly” named the organization after the oldest film school in Europe, Sentro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, founded in Italy in 1935, during the fascist dictatorship of Benito “Il Duce” Mussolini (David 2008, 232, 242).  Films produced or imported by the ECP and shown in the Film Center were free from censorship.  A number of progressive filmmakers and artists—notably Lino Brocka—initially supported the ECP (ibid., 232).  Critically-acclaimed films produced by the ECP included Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata (1982) and Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (1982).  The ECP also produced Celso Ad. Castillo’s sexually explicit Isla (1985). On August 8, 1985, the ECP was abolished and replaced with the Film Development Foundation of the Philippines (Executive Order no. 1051). Noted filmmakers like Brocka (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, 1974; Maynila, Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, 1975; Insiang, 1976; Jaguar, 1977; Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim, 1984), Bernal (Nunal sa Tubig, 1976; City After Dark/Manila By Night, 1980), Mario O’ Hara (Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, 1976), Mike de Leon (Itim, 1976;Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, 1980; Kisapmata, 1981; Sister Stella L, 1984), Lupita Aquino-Kashiwara (Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo, 1976) Marilou Diaz-Abaya (Brutal, 1980; Moral, 1982; Karnal, 1983), Kidlat Tahimik (Mababangong Bangungot/Perfumed Nightmare, 1977), and Eddie Romero (Ganito Kami Noon…Paano Kayo Ngayon?, 1976) produced some of their best work in the 1970s and 1980s, a period known as the Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema. In the final years of the Marcos era, the Film Center exhibited privately produced, sexually explicit films like Tikoy Aguiluz’s “Boatman” (1984) and Peque Gallaga’s “Scorpio Nights” (1985), which were big box-office hits (Wilson 1986).  Director Tikoy Aguiluz argued that “The Film Center makes its money off the sex movies so it can show the good ones. It’s like the mother who sells her daughter on the street so the next child can go to the university. It is crazy–but it’s the Philippines” (quoted in Wilson 1986). See also Bomba and Softdrink beauties

Film Center tragedy    The Manila Film Center, then known as the Manila Film Palace, was intended to serve as the venue of the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF), scheduled for January 18-29, 1982.  On November 17, 1981, the collapse of a scaffolding on the fourth floor caused the death of about a dozen workers (Severino 2005). The tragedy gave rise to rumors of sabotage, bodies left buried in cement, and ghostly sightings. The MIFF lasted only two years and was abandoned in 1983.

First Quarter Storm    A series of rallies, demonstrations, and strikes that took place between January and March 1970, it represented the country’s “first urban movement to make national, integrated demands” (Boudreau 2004, 73).  Protestors burned effigies of a coffin (symbolizing the death of democracy), a crocodile (symbolizing the corrupt Congress), and the President himself as the First Couple emerged from the Congress building following the State of the Nation Address on January 26.  On January 30, the “Battle of Mendiola” broke out as protestors clashed with the police. Protestors commandeered a truck and rammed it through Gate 4 of Malacañang Palace and six people were killed as police tried to break up the demonstration. The Movement for a Democratic Philippines organized protests on February 12, 18, and 26 at the Plaza Miranda, drawing crowds of thousands. Jeepney drivers, with the support of students, organized a citywide strike and a “People’s March” on March 3.  Sympathetic coverage by the opposition-owned mass media (see, for example, the classic collection of essays by Lacaba 1982) helped disseminate the messages of the demonstrators and stoke a sense of political crisis. A year later, between February 1-9, 1971, a Republic of Diliman (also known as the “Diliman Commune,” see Tuta and Beams, Dovie) would be established by students, teachers, and residents of the University of the Philippines-Diliman, in solidarity with transport workers protesting the three-centavo increase in oil prices.  

Galman, Rolando C.   Tricycle driver, military asset, professional hitman, and alleged assassin of Benigno Aquino, Jr., shot and killed on August 21, 1983.  The government tried to pin the blame for Aquino’s assassination on the Communist New People’s Army, stating that Galman was one Ka Bert Ramos, but this theory was rejected by the Agrava Fact-Finding Commission. Galman’s common-law wife Lina Lazaro and girlfriend Anna Oliva and her sister Catherine disappeared.  See Assassinations and massacres and salvage

Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining   See National Artist Award

Human Rights Violations  See Torture and Salvage

Iginuhit ng Tadhana: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story   Mythmaking 1965 bio-pic (English translation: Decreed by Destiny) detailing the life and career of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos and his courtship of, marriage to, and family and electoral-campaign life with Imelda Marcos. The film absolves Marcos of the Julio Nalundasan murder and paints Marcos as a war hero, devoted son, faithful husband, loving family man, and rising-star politician destined for greatness.   Released by Sampaguita Pictures and directed by Mar Torres, Jose de Villa and Conrado Conde, based on the screenplay by Luciano B. Carlos and Emmanuel G. Borlaza, the film starred Luis Gonzalez (Ferdinand Marcos), Gloria Romero (Imelda Romualdez Marcos), and Rosa Mia (Josefa Edralin Marcos).  Prior to the release of the film on September 7, 1965, as part of the lead-up to the November 9 presidential election, Marcos had commissioned an English-language biography, For Every Tear a Victory: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story (1964), written by Hartzell Spence and published in America.  In 1969, a biography of Imelda Marcos by Kerima Polotan (1969) was published in America.  Government censors banned the showing of the movie on September 17, 1965.   Carmen Navarro Pedrosa’s unauthorized biography (1969) of Imelda caused a stir, with its revelation of the troubled marital history of Imelda’s parents, Imelda’s childhood spent living in a garage, and her relationship with (the then married) Ariston Nakpil.  Pedrosa, who once worked for the Lopez-owned Manila Chronicle and whose husband had been an executive of the Lopez-owned Meralco, later claimed that she had to fend off a US$125,000 bribe offer and several telephone threats (Ellison 2005, 100).  Biography as a publicity (and campaign) tool to burnish a politician’s image and popularity is not new.  Sol H. Gwekoh published biographies of Elpidio Quirino (1949) and Diosdado Macapagal (1962), while Ramon Magsaysay’s political adviser Marvin Gray co-authored The Magsaysay Story with Carlos P. Romulo (Romulo and Gray 1956).  A bio-film on Macapagal, “Hirap at Tagumpay,” was not released.

Jabidah Massacre  Also known as the Corregidor Incident or Corregidor Affair, alleged massacre of between 14 and 28 (McKenna 1998, 140) Muslim Tausug trainees who had been recruited for a covert commando unit, codenamed “Jabidah.” Undertaken by the Philippine Army and administered by the Civil Affairs Office, Oplan Merdeka aimed to infiltrate Sabah, conduct guerrilla warfare, incite an uprising, and prepare the way for Philippine occupation of the territory. On December 30, 1967, between 135 to 180 recruits left their training camp in Simunul, Tawi-Tawi (then part of Sulu) for Corregidor, arriving on the island on January 3. In February 1968, the recruits decided to secretly send a letter of petition to President Marcos bearing their complaints about the miserable conditions of their training. The recruits had not been paid their monthly allowance and were forced to endure bad food and sleeping quarters. The signatories of the letter received information that they would be considered “resigned” effective March 1.  On March 18, the recruits were taken to the airport in batches of twelve at different times.  They were shot at the airport; only one person, Jubin Arula, survived the shooting (Vitug and Gloria 2000, 2-25). The massacre, exposed by Benigno Aquino, Jr. in his March 28, 1968 speech (see Bomba), played a role in advancing the Bangsa Moro struggle. Datu Udtog Matalam cited the massacre as a rationale for establishing the Muslim (later changed to Mindanao) Independence Movement in 1968 (McKenna 1988, 144-46). The massacre inspired Nur Misuari to embark on a political career and rise through the leadership ranks of the secessionist movement before the student branch of the movement split off to form the Moro National Liberation Front in 1972 (Majul 1985, 45).  The Tripoli Agreement of 1976, which had provided for a ceasefire between the government and the MNLF and set the terms for granting political autonomy to thirteen provinces in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, was not fully implemented.  Instead, in 1977, Ferdinand Marcos unilaterally proclaimed an autonomous region and organized a referendum that offered only limited autonomy and devolution of power.  A faction of the MNLF, headed by Hashim Salamat, began operating separately under the name of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 1981 to work for the establishment of an Islamic state in the Southern Philippines.     

Japayuki   Filipino version of “karayuki-san” (唐行きさん, kara= China or other overseas destinations+yuki=to go to+san=honorific title), which originally referred to Japanese women who worked abroad as prostitutes, querida, or geisha. Entering the popular lexicon circa 1982, “Japayuki” refers to women—Filipino and, more generally, Southeast Asian—in sexualized occupations in Japan (Mackie 2004, 59).  In 1978, some 7,455 Filipino “tourists” entered Japan, mostly as female “entertainers”; by 1982, the figure had risen to 24,712 (Cabilao 1978, 78). The number of Filipinos in Japan —the majority of whom were female and Overseas Performing Artists (OPAs)—continued to increase throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. In 1999, for example, out of 144,000 Filipinos, eighty-five percent were women, of whom 60,455 were OPAs and 54,004 were spouses and children of Japanese (Fuwa and Anderson 2006, 117). Only in 2005 was there a drastic decline in the number of Filipino entertainers as new and strict regulations were put in place in response to criticism of Japan by the U.S. State Department’s Fourth Trafficking in Persons Report (ibid.).  

Jeproks   Tadbalik (transposition of syllables) argot for person who lives in the housing projects of Quezon City, immortalized in the 1977 Mike Hanopol hit song “Laki sa Layaw-Jeproks.”   Other popular tadbalik words from the Marcos era include erpat (father) and ermat (mother), waswit or watot (asawa, spouse), dehins (hindi, not), goli (ligo, take a bath), golets (let’s go), astig (tigas, tough), tsekot (kotse, car), botak (takbo [run], shoes), enka (kain, eat), replaced by chibog (bo-chi, derived from subo, to take in food), syota or tasyo (“short time,” girlfriend), alaws (wala, none), tibak (aktib, from aktibista, activist), naspu (punas, wipe), and yosi (sigarilyo, cigarette). Sample sentence: Pogi pero dehin goli.  Slang popular during the Marcos era include: baduy (uncool, unfashionable), sputing (from “sporting,” well-dressed), walastik (walang plastic, genuine, awesome; often used alongside walandyo), makulit (maulit, pesky), burgis (bourgeois), silahis (bisexual), chimay (domestic helper), bagets (bagito, meaning young newbie, greenhorn; teenager). Other popular argots include “kolehiyala” (coed) Taglish (“Let’s make tusok-tusok the fish balls.”) and “swardspeak” (gayspeak, gay lingo, attributed by Jose Javier Reyes [1977] to columnist Nestor Torre; for example, bongga, awesome, stylish, flamboyant; Thunder Cats or wrangler, old person; Tom Jones, hungry; Carmi Martin, karma; fayatollah kumenis, thin; Julie Yap-Daza, huli, caught)  (Alba 2996; Francisco 2006; Reyes 1977; Hart and Hart 1990; De Guzman 2017).  See Manila Sound

Jingle Songbook/Chordbook Magazine   Edited by Far Eastern University graduate Gilbert Guillermo (and later by Ces Rodriguez), this iconic Filipino music magazine–briefly renamed Twinkle in 1973-1975–debuted in 1970 with a naked, impish, pissing (the Filipino slang for which is “jingle”) cherub designed by Emil Davocol as mascot, and went on to become the Bible of several generations of guitar-playing and music-loving Filipinos (Pardo 2013; Concepcion 2020; Escasa 2012). The cover of the maiden “chapter” of the bimonthly “songbook magazine” (later amended to “chordbook magazine”), which quickly sold out at 3 pesos a copy, originally featured popular actress and singer Nora Aunor, but was criticized for being “baduy” and replaced in the second printing with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney (De Jesus 2020).  Jingle provided not only the guitar chords and lyrics to popular (and protest) songs from the Philippines (see Manila Sound) and abroad, but also carried articles on musicians and the music scene in the Philippines, U.S., and United Kingdom (Rhythm and News), and on current events and human-interest stories. It also published poetry, fiction (including Lualhati Bautista’s now-classic novel Dekada ’70), and literary essays (This Page Tells a Story); comics and art work; columns; jokes, often risqué (or “green,” hence Grin Page); book and movie reviews; album reviews with a rating system consisting of the Chordian Angel “superior” rave, the three-bell “very good” to “mediocre,” and the bangaw/blowfly “forget it” pan; and letters from readers (Bongga at Boquilla). The success of Jingle spawned sister publications like the bestselling Jingle Songhits Magazine; The Best of Jingle “annual collection of the best hits, past and present”; Jingle Keys and Jingle Organ for keyboard playing; Jingle Bells featuring Christmas songs; Jingle Beatles and Bee Gees Songbook; Extra Hot! and Sensation for movie and entertainment celebrity fans; and Champcovering sports. The last chapter of Jingle Chordbook Magazine came out in 1997.

Kabataang Barangay   Created by Presidential Decree no. 684 on April 15, 1975, and modeled on the Soviet Komsomol (Landé 1986, 128), the Pambansang Katipunan ng Kabataang Barangay was intended to be the government-sanctioned and -subsidized version of the radical-nationalist Kabataang Makabayan. Its first chairperson was presidential daughter Imee Marcos and its membership was largely drawn from the ranks of the poor (between fifteen and eighteen years of age, later raised to twenty-one). This barangay-level youth organization was the principal agency responsible for promoting youth participation in the political life of the Bagong Lipunan.

Katas ng Saudi   Literally, “sap of Saudi,” meaning the fruit of one’s earnings in Saudi, phrase used by Overseas Contract Workers (OCW, forerunners of the Overseas Filipino Workers) based in Saudi Arabia and more generally the Middle East, often emblazoned on jeepneys, sari-sari stores, and other products of OCW investment.  The oil-price hikes of the 1970s (see Bataan Nuclear Power Plant) created an economic boom in the Middle East and fueled the demand for labor, particularly in the construction sector.  The Marcos government’s New Labor Code in 1974 and bilateral labor agreement with Iran in 1975 signaled a new era in which the state would come to play an active role in promoting and regulating the export of Filipino labor abroad. The government viewed the labor export program as a “temporary measure” to “ease underemployment” (National Economic and Development Authority, Philippine Development Plan, 1978-1982, quoted in The Labour Trade 1987, 18).  As the political and financial crises (triggered by the global debt crisis [see Dee, Dewey] and the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr.) worsened in the early 1980s, the Central Bank turned to labor export as a stop-gap measure: “Tapping the remittances of Filipino workers would be the most immediate and obvious means by which the country could improve the BOP [balance of payments] position which was estimated to be US$1.1 billion in the red last year” (ibid.).  While men constituted the majority (88%) of the OCWs deployed in 1975, the percentage of female workers would increase to 47% by 1987 and reach as high as 69% (73% of the newly hired) by 2002 (in 2019, the proportion of female workers was 56%) (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration 2003; Fast Facts on Filipino Labor Migration 1999).  The category of OCW also included Filipino seafarers, who used the phrase “Katas ng Barko” (ship). Over the next decades, they would go on to account for one-quarter of the 1.2 million seafarers who make it possible for nine-tenths of the global trade to be conducted by sea (The Economist 2019).  In addition to OCWs, there had been a substantial number of Filipinos who migrated to the United States and worked in plantations, canneries, mines, restaurants, hotels, and households from the first decade of the twentieth century to the 1930s, and as professionals and as spouses and minor children reunited with their families based in America in the wake of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  Filipino workers have long been an integral part of the global trade system. In fact, historians date the birth of world trade to the establishment of the entrepôt city of Manila in 1571 (Flynn and Giráldez 1995, 201). Filipinos built and manned the galleon ships that linked Asia, the Americas, and Europe from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries; some one-third of the total silver produced in the Americas over 250 years passed through the Philippines (Legarda 1999, 44).  From the nineteenth century onward, Filipinos roamed the world’s sea lanes as marineros who were better known under the brand name “Manilamen,” working as manual and domestic workers in London and Hong Kong, settling in Marseilles, Barcelona, Singapore, and Capetown, diving for pearl in Australia, and hiring themselves out as mercenaries in the Boxer Rebellion (Aguilar 2012b).  “Manilla men” were not just a part of the crew of “seamen of all tribes” who operated Captain Ahab’s whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville’s classic American novel Moby Dick (1851).  Possessed of “vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;–a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtility” (Chapter 48), they made up the secret crew members of Captain Ahab’s personal harpoon boat.  Chapter 50 of the novel has Captain Ahab “standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men were springing to their oars” as they pursue the Great White (Sperm) Whale.  In the late twentieth century, the growing importance of Overseas Filipino Workers and their remittances for the Philippine economy and society would be confirmed by Corazon Aquino’s christening of these workers as “bagong bayani” (new heroes). The sheer amount of OFW remittances—representing eight to ten percent of the Gross Domestic Product between 2012 and 2019 (Dumlao 2014; Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas 2020)–has had enormous consequences for the Philippine economy, stabilizing the macroeconomy and boosting the current account, domestic consumption, and domestic investment. 

Kilusang Bagong Lipunan   A pro-government party created in February 1978, the KBL won landslide victories in the Interim Batasang Pambansa (1978), local (1980) and presidential (1981) election. (The opposition party Lakas ng Bayan [LABAN], founded by Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1978, merged with the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino [PDP], led by Corzaon Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco, in 1983.  PDP-LABAN then formed an alliance with Salvador Laurel’s umbrella United Nationalist Democratic Organization [UNIDO] to field the Cory-Doy team for the snap presidential election in 1986.)  While not a monolithic entity, its political machine controlled sixty-nine out of seventy-three provincial governments and fifty-three out of fifty-nine city governments and a substantial majority of the municipal and barangay posts across the country (Timberman 1991, 144).  The “Bagong Lipunan” (New Society, cf. Suharto’s Orde Baru, “New Order” in Indonesia), coined specifically for the Philippines under martial law (“To save the Republic and form a new society”), came with PLEDGES (Peace and Order, Land Reform, Economic Development, Development of Moral Values, Government Reforms, Educational Reforms, Social Services) and slogans like “Support the New Society,” “Bagong buhay sa Bagong Lipunan” (which Marcos critics amended to “Bagong buhay sa bahong lipunan”) and “Sa ikaunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan.”  On Independence Day, 1978, Ferdinand Marcos signed Presidential Decree no. 1413 adopting “Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa” (One Nation, One Spirit) as the country’s official national motto.  Other keywords associated with the Marcos era include “democratic revolution” (“a revolution in the tradition of our democracy,” Marcos 1971),  “Filipino Ideology” (1979), “revolution from the center” (as opposed to revolution from above or below, with the government serving as a “faithful instrument of the people’s revolutionary hopes,” [Almonte and Vitug 2015, 81]), “smiling martial law” (Marcos 1977b, 132, citing foreign press coverage), and “constitutional authoritarianism” (defining the constitutional basis of martial law [see Ruiz 1993]).  The “Marcos”-authored books were ghostwritten by a team of writers (including Adrian Cristobal, Fred dela Rosa, and Yen Makabenta) working under the supervision of a propaganda group organized by Blas Ople in 1971 (Reyes 2018, 181, 192).  Almonte, who claimed that the book Revolution from the Center was based on his doctoral dissertation, even as the book drew on material from previous “Marcos”-authored books (Reyes 2018, 190), was then with the think-tank Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, attached to the University of the Philippines and active between 1973 and 1979.

A Marcos-Era Glossary: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z, Bibliography

A Glossary of the Marcos Era (1965-1986) in the Philippines (A-C)

This glossary, by no means exhaustive, presents potted histories of keywords and phenomena that are evocative of the Marcos era (1965-1986) in the Philippines. Terms in bold font have their own entries. Forthcoming in Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Mary Grace Concepcion, JPaul S. Manzanilla, and Ruel V. Pagunsan, eds., “Remembering Martial Law”

Assassinations and massacres   [1] Ilocos Sur Representative and Nacionalista Party member Floro Crisologo of the tobacco bloc was shot and killed by two gunmen inside the Vigan Cathedral Church on October 18, 1970. The incident occurred less than a month before the November 10 election of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The bitter political rivalry between Crisologo and his nephew Luis “Chavit” Singson made the latter a chief suspect in the assassination (New York Times 1970, 22). No one was charged with the crime.  [2]  An estimated 106 Muslim men, women, and children were massacred by anti-Muslim “Ilaga” paramilitary forces that threw grenades inside a mosque in Barangay Manili, Carmen, North Cotabato, and opened fire on residents who had been rounded up inside a schoolhouse on June 19, 1971 (Acuña-Gulo 2018). “Ilaga” is the Cebuano word for “rat,” whereas in Huk country, their anti-Communist counterparts were known as “Monkees” (after the fictional American pop group created for a television show that went on to become a successful, real-life band), to distinguish them from the Huk execution squad nicknamed the Beatles.  Ilaga leader Feliciano “Kumander Toothpick” Lucas surrendered to Ferdinand Marcos, but was not persecuted (George 1980, 149).  The Manili massacre was just one of twenty-one incidents involving the Ilaga forces (founded in 1970) that took place between 1970 and 1972, including two in Buldon in August 1971 that claimed a total of seventy-four lives; some 300 Muslim Filipinos were killed in Cotabato alone (Macasalong 2013, 101, 105).  In 1971, violence in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte left 130 dead (ibid., 101-102). Between late 1968 and 1969, the death toll from the “demilitarization of Central Luzon” totaled 100 in Pampanga and 150 in Tarlac (Brands 1992, 291).  On September 24, 1974, two years after the declaration of martial law, an estimated 1,500 Muslims aged 11 to 70 years were massacred inside a mosque in Barangay Malisbong, Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat and some 300 houses were destroyed by the military (MindaNews 2014).  See also Jabidah Massacre  [3]  Opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. was assassinated on the afternoon of August 21, 1983, after his Taipei-originating China Airlines flight CI-811 berthed at Bay 8, West Satellite area, Manila International Airport.  Owing to intense public criticism of the fact-finding commission formed by Administrative Order no. 469 and headed by Supreme Court Justice Enrique Fernando, Marcos created through Presidential Decree no. 1886 the five-person Agrava Fact-Finding Board Commission, headed by former appellate judge Corazon Agrava.  In 1984, the Commission produced two reports. Rejecting the theory of the lone Communist gunman (Galman, Rolando C.), both reports found that the assassination was the result of a military conspiracy, but differed in their accounts of the persons involved.  The majority report, signed by all members except Agrava, named Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver and head of the Metropolitan Command and Metropolitan Police Force General Prospero Olivas along with a civilian and twenty-three other military officers. The minority report claimed that only one general and six soldiers were involved, and did not include Fabian Ver.  Following a trial, the Sandiganbayan issued a ruling on December 2, 1985, acquitting all twenty-five military personnel and ruling that the assassination was the work of Galman alone.  The Aquino assassination triggered a political crisis–compounded by economic crisis (see Dee, Dewey and Sugar)–that culminated in the People’s Power Revolution. A post-EDSA 1986 investigation sentenced sixteen soldiers to life imprisonment.  Independent forensic analysis suggests that either Galman or Sgt. Pablo Martinez, who brought Galman in, was the likely shooter, and that the gunshot wound (from a .357 high-powered magnum loaded projectile) had been fired from the left side as Aquino was being led to the Aviation Security Command van on the tarmac, not from the back side as he descended the stairway (Bailen, Erfe, Molino, and Rosete 2009, 37, 71, 77). Martinez would later claim that Capt. Romeo Ochoco, then with the Presidential Security Command, and Capt. Felipe Valerio, head of the AVSECOM Team Alpha positioned on the tarmac, had vital information on the assassination (Ramos and Calleja 2014).   [4] Zamboanga mayor Cesar Climaco, a Marcos critic, was shot and killed on November 14, 1984.  At the time of the murder, Southern Command (SouthCom) Chief Major Delfin Castro claimed that Rizal Alih had admitted to the murder, but Alih denied involvement and the Climaco family did not accept this version of events (Davis 1987, 144-45). The case remains unsolved and no one has been charged with the crime. Alih led the three-day Cawa-Cawa Siege in Zamboanga in 1989 that resulted in the hostage-taking and death of Brigadier General Eduardo Batalla, Philippine Constabulary Chief of Western Mindanao, and several other PC officers; Alih died in prison on August 14, 2015.  [5] Antique governor Evelio Javier was assassinated on February 11, 1986. Javier’s family filed charges against his political rival, Kilusang Bagong Lipunan member and Batasang Pambansa majority floor leader Arturo Pacificador and Pacificador’s lawyer, Avelino Javellana. Javellana and several gunmen were convicted, Pacificador acquitted.  [6]  The Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB), the Manila-based urban-warfare and hit squad of the New People’s Army, was organized in 1984 and named after the eponymous labor leader-turned-guerrilla who was assassinated by security forces in 1983. Operating through “sparrow units,” and later breaking away from the New People’s Army, the ABB was linked to the assassination of Colonel James N. Rowe, chief of the Army division of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group that trained Filipino army personnel in counter-insurgency techniques, on April 21, 1989. In 2000, Juanito Itaas was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, while Donato Continente was sentenced to twelve to fourteen years of imprisonment, for the murder of Rowe; both men—who said they were tortured into admitting to the assassination (Magsambol 2021)—were also sentenced to six to nine years of imprisonment and six months to two years four months of imprisonment for the attempted murder of Rowe’s Filipino driver Joaquin Vinuya (Supreme Court 2000).  In 2017, Itaas was pardoned by President Rodrigo Duterte (Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process 2017). The ABB claimed responsibility for the assassination of notorious torturer Rolando Abadilla, former commander of the Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group, on June 13, 1996 (Philippine Daily Inquirer 2016).  Another notorious torturer, Abadilla’s former understudy, Rodolfo Aguinaldo, who went on to serve as Governor and Representative of Cagayan, was assassinated in 2001 (Salatan 2001). National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultant Randy Malayao, who had been charged with Aguinaldo’s assassinationbut acquitted by a Cagayan court for lack of evidence, was killed by an unidentified gunman in 2019 (Dullana 2019).  Prominent activists killed during the Marcos era include Lorena Barros, Bobby de la Paz, Juan Escandor, Enrique Voltaire Garcia, Liliosa Hilao, Edgar Jopson, Emmanuel Lacaba, and Hermon Lagman. See Torture and Salvage

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant   Although the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission, established in 1958, had considered the idea of building nuclear power plants well before the 1970s, the two oil crises (also known as “oil shocks”) of 1973 and 1979—when prices increased by 400% owing to the export embargo imposed by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries on countries that supported Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli (Yom Kippur/Ramadan) War and by 100% owing to the 1979 Iranian (Islamic) Revolution, respectively—and a growing Philippine economy spurred the demand and search for new sources of energy (the following discussion is indebted to Mendoza, Bertulfo, and Cruz 2018, 344-53). Two contractors, General Electric and Westinghouse, submitted proposals to build the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). Westinghouse allegedly relied on political connections with Marcos’ golf buddy Herminio Disini to secure the contract (see Cronies and crony capitalism).  Westinghouse originally proposed building two reactors for US$500 million (200 million less than the G.E. proposal), but the cost had ballooned to US$ 1.1 billion for only one reactor by the time the contract was signed in 1976. When the plant was completed in the mid-1980s, the total cost was more than US$2 billion. Government-assumed loans linked to the BNPP amounted to US$795 million, the highest among the crony-run companies (IBON 2004, 5, cited in Mendoza, Bertulfo, and Cruz 2018, 346). The National Computer Center estimated that the project was overpriced by $75 million and more expensive than comparable Westinghouse nuclear-plant projects in neighboring Taiwan and South Korea.  Allegations of corruption, questions about the geographical siting and safety of the BNPP in light of the 1970 Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accidents, the politicization of the debt issue (by the end of the Marcos era in 1986, the external debt of the Philippines stood at US$ 27.2 billion, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 0.90 [Boyce 1993, 4]), anti-nuclear protests, and the elevation of the BNPP to a symbol of America’s overweening influence on the Philippines resulted in the decision by the Corazon Aquino government not to put the plant into operation, despite the fact that the plant was fully operational.  

Beams, Dovie   Hollywood producer Paul Mason had contacted American actress Dovie Beams (1932-2017) sometime in mid-December 1968 about a role in Ang Mga Maharlika, a US$3-million film based on Ferdinand Marcos’s war exploits (see War medals). Marcos intimate Potenciano Ilusorio, producer of the film, arranged Beams’s trip to Manila (see Cronies and crony capitalism). Beams met “Fred” while auditioning for her role as the war hero’s love interest. “Fred” confessed that he was the president of the Philippines (Rotea 1984, 24).  Their affair intensified through 1969 to early 1970, with Ferdinand Marcos’ men playing a cat-and-mouse game of hiding Beams from Imelda’s people. Beams recorded “Fred” singing songs like “Pamulinawen” and “Come Closer to Me” (ibid., 97–98) into the microphone of a tape recorder and allowed him to take photographs of her in the nude. Beams was featured on the October 3, 1970 issue of the Philippines Free Press, titled “A Lovely Argument for Special Relations,” which quoted Beams as saying “I don’t know why I attract married men” (Quirino 1970, 3).  Imelda Marcos, alerted to the affair, allegedly put pressure on Ilusorio to cut Beams out of the Maharlika production and instructed Commissioner of Immigration Edmundo Reyes to deport the actress (Rotea 1984, 120–21).  Manhandled by immigration officials, Beams consulted an attorney, with whom she deposited some of the evidence of the clandestine affair that she had collected. Beams claimed (ibid., 130) that Imelda tried to bribe her with US$100,000 to keep quiet and disappear from Marcos’s life by using the American embassy as conduit.  On November 11, 1970, at a press conference held at the Bayview Hotel on Roxas Boulevard, Beams dropped the bomba, revealing details of her twenty-three-month affair with Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. As proof, Beams played portions of the tape recordings she had secretly made of the trysts, including one of Marcos crooning “Pamulinawen”. Marcos claimed to have met Beams (whom he insisted on calling by her married surname Boehms) when he was introduced to the cast during the shooting of Maharlika (Marcos diary entry of October 19, 1970; also cited in Rempel 1993, 87, 90). He called Beams’s “extortion activities” a “diabolical plot” (diary of November 10, 1970, cited in Rempel 1993, 88) and speculated that it was either the “CIA or the American embassy” or else his “political opponents who are encouraging this or have planted her” (ibid.).  Ten articles serialized in the crony-owned Republic Weekly between late February and April 1971 vilified Beams as a prostitute, lunatic, gold digger, and unfit mother (A. E. 1971, 3), and published nude photos of her.  Students at the University of the Philippines made a loop of the more sensational parts of the tape recordings and aired them all over campus through the DZUP radio channel at the time of the Diliman Commune (Seagrave 1988, 369; see First Quarter Storm). The Dovie Beams affair, with its titillating mix of sex and politics, blackmail and strong-arming, cat-and-mouse chases and conspiracy theories, provided fodder to a news-hungry, politicized press, and ammunition to vocal and silent critics and opponents of the Marcos administration. The airing of Marcos’s bedroom antics exposed him to public hilarity and humiliation (protestors held up signs saying “Ferdie, Sino si Fred?” and “Palinawen ang Pamulinawen” [Hau 2019, 603]), chipping away at Marcos’ carefully crafted public persona as devoted husband and heroic statesman (see Iginuhit ng Tadhana). The scandal also played a role in shaping a number of influential accounts of the Marcos dictatorship and its trajectory. A 1984 tell-all book by journalist Hermie Rotea, initially written in collaboration with Beams before the two had a falling out, argues that “true story of American actress Dovie Beams of Beverly Hills, California, . . . not only reveals what kind of leader Ferdinand E. Marcos is, but also heralds the rise of his wife Imelda from ceremonial First Lady to a conjugal tyrant reminiscent of Evita Peron of Argentina” (Rotea 1984, 1; see conjugal dictatorship).  In some accounts of the Marcos era, the Dovie Beams scandal marks “a turning point….  He [Ferdinand] could no longer control her, and she went crazy with power and greed” (Karnow 1989, 379).   Others claim that both Imelda’s relatives (particularly Benjamin Romualdez) and “Imelda would extract a heavy price from Ferdinand for his philandering—from shares in gold mines to unbridled political power” (Seagrave 1988, 227; Mijares 1976, 215; see X, Y, Z).  Scholars have characterized the relationship between Imelda and Ferdinand as one of “mutual blackmail,” “a curious mixture of collaboration and conflict. Malacañang insiders often described it as a standoff between two warring camps, in which the battlegrounds were appointments, government contracts, investment opportunities, media treatment, and priority in the allocation of funds” (Hutchcroft 1991, 436–37; Wurfel 1988, 241).  “Whatever the precise origins of [Imelda’s] power, there is no question that at some point after 1972 she was able to establish a relatively autonomous power base within the regime…. [T]he ‘boundaries’ of her official positions were ‘frequently indeterminate,’ and the positions themselves were treated ‘as a personal right’” (Hutchcroft 1991, 436). The real turning point of Imelda’s rise to power was the declaration of martial law and Ferdinand Marcos’ increasingly fragile health. As early as June 7, 1975, a handwritten decree (no. 731) provided for an executive committee headed by Imelda Marcos to take charge of the country in the event of Ferdinand’s death or permanent disability.  See also Shoes

Beatles, The    [1] The most successful music act of all time, the British Fab Four (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) were greeted at the Manila International Airport (MIA) on July 3, 1966 by some fifty thousand fans, one of the largest airport crowds ever assembled.  The Manila concert was part of their June 24-July 4, 1966 world tour, which included concerts in West Germany and Japan.  Instead of being driven to the Manila Hotel, they were separated for half-an-hour from their baggage and taken aboard a yacht that took them out to sea before returning to the pier.  The entourage suspected that Philippine officials had found several pounds of marijuana packed in the equipment cases but had chosen not to make an issue of it. Prior to their arrival in Manila, an invitation to attend a July 4 luncheon reception organized by Imelda Marcos for three hundred Filipino war orphans and disabled children had been sent by Malacañang Palace to Tokyo, where the Beatles were performing, but, according to Beatles personal assistant Peter Brown, either press officer Vic Lewis or publicity agent Tony Barrow failed to relay the invitation to manager Brian Epstein (Barrow disputes this account, claiming it was Epstein who failed to RSVP the invitation) (the following account draws from Brown and Gaines 1983, 185-90; Barrow 2005, quoted in The Beatles Bible n.d.).  As a result, the Beatles slept through the 11:15 a.m. reception. In a phone conversation with the British ambassador, Epstein stated that it was NEMS Enterprises management policy that the Beatles not attend any official functions. Epstein tried to explain himself in an interview with the Channel 5 crew, but the audio track of his explanation was obscured by interference.  Later that day, the band performed two sold-out shows at 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. before an estimated eighty thousand people—tickets cost twenty and thirty pesos and supporting acts included the Reycard Duets, Wing Duo, Lemons Three, Eddie Reyes and D’ Downbeats, Dale Adriatico, and Pilita Corrales—at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium. The set list of songs included “Rock and Roll Music,” “If I Needed Someone,” “Baby’s in Black,” “Day Tripper,” “I Feel Fine,” and “Paperback Writer” (Reyes 2017).  The next morning, the Beatles woke up to the newspaper headlines “IMELDA STOOD UP: FIRST FAMILY WAITS IN VAIN FOR MOPHEADS” and “FUROR OVER BEATLES ‘SNUB’ MARS SHOW.” Epstein was slapped with a bill for local income tax on the band’s fee and ended up filing a bond of 74,450 pesos, even though the band’s contract specified that the local promoter, Cavalcade Promotions (headed by businessman Ramon Ramos, Jr.), was responsible for paying local taxes.  Denied service at the Manila Hotel and police protection, the Beatles, with the help of their sympathetic Filipino driver, made their own way to the airport, only to find that the escalators there had stopped working, forcing them to carry their own baggage.  Uniformed men mauled the entourage as the Beatles made their way across the tarmac to board the aircraft. Recalling this episode in New Delhi, India, the next stop of their concert tour, the Beatles informed their manager that they were no longer interested in touring. Their August 29 concert at San Francisco Candlestick Park was their final official live concert. See Jingle Songbook/Chordbook Magazine  [2] Nickname given to the Huk liquidation squads, in part owing to their long hair, as opposed to the anti-Communist “Monkees.” See Assassinations and massacres

Binondo Central Bank   Quasi-official shadow banking system organized by Minister of Trade and Industry Roberto V. Ongpin between November 1983 and February 1986. Under the auspices of the Presidential Anti-Dollar Salting Task Force (created by Executive Order no. 934 in February 13, 1984), Ongpin’s Task Force Luntian mobilized the country’s top black marketeers based in Binondo at a time of economic instability, following the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr. and the speculative attacks on the Philippine peso (the official exchange rate went from eight to fourteen pesos to one U.S. dollar during this period, with the dollar fetching as high as twenty-five to twenty-seven pesos on the black market) (Balea 2011; Inquirer.net 2011; Gonzales 2012). The Binondo Central Bank served as a “parallel institution” that worked in tandem with the Central Bank to control and stabilize the dollar-peso exchange rate and prevent runaway inflation by intervening in the black-market currency system (Boyce 1993, 283; Aquino 1987, 76, 111).  Binondo bankers acquired U.S. dollars on the black market, that is, from tourists, American military personnel, and other sources. General Fabian Ver provided the security services (for which he was allegedly paid 70,000 pesos a day) to smuggle the black-market dollars by courier to Hong Kong, where the money was deposited in major banks, on a daily basis (Fajardo 1988, 58). Filipino importers, exporters, traders, and others who needed U.S. dollars but could not acquire them through official banking channels bought traveler’s or cashier’s checks in pesos from their local banks and then handed over these checks (or else paid in cash) to Binondo intermediaries, who in turn instructed the Hong Kong banks to wire the equivalent amount in dollars to these clients’ overseas bank accounts.  Unsold dollars were sold to the Central Bank through the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corporation (ibid.).  The peso stabilized at eighteen to twenty pesos to the U.S. dollar, increasing the Central Bank’s foreign reserves by US$ 400 million (Gonzales 2012).   In 1987, the Presidential Commission on Good Government brought a case before the Sandiganbayan naming Ongpin, the estate of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and Fabian Ver and his children as defendants who profited illegally from protection money provided by the Binondo Central bankers.  In January 2012, the Sandiganbayan dismissed the fifty-billion-peso damage suit against Ongpin and others because of “absence of evidence” (ibid.).

Blue Ladies   Tapped by Imelda Marcos to support the 1965 electoral campaign of Ferdinand Marcos, the Blue Ladies wore white kimonos with the name “Marcos” spelled out on blue sashes. They included society matrons like Imelda Ongsiako Cojuangco, Zita Feliciano, Maria Luisa Madrigal, Gretchen Oppen Cojuangco, and Pat Domingo Masigan.  Other politicians relied on women as well to mobilize female supporters: examples include Diosdado (and First Lady Eva) Macapagal’s Lakambini ’65, Sergio (and daughter Minnie) Osmeña, Jr.’s Pearls, Lito (and Consuelo) Puyat’s Yellow Belles, and Eduardo (and Gretchen) Cojuangco’s GLAD (Gretchen Ladies’ Auxiliary for Danding) (Roces 2000, 32). 

Bomba   Filipino word for “bomb,” from the Spanish bomba, in turn derived from the Latin bombus (“a buzzing or booming sound”) and Greek bombos (“deep, hollow sound”) (Etymology.com “Bomb”), cf. “bombshell” (Etymology.com “Bombshell”). [1]  See Bombings   [2] Synonymous with the “exposé,” bomba involves the public revelation, often politically motivated, of the scandalous or discreditable behavior of prominent personalities, be it graft and corruption, sexual peccadillos, murder and mayhem, or moral failings and ethical lapses.  Bomba are usually dropped or exploded in public or political fora, particularly during the electoral campaign season, with politicians serving as bombers and targets, accusers and accused.  See Quintero, Eduardo  [3] Bomba’s association with public display and potential scandal also gave birth to a new film genre: sexually explicit melodrama (Lumbera 2011, 11; Rafael 2000, 133). The 1933 American film “Bombshell,” starring Jean Harlow (herself nicknamed “The Blonde Bombshell”), established the link between female sexual allure and newsworthy publicity. By 1942, “bombshell” had acquired the meaning of “a pretty woman ‘of startling vitality and physique’” (Etymology.com “Bombshell”).  The breakdown of the Filipino movie-studio system in the late 1960s flooded the Philippines with imported Hollywood and other foreign films. Independent producers resorted to shooting low-budget “quickies” that recouped their investment by featuring sensationalistic sex and violence. Bomba queens like Merle Fernandez, Rosanna Ortiz, and Rosanna Marquez became icons of the Sexual Revolution. Critics have made a case for bomba film as a “subversive genre,” the narrative of which “pretends to uphold establishment values when it is actually intent on undermining audience support for corrupt and outmoded institutions” (Lumbera 2011, 12).  The year 1969 was heralded as the breakthrough “Year of the Bomba” (Samonte 1970, 38). Films like Ruben S. Abalos’ Uhaw (Thirst, 1970) and Celso Ad. Castillo’s Nympha (Nymph, 1971) delivered a much-needed shot in the arm for the native film industry (De Vega 1975, 33-35; Matilac and Lanot 1994, 84). The popularity of the bomba films coincided with the burgeoning social movement in the urban areas (Rafael 2000, 123; see First Quarter Storm).  Bomba films’ urban audiences included not only students but also workers and young middle-class professionals, whose “radical youth politics…bled into the potentially subversive qualities of the bomba film” (Espiritu 2017a, 87, 89).   As a film genre, bomba would go on to acquire other names as it evolved over decades: bold and wet-look in the 1970s (see Softdrink beauties);  FF (fighting fish) and penekula (penetration+pelikula) in the first half of the 1980s; ST (sex trip) from the latter half of the 1980s to the early 1990s, and TT (titillating) from the 1990s to the present (Tolentino 2014, 168). 

Bombings   Bombings variously attributed to the Marcos government, the Left, and the opposition. [1] The most controversial was the one that took place on August 21, 1971 at the Plaza Miranda. An estimated ten thousand people had gathered for a rally to launch the electoral campaign of the Liberal Party.  Between 9:05 and 9:10 p.m., three fragmentation grenades were hurled at the stage. Two of the grenades exploded, killing at least nine people (including a ten-year-old cigarette vendor and Manila Times photographer Ben Roxas) and wounding nearly a hundred others.  Among the injured Liberal Party members were Party president Gerardo Roxas, Senator Jovito Salonga, Senator Eva Estrada-Kalaw, Speaker Ramon Mitra Jr., Senator Sergio Osmeña Jr., and Manila Mayoral candidate Ramon D. Bagatsing.  Marcos placed the blame on “a ‘Marxist-Leninist-Maoist’ group receiving ‘active moral and material support of a foreign power’” (Eduardo Lachica, “The Bombing: Who Did It?” Manila Times August 27, 1970, quoted in Slater 2010, 132).  He suspended the writ of habeas corpus and arrested some 100 people (including members of the Kabataang Makabayan and Philippine College of Commerce president Nemesio Prudente) (Celoza 1997, 30).  Marcos accused Benigno Aquino, Jr. (who was not in Plaza Miranda at the time of the bombing) and five other Liberal Party members of having links and lending support to the Communists and of having prior knowledge of the bombing (Jones 1989, 66).  The evening of the bombing, Aquino told reporters he had received a phone call warning him that “they would get me” and that he had stopped by his house to get his bullet-proof vest before heading on to the rally (“Aquino: They Said They Would Get Me,” Philippines Herald August 22, 1971, quoted in Jones 1989, 321).   Critics and opposition figures blamed Marcos, claiming that “The known Maoists…are too few in number to constitute a political threat” (Lachica, ibid., quoted in Slater 2010, 133). They also criticized Marcos’ decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that “no such thing as ‘imminent danger’ of rebellion and insurrection exists to justify suspension of the writ” (Ramon Mitra, quoted in “Opposition Questions FM Intent in Writ,” Daily Mirror September 6, 1971, quoted in Slater 2010, 133).  In 1986, Juan Ponce Enrile and his Reform the Armed Forces Movement supporters (see People’s Power Revolution) leaked to the press Victor Corpus’s letter (addressed to Jose Lacaba [see Tuta], who was then preparing a film script based on Corpus’s life story) claiming that Corpus himself—a Philippine Military Academy graduate and lieutenant who turned Communist rebel in 1970, surrendered to the government in 1976, and was reinstated in the Armed Forces of the Philippines in 1987—had been present when Sison and other CPP members planned the bombing.  The Communist Party of the Philippines had been established on December 26, 1968 as a breakaway group from the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP); its military arm, the New People’s Army, was formed in March 1969. The “CCP grew from a ragtag band of students with a few dusty, old rifles to a party of 35,000 leading a guerrilla army of 25,000” (Rocamora 1994, 9). Gregg Jones’ Red Revolution, published in 1989, alleges that the bombing was secretly masterminded by Communist Party of the Philippines leader Jose Maria Sison to undermine Marcos’ credibility, sow division among the political elites by ‘intensify[ing] the split between the ruling classes”, and promote revolution by creating a situation in which “Increased repression will result in increased resistance” (quotes attributed to Sison in Jones 1989, 63, 61).  Former Central Committee member Ruben Guevarra, who chaired the military tribunal that ordered the execution of alleged bomber Danny Cordero (for a separate case of insubordination) and who later became head of Balik Loob Foundation (a rebel reconversion or returnees group [Reyes 1992]), published his own version in 1998.  Sison denies his and Aquino’s involvement in the bombing (Sison and Rosca 2004, 58-59; Sison 2001).  [2]  Between June and September 1971, there had been a spate of bombings targeting government facilities like the National Waterworks and Sewerage Authority (NAWASA) and the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). Some of these bombings were claimed by the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (Scalice 2017, 644).  Bombings also targeted the Arca Building, Filipinas Orient Airway, the porch of the South Vietnamese Embassy, a branch of the Philippine Trust Company, the Phil-Am Life Building, Far East Bank, an American Express office, and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Exchange office (Bonner 1987, 95, 97). Bombs were discovered on the premises of the Department of Foreign Affairs Building, the Senate’s publications office, and the Good Earth Emporium (ibid.).  The bombing of Joe’s Department Store left one woman dead and 41 injured (ibid., 97); the Quezon City Hall one injured 11 people.  Marcos blamed the communists; Benigno Aquino Jr. in turn dropped a bomba exposing Marcos’ secret orders to “sow violence and terror” in preparation for imposing martial law (Bonner 1985, 126-27).  Some of the bombings were believed to have been staged by military forces, along with the September 22, 1972 ambush of Juan Ponce Enrile’s convoy, to justify the imposition of martial law (ibid. 100.; McCoy 1999, 192).  In the wake of the People’s Power Revolution, Enrile confirmed that the ambush had been staged, only to retract his confession later on in his memoir (2012, 380-81).  [3] Arson and bombings—of the Sulo Hotel, the floating casino, and Rustan’s department store (where an American woman was killed and 32 people injured on September 12), the Philippine Plaza, Century Park Sheraton and Manila Peninsula hotels (on October 12), and the Philippine International Convention Center (where Marcos was scheduled to deliver a speech at the international conference of the American Society of Travel Agents on October 19)—were attributed to urban-based “bourgeois bombers” belonging to the Light-a-Fire Movement, whose leading members included Heherson Alvarez, Bonifacio Gillego (see War medals), Charles Avila, and Steve Psinakis. The Movement’s operatives, Eduardo Olaguer, Gaston Ortigas, Othoniel and Ester Jimenez, had been arrested in December 1979 and sentenced to death in 1984, but their case was pending when the People’s Power Revolution broke out. The Light-a-Fire Movement had ties to the April 6 Liberation Movement, which included PICC bomber Doris Nuval Baffrey, with training and financial support provided by the U.S.-based Movement for a Free Philippines (founded in 1973 by former Senator Raul Manglapus) (Tan 1980).        

Chico River Dam Project   This World Bank-financed project to build four hydroelectric dams along the Chico River had been intended to produce electricity for domestic consumption in the wake of the decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to substantially increase the price of oil, a decision that sparked the international oil crisis of 1973 (see Bataan Nuclear Power Plant).  The Kalinga and Bontoc people learned of the project’s existence in 1974, when survey teams deployed by the National Power Corporation began entering their territory (see the “Kasaysayan ng Lahi” parade in Miss Universe Beauty Pageant). The project would have entailed flooding 2, 753 hectares of farmland and affected the lives and livelihoods of nearly 90,000 indigenous peoples (Gray 1998, 269).  Presidential Decree no. 848 (December 12, 1975) constituted four municipalities in the Kalinga-Apayao province into the Special Kalinga Development Region to pave the way for the Chico IV dam.  A vigorous protest movement mounted by the Kalinga and Bontoc resulted in the establishment in May 1975 of the Bodong Federation, Inc.  With support from church-based groups and nongovernmental organizations, 150 pangat leaders signed the landmark 1975 Pagta Ti Bodong (peace pact), prohibiting their people from working on the dams and boycotting activities relating to dam construction.  The National Power Corporation postponed dam construction, relying on PANAMIN and Philippine Constabulary and Army brigades to forcibly relocate nearly 2.6 million indigenous people (representing half the total number of tribal Filipinos) into some 400 “reservations” (detailed in Rocamora 1979).  In 1976, the New People’s Army supported the indigenous peoples’ protest movement. Protestors confronted World Bank president Robert MacNamara at the International Monetary Fund Conference in 1977, successfully pressuring MacNamara to issue the statement that “no funding projects would take place in the face of continued opposition from the people” (quoted in Gray 1998, 269).  The Cordillera indigenous peoples’ protest movement–among the first of its kind in Asia–had an important impact in forcing the World Bank to reframe its guidelines on indigenous peoples and forced resettlement (ibid.). The “militarization” of the region persisted, however, as Constabulary and Army brigades engaged in campaigns of intimidation, arrest, and violence.  On April 24, 1980, Macli-ing Dulag, pangat of the Butbut tribe of Kalinga and official spokesperson of the resistance movement, was killed by men belonging to the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division (Catajan 2017). The World Bank project was eventually abandoned.  

Coconut levy fund   The Philippines was once the world’s leading producer of copra and exporter of coconut oil (on the history and political economy of the coconut industry, see Tiglao 1980 and 1981). In 1980, coconut-product exports accounted for thirteen percent of the country’s total (and largest) export earnings, and the Philippines produced eighty to eighty-five percent of the coconut oil traded on world markets (Branigin 1981). In the early 1970s, bad harvests had resulted in an increase in the world prices of copra (and coconut oil), triggering an acute domestic shortage of coconut oil and other coconut-based products (the following discussion is indebted to Dohner and Intal 1989, 467-69). The government responded by imposing price controls on domestic coconut-based products. The Philippine Coconut Authority (headed by Juan Ponce Enrile) set up the Coconut Consumer Stabilization Fund in 1973 to compensate manufacturers for the shortfall resulting from the price control.  Republic Act no. 6260, passed on June 19, 1971, had mandated the collection of funds for the development of the coconut industry, imposing a levy of 0.55 pesos on the first domestic sale by a farmer for every 100 kilograms and placing the funds under the Coconut Investment Fund. The CCSF was funded through a levy of 150 pesos per metric ton of copra, amounting to about twelve percent of world prices. In 1974, a presidential decree merged this fund with the Coconut Investment Fund, allowing the CCSF to set aside some of its revenues for investment, research, and development of the coconut industry. Another presidential decree created the Coconut Industry Development Fund in 1975, funded by the levies of the CCSF and levy on copra sales, now increased to 200 pesos. The Philippine Coconut Authority (created by Presidential Decree no. 231 in 1973, the governing board of which had been reorganized in 1974 to comprise the Chairman and President of the Philippine National Bank and five members of the Philippine Coconut Producers Federation [COCOFED]) allowed the levies collected to be used to acquire a majority interest in the First United Bank, subsequently renamed United Coconut Planters Bank.  Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, Jr. served as the bank’s first president while Enrile served as Chairman of the board; Maria Clara Lobregat served as president of the Philippine Coconut Producers Federation and board member of the United Coconut Oil Mills (see Cronies and crony capitalism).   The CCSF levies and part of the investment fund were deposited in the UCPB, which then organized the United Coconut Oil Mills (UNICOM), also headed by Cojuangco, in 1979 to purchase oil mills that had been badly affected by the fall in copra production (Dohner and Intal 1989, 467). By 1980, UNICOM owned thirteen mills that accounted for eighty percent of the country’s milling capacity and managed two more mills, for a total ninety percent.  The National Economic Development Authority estimated the total levy collections of the CCSF and CIDF at ten billion pesos. Finance Minister Cesar Virata insisted on suspending the levy in 1981, but UNICOM responded by organizing a “demonstration” (Branigin 1981) and refusing to buy copra and sell coconut oil. Within five days Marcos restored the levy (Dohner and Intal 1989, 468).  The taxation increased despite the decline in domestic copra producer prices, especially between 1979-1981.  Funds from the levy were allegedly used to support the Miss Universe Pageant, the 1978 World Chess Championship in Baguio City between Anatoly Karpov (who retained the title) and Viktor Korchnoi, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (see Edifice complex), and the construction of the Coconut Palace, among other projects (Manapat 1991, 184), and also siphoned off into various Marcos and crony-controlled holdings (enabling, for example, Cojuangco’s purchase of thirty-one percent shares in the San Miguel Food Corporation [Manapat 1991, 221-39]).    The Supreme Court ruled that the coconut levy funds are “prima facie public funds” imposed by the “State for the benefit of the coconut industry and its farmers” (Supreme Court 2017).

Conjugal dictatorship  Term coined by Primitivo Mijares (1976, reprinted 1986) to refer to the “dynasty” jointly founded by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, with Imelda supposedly gaining economic concessions and accruing greater political power and leverage during the martial law era with her appointment as minister of Human Settlements; governor of Metro Manila; chair of the National Housing Corporation, National Home Mortgage Corporation, National Pollution Control Commission, and Rural Waterworks Development Corporation; and head of the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (New Society Movement, KBL) Ladies (Roces 2000, 46–47). The imposition of martial law cemented the absolute power of the Marcoses by quelling dissent, dismantling the institutional checks and balances that had hitherto served to constrain the executive power of the president and render it accountable to the public, and facilitating Imelda Marcos’s ascent to the commanding heights of government in partnership with her increasingly ailing husband (who underwent kidney-transplant surgeries in August 1983 and November 1984 [AP News 1985]). For his exposé (see bomba), Mijares, former National Press Club President and one-time aide of Marcos, and his son were allegedly salvaged (Thompson 2004, 132).

Crispa versus Toyota   Legendary rivalry between two top teams, the Crispa Redmanizers and Toyota Tamaraws, of the Philippine Basketball Association.  Between 1975 and 1983, the two teams won twenty-one out of the twenty-sixchampionship titles, with Crispa cumulatively winning sixty-five games against Toyota’s fifty-eight (“Crispa-Toyota Rivalry”). In total, Crispa won thirteen championships, including two grand slams (“Crispa Redmanizers”), while Toyota (known as Komatsu Comets and Toyota Comets prior to the formation of the PBA in 1975, the team would go on to play under different names during this period: Toyota Silver Tamaraws, Toyota Tamaraws, Toyota Super Corollas, Toyota Super Diesels, and Toyota Silver Coronas) won 9 (“Toyota Super Corollas”).  PBA Hall of Fame inductees from the two teams include Crispa’s Fortunato “Atoy” Co, Philip Cezar, William “Bogs” Adornado, Virgilio “Baby” Dalupan, Alberto “Abet” Guidaben, and Toyota’s Robert “Bobby” Jaworski, Ramon “Mon” Fernandez, Francis Arnaiz, and Danilo “Danny” Florencio.  The two teams played their first championship match in the 1974 Manila Industrial Commercial Athletic Association All-Filipino Tournament, with the Redmanizers taking the title.  The Toyota team was disbanded in 1984, Crispa in 1985.  Toyota won the reunion match on May 30, 2003.

Cronies and crony capitalism   “Crony capitalism” was coined by George M. Taber, business editor of Time magazine, and used in the headline of an article written by John DeMott, “A Case of Crony Capitalism,” in the magazine’s April 21, 1980 issue (Taber 2015).  Crony capitalism is defined as the “Philippine distortion of the capitalism” that “benefited the few and kept the masses in poverty. The cronies got richer, and the poor stayed poor” (ibid.; cf. Jaime Ongpin’s letter to Asian Wall Street Journal in Dee, Dewey).  Ricardo Manapat’s 1979 exposé, “Some are Smarter than Others,” listed the financial dealings of Marcos’ close friends and associates, the so-called “Octopus Gang,” among them Roberto Benedicto (see Sugar and Voltes V), Antonio Floirendo, Juan Ponce Enrile (see People’s Power Revolution),  Geronimo Velasco, Herminio Disini (see Bataan Nuclear Power Plant), Lucio Tan, Jose Yao Campos (see X, Y, Z), Rolando Gapud, Roman Cruz, Ricardo Silverio, and Eduardo Cojuangco (see Coconut levy fund), plus the Elizalde (see Tasaday), Enriquez, Panlilio, and Tantoco families, and the nepotistic Romualdez and Marcos clans (hence the joke “under martial law everything is relative. You have to be related.” [Butterfield 1977]), whom Marcos placed in key positions in charge of various industries, quasi-state monopolies (a monopoly obtains when a dominant supplier sells to many buyers) and monopsonies (a dominant buyer buys from many sellers), and other big enterprises.  After the People’s Power Revolution, Manapat (1991) expanded his research into a book bearing the subtitle A History of Marcos’ Crony Capitalism.  The concept of “crony capitalism” rests on the notion of plunder, on the “political pathology” (Aquino 1987, 4), of the kind of authoritarian rule whose sole, imputed purpose is to ensure its own survival and perpetuation, while diverting the wealth of the nation for the personal and political use of the dictator and his family. Crony-controlled companies accounted for US$ 3.3 billion of government-assumed loans, or roughly thirteen percent of the total debt of US$ 26.7 billion incurred by the Philippine government by the end of the Marcos era (IBON 2004, 5).  “Crony capitalism” would acquire regional currency during the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis, when American officials such as William Clinton, Robert Rubin and, most especially, Lawrence Summers employed the Philippine-coined terms “cronyism” and “crony capitalism” to lay the blame for the Asian crisis on the cozy collusion between government and business, particularly in Southeast Asia (Bello 2000, 182; Clinton 2005, 452; Rubin 2003, 234, 249). In 2014, the Economist (2014, 54-55) featured a “Crony Capitalism Index” that ranked Hong Kong (1), Malaysia (3), and Singapore (5)—the three countries that experienced the East Asia Miracle—above the Philippines (6) in the list of countries where “politically connected businessmen are most likely to prosper.”  The phrase “government by crony” was used by Republican Senator Harry P. Cain to criticize President Harry Truman’s appointment of an old friend, Mon C. Wallgren, as member of the Federal Power Commission in October 1949 (the Senate “brush[ed] aside” this charge and confirmed the appointment) (Knowles 1949).  The term “crony capitalism” has “come home” (Kristof 2011) to the United States and been applied to the cozy alliances and collusion between Republican and Democratic-led government, on the one hand, and (big) business and other private interests, on the other hand (Krugman 2002, Lewis 2013, and Zingales 2016).

Cursillo Movement   Full name Cursillo de Cristianidad (“Little Course in Christianity”).  International civic-religious movement originating in Mallorca, Spain in 1949 and aiming to serve as “an instrument of Christian renewal” and “the renewal of the parish and through the parishes, the renewal of the diocese, and indeed for the entire people of God” (Bishop Mariano G. Gaviola, Secretary-General of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines and Director of the National Secretariat of the Cursillo of the Philippines, quoted in Bautista 1972, 235).  The practice was introduced to the Philippines via the United States of America in 1962; the Filipino women’s Cursillo was organized by Aurora Aquino and Rafaela Vera in 1964 (Bruton 1969, 1; Bautista 1972, 240). As part of their coursework, “candidates” undergo four days and three nights of intensive spiritual exercises (daily Mass, common prayers, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, “confrontation,” and “clausura” closing ceremonies), lectures (“rollos”), and “tension-relieving” activities (such as singing, games, and jokes sessions) in the Cursillo House of their respective diocese (Bautista 1972, 238). From the post-Cursillo “Fourth Day” onward, the cursillista is expected to commit lifelong to reinforcing their religious fervor by keeping the promises they made in their “service sheets” and by attending weekly meetings (called “ultreya,” meaning “onward!” or “beyond”), “group reunions,” and “grand reunions” (ibid.).  By 1969, there were 180,000 cursillistas in the Philippines (243-44).  Filipino cursillistas were responsible for disseminating the practice in the Pacific region, notably Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco, USA (Napoli 2013, 11).  

A Marcos-Era Glossary: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z, Bibliography

Year of the Tiger

Happy Year of the Tiger!

On Reading Books and Censorship

Note: This essay is based on my presentation at the “Reading Rights: Defending the Right to Read against Book Banning and Censorship” Webinar organized by the Academics Unite for Democracy and Human Rights on December 6, 2021.   I thank Bomen Guillermo for his kind invitation and support.  

Here are just a few of the reasons why I love books:

1. I love their thingliness. I don’t recall ever wanting to smell or caress the TV or computer, but I love doing so with books. I love the heft, texture, color, and scent of books, their typography and design, their portability.
2. Books are mini-shuttles that transport readers across space and time, guiding them toward inner and outer worlds, toward real and imagined ones. 
3. I love the anticipation of reading as much as the joy of reading. I always look forward to opening a book for the first time. I’m an avid collector of first and last sentences.
4. I love collecting books, or used to love collecting books. I am a recovering BookSale addict. 
5. Books are easier on the eyes and less likely to drive their readers to distraction, compared to the screen.
6. Books are good sleeping pills for adults and pacifiers for kids.  

Since you are taking part in this Webinar, I think I’m already preaching to the converted, so let me focus on a few other points with wider social, cultural, and political resonance and implications. 

People read books for pleasure, for the stories that books tell, for the music of their language(s) and the multiple meanings, even contradictory ones, they suggest. People also read for instruction, for the information that books present.

More than that, to open a book is to open a gate of interpretation. Books lay out arguments that readers can grapple with. There’s something to be said about the fact that, to quote George Orwell in 1984, “The best books…are those that tell you what you know already.”

But it is also true that we learn new things from books. Books have the power to unsettle and disturb, to challenge truisms and cherished assumptions, even to provoke and offend. They may lead readers to question themselves as well as the societies and world they live in. Above all, they sharpen one’s thinking. 

The usual knee-jerk reaction of the offended, particularly those in positions of authority who find themselves under challenge, is to argue for banning the books.

Indeed, the list of books that have been banned or challenged at one time or another somewhere in the world is quite extensive. They include not just the usual suspects like Copernicus, Galileo, Voltaire, Marx, and Darwin, but also Chaucer, Einstein, The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, Alice in Wonderland, Madame Bovary, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, A Farewell to Arms, The Pentagon Papers documenting the US involvement in Vietnam, Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962, Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Perburuan (The Fugitive), the Qur’an, and the Bible.  

The most famous banned books in the Philippines are Jose Rizal’s Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo. Let’s look at the passages in these novels in which the word “terror” or its equivalents appear.

There’s the Guardia Civil, which has “only this purpose: the repression of crime by means of terror and force” (tiene no más que este fin: represión del crimen por el terror y la fuerza). There’s Sisa, full of terror (llena de terror), driven mad by the injustice inflicted on her sons. There’s Juli, overcome with terror (rendida por el terror) at the thought of the terrible fate that awaits her at the convent. There’s Matanglawin, formerly known as Cabesang Tales, who is called the Terror of Luzon (el Terror de Luzon) and the reign of terror (régimen de terror) endured by ordinary people who, caught between the tulisanes and the government, opt to join him.

There’s Simoun, who inspires terror in Basilio and others before and after Basilio learns of his plan to organize a revolution. Simoun displays antique jewelry linked to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Padre Irene hastens Capitan Tiago’s death by feeding the sick old man’s terror with hair-raising stories (aumentar su terror con historias espeluznantes). At the Quiapo fair, Simoun makes Padre Salvi faint with terror (rendido por el terror) when Simoun, disguised as the Sphinx, accuses Salvi of having driven Maria Clara mad with terror and suffering (volverla loca de terror y de sufrimiento).

In the chapter titled “Tatakut,” certain persons are said to have advised the Captain-General “to inspire terror [inspirar el terror] and administer a lasting lesson to the filibusteros”. His Excellency refuses to release Basilio despite the latter’s innocence, on the grounds that “the punishment will prove more salutary and exemplary, since it inspires greater terror [como que infunde más terror].”  

In other words, it isn’t only Simoun and Matanglawin who have the ability to inspire terror.  Readers understand fully well that they were driven to do what they did by the injustice and persecution inflicted on them and their loved ones.

The novels also emphasize the fact that it is the government officials, the clergy, the police and military, and the state itself that regularly terrorize individuals and communities.  Rizal pointed out that the abuses committed by authorities are responsible for fomenting filibusterismo. Rizal himself would be tried, condemned, and executed as the Word Incarnate of filibusterismo (el Verbo del filibusterismo), or what states would now call a terrorist. Both La Liga Filipina and the Katipunan, with their clandestine operations, would have been categorized in our time as terrorist organizations.

And if you look at the commentary on Rizal’s novels over the past hundred or so years, the most persistent refrain you hear is the one that laments the fact that modern-day, Filipino counterparts of the abusados are alive and well and still terrorizing the Filipino people. 

Now let me turn to the topic of book prohibition in more recent memory. Under martial law, exposés or what Filipinos at the time called bomba like Primitivo Mijares’ The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos I and Carmen Navarro Pedrosa’s The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos were banned.

According to my friends who were students and teachers at the University of the Philippines (UP) at Diliman, UP library books that had keywords or titles like “revolution” and “Marx” were removed from the open stacks and circulation. Even the Campus Crusade for Christ’s book Revolution Now! was removed from the reading room. These books were not withdrawn from the library collection. Instead, they were “archived”, which is another way of saying that these books were kept under lock and key. It is true that in principle the books could be perused. The problem was that one had to submit an official request to gain access to the books. In this way, the military was able to keep tabs on who personally requested the books. 

At the same time, however, the UP librarians created a parallel secret archive for the materials–speeches, manifestos, newspaper clippings, literature, pamphlets and leaflets–critical of the Marcos regime, materials that would form the core of the UP Radical Papers collection, away from the prying eyes of the military.

After the People’s Power Revolution, the materials from both archives became available for use by students, teachers, and scholars. 

Access to libraries and their materials is crucial to critical thinking and research, as any student or scholar can tell you. For the past year or so, I’ve been working on a glossary of the Marcos era, and I have found that books and other library materials still provide the best access to fully vetted, systematically organized and presented data and debates that can be backed by verifiable sources. 

Looking back, I think that the “archiving” of so-called “subversive” books and materials did not prevent activists from becoming activists and resisting the Marcos dictatorship. Activists found ways to link up with each other through networks of solidarities among likeminded people and, just as crucially, people who didn’t necessarily agree with each other politically or ideologically.

Ideas circulated in clandestine and other forms. More people were learning about the abuses of the dictatorship by alternative means, including the mosquito press and aboveground as well as underground advocacy inside and outside the Philippines. More important, they were experiencing for themselves firsthand the effects of political repression and the increasingly dire economic condition in the country, which was greatly exacerbated by nepotism and crony capitalism.

And yet, as much as the withholding of books and other reading materials did not prevent people from experiencing for themselves the disastrous consequences of constitutional authoritarianism, it did at the same time have the general effect of restricting access to information and filtering knowledge about the regime. Restriction and filtering have had lingering effects even into the present.

The educational system produced textbooks for elementary and high school students that touted the accomplishments of the Marcos era but did not give full and accurate information, let alone encourage teachers and students to think more critically, about the regime’s failings and their negative consequences.

Mainstream press reporting was censored at the time. Even decades later, with a few important exceptions, it is often unsystematic and lacking in nuance and context. In the age of social media, people prefer their echo chambers over informed analysis. Fewer still bother to read books, especially academic ones, or do their own research.

Demographic change is clearly a factor behind selective historical memory, as nearly sixty-five percent of our total population is aged 34 and below and a little less than eighteen percent of those now aged between 35 and 49 years were born only after martial law was declared, meaning that more than eighty-two percent of the current Filipino population had either not been born yet or were still children when the Marcos dictatorship was toppled.  

Those old enough to have lived through the martial law years have tended to view the period selectively through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, though this attitude in part springs from disillusionment with the failure of People Power democratization to deliver on its promise of peace, order, prosperity, and decisive action to improve the lives of fellow Filipinos.

Which brings me to the current situation and its implications for Philippine society. We all know that a solid, grounded education makes for an empowered, conscientious citizenry. The essential ingredients of a good education are good students, good teachers, good libraries and laboratories, and supportive administrations. 

Withdrawing or banning books from libraries erodes the core principles of freedom and democracy affirmed by no less than our Constitution. There is something very wrong when documents signed by the government itself, such as the Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 and the“Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines” of 1998, are among the materials withdrawn from libraries. Should military and school authorities then also withdraw from bookshelves the Constitution on which these documents affirming the inviolability of human rights are based? 

Academic freedom is based on the freedom of thought and expression. But educators have no right to use administrative fiat to infringe on students’, teachers’, and researchers’ constitutionally guaranteed rights as citizens to inquire and think for themselves and engage in free and open discussion. More substantially, the job of educational institutions is to nurture students’ ability to make their own judgments about the books they read, whether educators agree with the ideas contained in these books or not, and especially when they don’t.  

Freedom of thought and expression includes the freedom to speak truth to power, to criticize people in positions of authority, and demand change for the better. People don’t only have the right to criticize their leaders and other authorities when these people are not doing their jobs; they also have the right to defend themselves against tyranny, oppression, and injustice. Let us not forget that the 1987 Constitution was itself founded on the right of revolution.  

People who don’t want other people to read books that they don’t like assume that people cannot be trusted to figure things out for themselves. They believe that ideas need to be “processed” and “guarded”, the better to spoonfeed students. They’re not interested in promoting debate; as far as they’re concerned, “sa pamamahay ko, ako ang masusunod”. To understand where authoritarian tendencies reside, we should begin by looking closely at ourselves, our homes, and, yes, our schools.

The Supreme Court tells us that “Academic freedom has traditionally been associated as a narrow aspect of the broader area of freedom of thought, speech, expression and the press”. Narrow its purview may be, abusing academic freedom has much broader implications. If you have no problems undermining the concept of academic freedom, you also end up undermining every other freedom because, basically, you don’t think that freedom and democracy matter at all.

Freedom and democracy are foundational to this country and to the proper functioning of any state, market, and society. Those who have no respect for these foundational concepts subvert the very system they claim to be upholding or defending against so-called communist-terrorists. 

It was Antonio Gramsci who in 1919 wrote that “To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act” (“Workers Democracy” editorial, L’Ordine Nuovo [The New Order]).  In this age of fake news and alternative facts, of illiberal politics undercutting civil liberties and democratic governance, of new technologies such as artificial intelligence that enhance the state’s power to control its people and are augmenting human reasoning and decision-making in unforeseeable ways, in this age of historical amnesia and lionizing of strongmen and their brood, anyone who adopts a critical stance and works to transform the system is likely to be labeled a subversive, a terrorist. Well, if telling the truth is a “communist and revolutionary act,” then may there be more communists and revolutionaries. 

Aurora Roxas-Lim: In Memoriam

Her friends called her “Roxy,” but I always called her “Auntie Aurora” because that was how my mother, who was related to Benito “Uncle Ben” Lim, called her.  

Auntie Aurora was a marvelous woman. She had merely to enter a room or into a conversation to light it up, to ramp up the energy level.  Not only was she companionable, vivacious, and warm-hearted; she was also visionary, indefatigable, efficient, and no-nonsense. A rare combination. 

Above all, she was an inspiration, a model of the life of the mind dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. 

In my mind, she and my mother were forever linked by their association with the University of the Philippines and by their abiding interest in art.  My mom was the first person in her family to go to college. Because Tondo was far from Diliman, Mama—who, like Auntie Aurora, was accepted to UP as an honors graduate on scholarship—lived with Auntie Aurora and Uncle Ben in their campus housing on weekdays.  My mom was originally a pre-Medicine student, but left school to marry my dad. After raising five children, she eventually went back to UP, shifting to the College of Fine Arts to major in Painting and graduating magna cum laude the same year that I did. 

As a UP undergraduate, I once toyed with the idea of majoring in Art Studies because I liked to draw and paint and was deeply interested in Asian art history, but decided to stay on as an English major because I loved reading literature and creative writing (known then as “imaginative writing”—don’t ask me what’s the difference!) even more. Auntie Aurora, too, had been an English-lit major as an undergrad before she shifted to art studies.

It was Auntie Aurora (and my mom) who encouraged me to pursue graduate studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  Auntie Aurora had been a doctoral student of art history in Ithaca, but had had to cut short her program of study and return to the Philippines because of a serious eye condition that required surgery and long-term treatment.  From her, I learned about Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program, the premier area studies program in the United States at the time. From her, I learned as well of Cornell’s famed Wason collection of library and archival materials relating to East Asia.  (There was also a colonial connection here, as the First Philippine Commission appointed in 1899 by US President McKinley was headed by Jacob Schurman, the president of Cornell.)  

It’s ironic that, in those days, one still had to go all the way to America to learn about Southeast Asia and write a dissertation about Philippine literature. But I look back on my Cornell sojourn with great fondness, because I was fortunate to have learned a lot from my teachers and fellow students there. Like Auntie Aurora, I studied Bahasa Indonesia. Like Auntie Aurora, I have been involved in promoting Asian (and in particular, Southeast Asian) studies through institution-building and scholarship.

Over nearly three decades, Auntie Aurora kindly kept in touch, meeting in person, talking by phone, and later, exchanging emails.  At the small wedding dinner party that my parents organized for me and my husband Shiraishi Takashi, while my husband and Uncle Ben happily bonded over their common interest in the politics of East Asia, Auntie Aurora sat next to me and shared with me her painful experience of the Japanese occupation. I was shaken, in particular, by her eye-witness account of the torture and murder of one of her brothers, and the injuring of her father and another brother. But I was deeply honored by her wedding gift of her life story—an injunction to remember that the history of our family (my grandfather had been a guerrilla, too) is also bound up with the history of our country. 

My last email exchange with Auntie Aurora was over the passing of Uncle Ben, whose involvement in the policy of mass naturalization of the Philippine Chinese in the mid-1970s—a naturalization that importantly paved the way for the integration of the ethnic Chinese into Filipino society—also inspired me to delve deeper into the Chinese Question in the Philippines.  She wrote a beautiful tribute to Uncle Ben for his funeral and shared the text with me and my parents and siblings.  

I cannot do justice to the long, productive life Auntie Aurora led, the friendships she enjoyed, the careers of younger people she nurtured, the academic institutions she strengthened, the scholarship she pioneered. All I can say is that I am deeply privileged to have been influenced by her, and my life would have been quite different had it not been for her.