Non-fiction

The Miserable Mrs Marcos

 

The first child of a second wife will always have issues. And when a girl too beautiful and too smart spends the formative years of her life sleeping on a cardboard mat by the family Cadillac, habitually deprived of Lady’s Choice sandwich spread on her morning pan de sal and amidst many a drama of hapless parenting, expect that something in her head will be seriously messed up.

Imelda Marcos’s father, Vicente López Romualdez, was the humble grandchild of a blue-blooded friar from Spain. Her mother, Remedios Trinidad, grew up impeccably sheltered in a respectable convent that enjoyed the patronage of Manila’s elite. Remedios dabbled in music, literature and the opera. She had beauty, poise and brains. A woman of her calibre was golden during the old days – she could have been big, could have married a much, much better man. Unfortunately she was a penniless convent girl who had brown skin. Perhaps seeing her own assets go to waste motivated Remedios to drive her daughter Imelda’s beauty pageant career.

Imelda never accepted failure. When she lost the competition for Miss Manila, she blushed, cried and cajoled until the mayor crowned her the Muse of Manila, a previously non-existent title. She also was not one to waste time. After a failed romance with Ninoy Aquino, who dumped her for being too bold and too tall, she quickly dismissed him – the one who got away – as a fling. Then rose-tinted Ferdie came along. He readily embraced Catholicism to exchange marital vows with his shy young bride – and cleverly exploited the media to his advantage. These Asian Kennedys knew how to work together from the start.

For an aspiring president of the Philippines it is far more important to know how to sing than to be able to run a country, and for this, Imelda’s singing and provincial upbringing were assets to Ferdie. She was every ounce a geisha on the way to Malacañang: her food measured to maintain her weight; daily agendas filled with cleverly organized events to promote the campaign. However, we must remember that, to begin with, something was very wrong up in her head, and the stress of playing politician’s wife slowly took its toll. Eventually a nervous breakdown bought her a ticket to New York, and a year spent in therapy. But certain moments in history can disappear like liquid through a sieve, and when in 1965 Ferdie made it to the palace, beating Diosdado Macapagal by evangelizing the people with his passion for infrastructure and tourism, Imelda was back in Manila in her high hair and her puffed-up sleeves. Perhaps the American psychiatrist moonlighted as a fashion consultant, extolling the virtues of shoulder pads and high heels.

Imelda came back convinced that a distinctive identity was the key to success, and that art and culture were its vital components. She thought a cultural centre would be the ideal vehicle through which to cultivate this among her people, to say nothing of being a perfect excuse to invite the Reagans over for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The Cultural Center of the Philippines would be erected to elevate the identity of the ordinary Filipino.

During her husband’s political campaign, Imelda’s maidservant habit of removing her shoes before entering homes and her overall probinsyana vibe did bring her closer to the masses, but it also meant she was never invited to parties at the exclusive Forbes Park. And since she was never accepted by Filipino high society, she decided to host a shindig of her own, welcoming pregnant, daster-clad mothers and tsinelas-shuffling fathers to the Cultural Center. However, it didn’t quite work out as she’d planned. Notice the landscape: the long walk from the car park to the entrance. You’d need a car and a driver to enter it properly. The majesty of the new Cultural Center stood in stark contrast to the poverty of the ordinary Filipinos.

One could frown at the building of a cultural centre at a time when we didn’t even have a culture; nevertheless, we should be thankful to Imelda because every first-world artist, writer, dancer and thinker came to know of Philippine arts and culture due to its association with the former First Lady, even if it had begun as an international joke. Genuine appreciation can begin with laughter. The grandest pantheons may be rooted in glitter.

When it comes to marriage, it often happens that one chooses a partner who measures up to oneself. Imelda wasn’t alone with her issues: only a crazy man would marry a crazy woman. Their union was shared insanity, their devotion to each other’s blurred vision its most telling form. Crazy people do crazy things.

Imelda was once content to stand behind her husband, but suddenly she relished standing beside him. There is no telling if Ferdie were thrilled or dismayed. No man likes to stand at a mere 5’5”, especially beside a towering Imelda at a God-given height of 5’8” (or 6’ with heels, escalating to 6’5” with her bouffant hair) and no amount of pomade on Ferdie’s fake black top could make him stand any taller. So he engaged in bodybuilding to make himself look bigger, reportedly popping pills to achieve quicker results. Apparently he was not satisfied with mere physical power, and declared Martial Law to show he could flex the muscles of the state, if not his own.

Ferdie cancelled all checks and balances. He cancelled the military and the media, too. Perhaps in his perception of reality this was essential for the Filipinisation of the Philippines. Perhaps Martial Law was just one man with one plan and a heavy dose of arts and culture.

Perhaps he reasoned that democracy wasn’t for everyone, particularly those who didn’t know what to do with it. How could a people without a firm sense of identity or self-knowledge understand how to harness power to progress?

Well-formed biceps and pectorals can be pleasing features of the male anatomy but seemed a bit startling on the ageing Ferdie, who at sixty continued to get physical, swallowing his magic potions, destroying his kidneys and loosening his grip on the New Society. His power began to slip away – into the hands of the CIA, the military, his cronies and Imelda herself. And that was when it all started to go wrong.

Martial Law was a time when you could live in Forbes Park and be a mother to a colegiala leftist daughter enrolled at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, who at any time might be arrested and shipped off to a very different sort of life at Fort Bonifacio, never to be seen again. You would not complain or search for her. Nobody ever cried for a dead communist, even if she had been gracious and beautiful and only eighteen.

Incidentally, Martial Law was a great time for writing. It was the perfect constraint to struggle against. Each printed article made the rebellious writers giddy, and sent them in – or got them out – of prison. Droplets in the political wave they were, their good cause crashing against an obdurate wall.

Not that Imelda didn’t do her share of good deeds. Clad in her pink terno she once sat with Gaddafi, quoting the Quran, expressing her support for peace among Muslims and Christians. Gaddafi was impressed, reportedly smitten with Madame, deeming her too intelligent for a woman, pleading for her conversion to Islam. Thus, weapons funding for the Mindanao insurgents was stopped and Madame was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Her illusions of grandeur had always been criminal, but with each accomplishment they became more magnificent. The day arrived when she started considering herself Filipina royalty. Perhaps she believed rubbing shoulders with truly titled couples and royal families from other countries elevated her to a similar status. Rumour has it that she tried to set up her daughter, Imee, with Britain’s Prince Charles; that she had the audacity to wear a crown to Buckingham Palace, where she was asked to remove it. She resisted, loath to demean her precious stones; in the end she had no choice but to turn her tiara into a choker.

Europe was beautiful. Europe was lovely. Imelda fell in love, and then it struck her: ‘I could do this at home!’ Her extravagance rose to the point of becoming a national disgrace. When you attended Imelda’s parties, you’d go home with a Rolex. If you were a foreign VIP, you’d be housed in European splendour.

There is a memorable scene in the fanboy life of the controversial Manila tour guide and performing activist, Carlos Celdran. As he describes it:

 

TV host Daphne Oseña: Oh, Madame! Have you met Carlos Celdran? He does a tour in the Coconut Palace about you!

Madame: Oh, hello, Carlos, let’s pretend we have exchanged respective pleasantries. Listen, here’s a little information to add to your tour. They say Filipinos can’t build pretty houses because they have only coconut and bamboo. So, Mrs Marcos resorted to making a palace out of only (hand-carved, hand-crafted and laminated) coconut and bamboo. Mrs Marcos wanted to show that there is no excuse for being ugly.

Along with this obsession with beauty came an obsession with celebrity. In the seventies, the Philippines became the world’s third most prolific movie producer, churning out more than 300 movies a year. You may remember major films branded with the titanic names of Oliver Stone, Lino Brocka and Chuck Norris. Even the admirable politician Juan Ponce Enrile might have watched The Year of Living Dangerously. International films were shot in the Philippines, a testament to the world’s faith in the country’s safety and security. Imelda, ever the social butterfly, began to attend prestigious film festivals all around the world. Today we condemn the government for not paying much attention or providing funding to local artists. Today, without a tiny Imelda inside our heads, we Filipinos hardly have the guts to tell the rest of the world how amazing we are. Back then, we had a cheerleader, someone who was sure we could do anything at home as well as it was done elsewhere.

Hence a Manila Film Center was born. Unfortunately, while it was being built, a sudden, heavy rain shower brought down the scaffolding, trapping dozens of workmen underneath. An unknown number were feared buried in quick-drying cement. One would think that a meticulous search would have been carried out, at least to console the grieving families, but no. Imelda ordered that construction should continue. The launch of the Manila International Film Festival was looming and Imelda, that most theatrical of actresses, didn’t want to disappoint her important guests. The show must go on.

Such excesses eventually brought the Filipino people out to the broad avenue, EDSA, to perform a class war masked as a revolution and a miracle. And then Ninoy Aquino, returning home from self-imposed exile in America, was shot dead – in broad daylight – as he emerged from a plane at Manila airport. Who could have arranged such a thing?

 

When you live in an invisible country floating on the edge of the Pacific and run by an ailing president and his party-loving wife, a country where ignorance is endemic and people can survive on gossip, just how much of what you think you know is true? Twenty-six years ago, as he boarded the helicopter to flee Malacañang, legend has it that Ferdie misheard the pilot name his hometown, ‘Paoay’, as their destination. Actually, they were headed for Hawaii.

Currently sitting on the throne is Noynoy, the son of the Philippines’ true queen, Corazon Aquino, Ninoy’s widow who was elected president in his stead. Noynoy is striving to strengthen the economy of a country that has been a disgrace for decades. Yet alongside the challenge of managing the country, he is also on a desperate quest to find a bride before his term ends in 2016. If he fails, who will inherit the throne?

Imelda lives on, and though it’s hard to believe, she is back in politics. Her title now? Congresswoman. She celebrates her birthdays at the Sofitel, where tears stream down her face but fail to wash away her woes – or her sins. Her audience includes friends and foes alike.

From this fairy tale we can conclude that Fortune is perennially drunk, and favours anyone who dances along in a frock, whether rich, bad, pretty, corrupt, indifferent, or simply blessed with incomprehensible luck. The 
favoured get to declare their happily-ever-afters to generations and generations of children wanting a story at bedtime.

With no less a personage than Pope Paul VI, Imelda shared this pro-foundly personal insight: ‘God is love. I have loved. Therefore, I will go to heaven.’

You know you’ve made it when you can write your own ending.

 


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