The Biography of Ferdinand Marcos and How He Became Philippine President
Loading ...Ferdinand Marcos devised his public image to appear to be the embodiment of the Filipino soul, much in same way that ancient Asian emperors were deified as incarnations of their people’s spirit. Like the sculpted heads of kings looking down from temple steeps at Angkor Wat, Marcos had his own bust carved into a hillside in central Luzon.
He depicted himself to be, at once, of noble, peasant, warrior, artist, colonial, and nationalist descent, as if he were the collective spirit writ large. His wife, Imelda, once attempted to commission the painting of a large mural covering the broad spectrum of Philippine history with all the faces bearing a resemblance to the Marcos family.
Their first son, Ferdinand Jr., more commonly known as “Bong Bong,” who was being groomed as Marcos’s successor, was made governor of Illocos. Imelda was handed the governorship of Manila, a seat in the cabinet, and many other appointments. Marcos held court with foreign dignitaries and emissaries of state while seated on a golden thrown perched high above them. He disempowered potential opponents and surrounded himself with only those perceived to be loyal relatives and friends, like his former chauffer and cousin, General Fabian Ver, who was quickly promoted to general and then chief of defense.
Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was born on September 11, 1917, in the town of Surrat in Illocos Norte, a rugged rural province in northwestern Luzon. He was part of the provincial Filipino/Chinese elite class. His mother was an elementary school teacher who helped her parents run the family store. It is said that her ancestral line stemmed back to the original Chinese settlers, who intermarried with local Filipinas under Spanish colonialism. They collaborated by helping to collect tribute and administrate governmental affairs. Marcos’s father was a public school supervisor who later became a politician. His grandfather, Fructuoso Edralin, is reported to have owned about 200 acres (80 hectares) of prime irrigated rice fields and coffee plantations and an additional 120 acres (50 hectares) of land outside of Surrat. During the American colonial era, he purchased 250 acres (100 hectares) of pure virgin forest land and sold timber to Chinese mills linked with his wife’s family, the Quetulios, a wealthy Chinese merchant-class family in Ilocos Sur.
Both Marcos’s father and mother earned their teaching credentials under the Thomasites, who were American colonial missionaries who came to the Philippines to disseminate and propagate English-language acquisition, American values and history, and educational techniques. Mariano, Marcos’s grandfather, was an illegitimate son of a rural Spanish judge. His grandfather on his father’s side, Fabian Marcos, served as a mayor in the town of Batac.
There are many rumors surrounding Ferdinand Marcos’s family background;some have been accounted for historically. Seagrave, in his 1988 biographical account The Marcos Dynasty, finds substantial evidence to suggest that Marcos’s mother had an affair with Ferdinand Chua, the son of a leading wealthy Chinese family in Illocos. The Chua family opposed the marriage and instead arranged a marriage between Josefa Edralin and Mariano Marcos,whose political career took off as a result of his being backed by the powerful Chua family. Mariano and his family subsequently moved to Manila, where he graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1924. That same year, he was elected an assemblyman in the Congress. Josefa found a job as an elementary
school teacher in Manila. There, the family networked and developed their alliances with politically influential urban and rural elites. Mariano served for two terms in Congress, the second under the Japanese occupation regime during World War II. He was later captured and denounced for collaboration and tied to four water buffalos by Filipino guerillas and pulled apart.
Ferdinand Marcos’s “godfather,” Ferdinand Chua, took an interest in and paid for his educational expenses and later helped to advance his political career. In 1930,Ferdinand Marcos enrolled at the University of the Philippines High School
and, three years later, the University of the Philippines, Diliman Campus.
In 1938, at 21 years old, Ferdinand Marcos and his uncle, and later his father, were arrested for the assassination of Assemblyman Julio Nalundasan. Nalundasan had successfully defeated and “humiliated” Mariano in a race for congressional office in his home province in 1935. Shortly after the elections, he was murdered. Although one of Mariano’s supporters was apprehended and accused, the case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. After his arrest, Ferdinand Marcos received a great deal of press coverage and some notoriety because he successfully delivered his own plea for bail so that he could complete his law degree and prepare an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Later, in 1939, Ferdinand Marcos was found guilty and sentenced to 17 years in jail. In prison, he wrote his appeal, took the bar exam, and earned the highest score in his class. The next year, Marcos successfully argued his case before the Supreme Court, which was presided over by Jose Laurel. According to Seagrave, however, it was Ferdinand Chua who worked behind the scenes and really managed to influence the Supreme Court to dismiss the solid testimony that had earlier convicted Marcos of murder. Marcos was freed and remained loyal to Laurel, to whom he owed utang na loob (a debt; literally, “gratitude from the heart”).
During World War II, Ferdinand Marcos served as a lieutenant at Bataan and was awarded one medal of valor. He was captured and later released by the Japanese, after which there are no credible records of his wartime experiences. Could his father or President Laurel have interceded? It has been suggested that Marcos promoted his political career on the basis of assertions that he was a war hero and highly decorated veteran. Marcos falsely claimed to have received 300 medals, including the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor. He boasted of commanding a battalion, Ang Mga Maharlika, of 8,000 guerilla soldiers who fought against the Japanese in northern and central Luzon and sent intelligence information to the U.S. forces. One scholar noted that “Marcos’s purported heroism was his rise to manhood, his profile in courage, his passport to political prominence, the symbol of his shared loyalty to America and the Philippines, his epiphany.”
U.S. Army records found in the National Archives document that American officers rejected Marcos’s plea for funds and supplies on the grounds that his movement was a fraud.
Although Marcos had some involvement with guerrilla units, it is possible that he was working for the Laurel administration during the Japanese occupation period.
After World War II, Ferdinand Marcos was practicing law in Manila when President Roxus invited him, in 1946, to enter politics. Marcos joined the Liberal Party and in 1949, with the backing of his home province of Ilocos, he successfully ran for a seat in the lower legislature. He served in the legislature for three years, and went on to win in the Senate election of 1959.
