Professional Documents
Culture Documents
When the Marcoses went into exile, they took with them a reported $15
million. However, the government of the Philippines was aware Marcos
had collected a far larger fortune. The country's supreme court estimated
he had amassed $10 billion while in office.
Marcos wed singer and beauty queen Imelda Romualdez in 1954 after an
11-day courtship, with the couple going on to have three children: Maria
Imelda "Imee" (b. 1955), Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (b. 1957) and
Irene (b. 1960). The Marcoses later adopted a fourth child, Aimee.
Marcos was reelected in 1969, the first Filipino president to win a second
term, but violence and fraud were associated with his campaign, which
was believed to be funded with millions from the national treasury. What
arose from the campaign unrest became known as the First Quarter
Storm, during which leftists took to the streets to demonstrate against
both American involvement in Philippine affairs and the increasingly
apparent dictatorial style of Ferdinand Marcos.
Downfall
Marcos managed to defeat Aquino and retain the presidency, but his
victory was deemed by many to be fraudulent. As word spread of the
rigged election, a tense standoff ensued between supporters of Marcos
and those of Aquino, with thousands upon thousands of citizens taking
to the streets to support a non-violent military rebellion.
With his health failing and support for his regime fading fast, on
February 25, 1986, Ferdinand Marcos and much of his family were
airlifted from the Manila presidential palace, going into exile in Hawaii.
Evidence was later uncovered showing that Marcos and his associates
had stolen billions from the Philippine economy.
Since 1993 Marcos' corpse had been embalmed in a glass casket in his
home province of Ilocos Norte. In 2016, President Rodrigo
Duterte ordered Marcos' body to be buried at the National Heroes'
Cemetery in Manila, with protests erupting in opposition to such a move
considering Marcos' human rights abuses. Nonetheless, in November the
remains of Marcos were interred at the new site in a hero's burial.
Assembly (for the second time), Nalundasan was shot and killed in his
home. Ferdinand, Mariano and other family members were eventually
tried for the assassination, and Ferdinand was found guilty of
murder.Appealing the verdict, Ferdinand argued on his own behalf to his
country's supreme court and won acquittal in 1940. Remarkably, while
Marcos was preparing his case in jail, he was studying for the bar exam
and became a trial lawyer in Manila subsequent to the acquittal. (It has
been reported that Marcos' freedom was abetted by Judge Ferdinand
Chua, who was also believed by some to be Marcos' actual biological
father.)
Success in Politics
During World War II, Ferdinand Marcos served as an officer with his
country's armed forces, later claiming that he was also a top figure in the
Filipino guerrilla resistance movement. (U.S. governmental records
eventually revealed these assertions to be false.) At the end of the war,
when the American government granted the Philippines independence on
July 4, 1946, the Philippine Congress was created. After working as a
corporate attorney, Marcos campaigned and was twice elected as
representative to his district, serving from 1949 to 1959. In 1959, Marcos
took a seat in the senate, a position he would hold until he ran for and
won the presidency in 1965 on the Nationalist Party ticket.
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