Reinventing Marcos

Marcos died a dictator. But today, on social media, Marcos is a hero.

Former Philippine president, Ferdinand E. Marcos held power for 21-years and lost power in four days. What happened and why is recounted in this book 'Reinventing Marcos' by Keith Dalton, a former foreign correspondent in the Philippines for 10 years. Marcos, regarded as one of the twentieth century's most corrupt and ruthless leaders - responsible for more than 110,000 deaths, imprisonments, torture, and 'disappearances' - was overthrown in a People Power revolution in 1986.

Marcos died a dictator. But today, on social media, Marcos is portrayed a hero. Years of social media disinformation have whitewashed Marcos, sanitized his regime, transformed him into a man he never was. This reinvented Marcos - the Philippines 'best-ever' president who ruled over a 'golden age' - was the false legacy that helped his son, Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. become president in 2022.

Bongbong's electoral victory, 36 years after his father was deposed, was a victory for the power of social media to rewrite history, deny facts, distort reality. Marcos has been mythologised and propagandised. In the years following his death, Marcos was rebirthed on social media: shortcomings were downplayed, achievements were magnified.

This is a book Dalton never intended to write, until he had to. As a long-term Manila-based foreign correspondent - he was there for half of Marcos's 21-years in power - Dalton was a witness to the most tumultuous political period in modern Philippine history. He saw first-hand the political suppression, the militarisation of the country, the human rights abuses, the killings, the cronyism, the corruption, and the nation's economic plunder. He saw how one man with his sycophants and acolytes, was able to capture a nation and build an empire of greed through despotism, nepotism, and corruption. Most Filipinos have no memory of Marcos and that's the reason Dalton wrote this memoir.

This is a sobering account of the Marcos years. But it's more than that. Dalton has written a compelling memoir about a 25-year-old with a typewriter in his backpack becoming a self-made foreign correspondent in a country where he knew no one. Before the Philippines, he travelled alone through Southeast Asia on truck-like buses, cargo ships, dodgy planes, and dilapidated trains. In a canoe, four days upriver in Borneo, he met the children of ex-headhunters who had never seen a white man before. On his journey, he got malaria in Brunei, kidney stones in Indonesia, dysentery in Burma, and gout in the Philippines.

After travelling for two years throughout the region, Dalton flew to the Philippines and stayed for the next 10 years. He was a radio correspondent and a newspaper reporter for 10 radio stations and three newspapers.

Dalton writes a revealing potted history of the Marcos era, and a first-hand account of the revolution that toppled him. He recalls the heroism of ordinary people and the life-sacrifices of others. Dalton has written an informative, often harrowing, sometimes humorous book. He has written of a life well worth telling. His first-hand accounts of what he saw and experienced are written to set the record straight, to refute the history deniers, to reinforce the truth that Marcos was a dictator, not a hero who presided over a 'bloody' age not a 'golden' age.