Laoag by Brent Hannon

When I was 18, I spent a year as an exchange student in General Santos City, a small town on the southern tip of Mindanao island, in the Philippines. That was in 1978, during the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who was elected president in 1966, and became dictator when he declared martial law six years later. Southern Mindanao was a rough neighborhood in 1978, as the Marcos military was forever fighting against Muslim separatists and Communist insurgents.

As a result, the military presence was heavy. Every night tanks rumbled down the thin provincial roads, as people and animals and vehicles raced for cover. The streets of General Santos were usually dark; the electricity always seemed to be off.

People vanished from the streets at 11pm every night - nobody dared to break the midnight curfew and be arrested by the Philippine Constabulary. The Philippine Constabulary were Marcos henchmen. They were unpredictable and violent, and the locals avoided them. The PC, as they were called, were from Luzon Island and spoke Tagalog, not the Cebuano used by the natives of General Santos. They used to get drunk in local bars, spill into the streets, and shoot their M-16s into the air.

My best friend that year was Max Cabreros, and one night his 11-year-old sister was shot in the throat and killed by the PC. Max was a poor kid from a muddy, destitute neighborhood called Barrio Bula, and his family never found out what happened. It was best not to inquire.

I returned to the U.S. the following year, with fond memories of the country and its people, but with a growing dislike for dictator Marcos. My dislike was fuelled by newspaper articles detailing his greed and corruption: Marcos stashed vast sums of money in Switzerland, and he and wife Imelda lived like royalty, while the country remained desperately poor. The 1983 murder of opposition politician Benigno Aquino further darkened my view of Marcos.

Then came 1986, and the People Power revolution. Marcos was deposed, and he and Imelda fled to Hawaii, taking crates of pesos and jewelry with them. That was followed by news of Imelda’s 3,000 pairs of shoes, a figure later revised to 1,220 pairs. I watched on TV as Ted Koppel grilled an implacable Marcos. “But Imelda needs those shoes,” he said. “In the morning she needs one pair, and for lunch she needs another pair, and if she goes out at night, she needs another pair.” And on it went - the dictator was unrepentant.

And so, on a recent visit to the Marcos hometown of Laoag in Ilocos Norte province, I expected to have an angry reaction to the Marcos mementos on display, and I was ready to give loud lectures on the evils of the Marcos dictatorship, to anyone who would listen. But it wasn’t like that at all. For one, Ilocos Norte is a beautiful province, and its white sand beaches, green mountains and old Spanish churches made it easy to forget my grudge.

Plus, nobody in Laoag wanted to listen to my lectures, because so few of them care about Marcos. He is gone and nearly forgotten, despite leaving behind an impressive array of buildings and monuments. Indeed, Marcos accounts for most of the area’s tourist sites: Fort Ilocandia Resort and Casino, the Marcos Museum and Marcos guesthouse, Malacanang Palace of the North and the adjacent world-class golf course, are all Marcos legacies.

Twenty years ago, these were some of the most lavish buildings in the country, but now even the top attractions – Malacanang of the North, and the Marcos Museum – are thinly staffed and poorly maintained, sagging like the late dictator’s reputation.

When Malacanang of the North opened in 1977, it was the center of Philippine high society and one of the trendiest scenes in Asia. On the lake, the president and his guests sailed and water skied, and on the golf course, they chipped and putted, and, presumably, divided up the country’s wealth among themselves. The palace’s heyday was 1983, when daughter Irene Marcos was married, attended by the cream of Philippine and international society, including the U.S. ambassador.

But the glory days of Malacanang of the North are long gone. Inside the mansion, ignoring a Keep Off sign, some Hong Kong tourists jump onto the Marcos marital bed and snap photos. A moist breeze blows through the empty rooms, smelling of sea and jungle, and the decay is palpable. The hardwood furniture creaks and moans, the capiz windows are moldy, and the swimming pool is filled with moss. Nor are the Hong Kong tourists very interested in the place. Their footsteps die out, and the mansion falls silent. As I leave, the housekeeper turns off the lights.

So it is with the other Marcos legacies. In the Marcos museum in nearby Batac, I am the only visitor. Here the main exhibits are dozens of life-size statues of the diminutive dictator, standing in glass boxes and sporting various outfits: 33 plastic Ferdinands in all. Some of the statues are chipped and broken, and on the floor is a dusty painting of Imelda, with a hole in the canvas.

Downstairs from the museum is the Marcos Mausoleum, where Ferdinand Marcos lies in a glass coffin. The crypt is unimpressive, although Marcos himself is in remarkable shape. There he lies, silent and ghostlike, with his pale skin and trademark shock of black hair. I am face to face with the former dictator, and I feel no emotion at all.

Maybe that’s because the body looks so much like a wax figure. Is it really Marcos? Nobody seems to know for sure. My guide, January Juan, is sure the body is a fake: there’s no condensation on the glass, she says, which would indicate refrigeration. Plus he died in Hawaii in 1989 – when did they ship him back? But Eddie Quirino, grandson of former Philippine president Elpidio Quirino, insists that it is Marcos. “He was embalmed with pure glycerin at 110 degrees, the latest technology,” he says. “If you light a cigarette, he will go up in flames.”

There is one Marcos legacy that is thriving and well-maintained: the Fort Ilocandia Resort and Casino, which opened in 1983. Depending on which story you believe, the hotel was either decreed by Imelda as her personal pleasure palace, or built for daughter Imee’s wedding reception, or generously built and donated by selfless Imelda to the people of Laoag, who had heretofore been lacking in five-star accommodation.

In any case, the hotel was taken from the Marcoses in 1986, and given to the government, which sold it several years ago to a group of Hong Kong businessmen. The new owners have poured millions of dollars into the sprawling property, and it is now a beautiful seaside resort. The hotel is tasteful, done in the characteristic red brick of Ilocos, and the long walkways between rooms are thoughtfully sheltered from the sun. But nothing at the resort commemorates either of the Marcoses.

Fort Ilocandia resort is a fine place to hit a few golf balls, gaze at the green mountains, sip a cold beer, and ponder the Marcos legacy. Ilocos has mostly forgotten its most famous son, but so too has the rest of the country. Imelda’s shoes are no longer on display at Malacanang Palace in Manila: they have been stored away, along with 888 handbags, 508 floor-length gowns, and 15 mink coats. A three-story-high concrete bust of Marcos in Benguet province was blown up in 2002, and won’t be replaced. Even the annual celebration of the Marcos ouster has been cancelled, due to a widespread lack of interest.

The Philippines has moved on to new leaders, some of whom closely resemble Marcos in terms of greed and corruption. In other ways too, little has changed since 1978: Muslim separatists in Mindanao, bombs in Manila malls, coup talk in the coffeehouses, kids in ragged shirts selling single cigarettes, homeless people burning coconut husks on Roxas Boulevard - how familiar it all is.

The key change is the absence of martial law. The curfew is gone, and so is the pervasive military presence. In the Philippines anyway, even a shaky democracy is better than a military dictatorship. Certainly, it’s more pleasant for the people who live here.

Sitting in a plush Fort Ilocandia deck chair, I reminisce about my long-ago life under martial law, and ponder the passage of time and the fleeting nature of power. In 1978, the entire country revolved around Marcos; he was omnipresent. Today he means almost nothing, even in his home town. Sic transit gloria mundi, as they say: thus passes worldly glory.