Where to Bury Marcos? Dead Body Politics in the Marcos Playbook

Abstract

Almost three decades after his demise, the burial of Ferdinand Marcos, former president and dictator, continues to be a divisive issue in Philippine politics. Even in death, he is still able to draw both feelings of veneration and rage. It is in this context that this article draws together several versions of Marcos’s dying wish on where he must be buried and juxtaposes these claims with the Marcoses’ political maneuverings to get back into power. The objective is not so much to determine with certainty Marcos’s wish, but rather to build a chronology of when his supposed wish was invoked, by whom, and for what political purpose. Relying on news accounts and other secondary sources, this article traces several versions of Marcos’s dying wish regarding his final resting place in the shifting accounts of his family members and close associates throughout the years after his death. Using the frame of dead body politics, this article offers a close scrutiny of how human remains have intermingled with the politics of the living. The article argues that both the disputes surrounding the final resting place of Marcos’s body and keeping his remains above ground as some sort of cult relic have served not only to sustain myths about his regime, but also to bolster the family’s extant political interests.

Full text

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MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 2016 31 (2): 1–38
Where to Bury Marcos?
Dead Body Politics in the Marcos Playbook
CHRISTIAN VICTOR A. MASANGKAY
AND LARAH VINDA DEL MUNDO
ABSTRACT. Almost thre e decades after his demise, the burial of Ferdinand Marcos,
former president and dictator, continues to be a divisive issue in Philippine politics. Even
in death, he is still able to draw both feelings of veneration and rage. It is in this context
that this article draws together several versions of Marcos’s dying wish on where he must
be buried and juxtaposes these claims with the Marcoses’ political maneuverings to get
back into power. The objective is not so much to determine with certainty Marcos’s wish,
but rather to build a chronology of whe n his supposed wish was invoked, by whom, and
for what political purpose. Relying on news accounts and other secondary sources, this
article traces several versions of Marcos’s dying wish regarding his final resting place in
the shifting accounts of his family members and close associates throughout the years
after his death. Using the frame of dead body politics, this article offe rs a close scrutiny
of how human remains have intermingled with the politics of the living. The article
argues that both the disputes surrounding the final resting place of Marcos’s body and
keeping his remains above ground as some sort of cult relic have served not only to sustain
myths about his regime, but also to bolster the family’s extant political interests.
KEYWORDS. Ferdinand Marcos · Marcos burial · Marcoses · dead body politics
INTRODUCTION
In the morning of November 18, 2016, news broke out that Ferdinand
Marcos, the former Philippine dictator, was interred in the Libingan
ng mga Bayani (LNMB) or Heroes’ Cemetery, as commentators would
say, “like a thief in the night” (CNN Philippines 2016). The corpse of
the former dictator was finally buried after it was frozen for some years
in Hawaii, paraded along his home province in Ilocos Norte, and then
displayed for decades in a refrigerated coffin in a mausoleum for public
viewing. Twenty-seven years after Marcos died, one can marvel at the
conveyance of his dead body from one place to another, ultimately
ending at the cemetery reserved for heroes in the nation’s capital—a

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supposed end-game in a political scheme that the Marcoses played for
decades.
This article traces the unfolding of these developments, beginning
with the ailing dictator’s dying wish to conditions in the present where
his dead body continues to figure in Philippine society. The paper
traces several versions of Ferdinand Marcos’s1 “dying wish” in the
reported declarations of the Marcos family throughout the years after
his death. It also recounts the ways in which the family navigated the
political terrain as they demanded for Marcos’s final resting place.
More critically, this paper probes how the living Marcoses have
benefitted from these declarations.
To meet the above objectives, data from newspaper articles from
1988 to 2016 were collected and systematized. The following digital
archives were used: newspapers.com, newsgoogle.com/newspapers,
was hi ngtonpost.co m / a rchive, arc h iv es.chicag o tr ibune.c o m ,
nytimes.com, and articles.latimes.com. Related materials were also
found during field research in Mariano Marcos State University in
Ilocos Norte, the bulwark of the Marcoses. Keywords used were a
combination and variations of “Ferdinand Marcos,” “death,” “burial,”
“Libingan ng mga Bayani,” “Heroes’ Cemetery,” and “dying wish.”
Journalistic accounts were thus used to put together the declarations
made by the Marcos family, developments in relation to Marcos’s
dead body, as well as the public opinion at the time. Biographies of
key personalities, related pieces of legislation, and court decisions
were also consulted to supplement the news articles. The events and
developments recounted in these primary and secondary documents
were organized chronologically and structured into a narrative to
outline the various declarations of Marcos’s dying wish and the
responses of the Philippine government and different sectors of the
society.
This paper begins with a discussion of dead body politics as a
conceptual framework. Next is our findings, which is an account of the
changing declarations and political maneuvers of the living Marcoses.
We conclude with a discussion of how dead bodies have been used by
the Marcoses in the pursuit of their various political ends.
_________________
1. From here, Ferdinand Marcos will be referred to as “Marcos” and his family
members will be signified using their first names (i.e., Imelda, Imee, and “Bongbong”
for Ferdinand Marcos Jr.).

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MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
STUDYING THE POTENCY OF DEAD BODIES
If Rodrigo Duterte feigned being undecided about his bid for the
presidency in 2015, he was certainly decisive about interring Marcos in
the LNMB. As part of initial academic efforts to gauge the former
Davao mayor’s first six months as president, Cleve Arguelles (2017)
weighed in on Duterte’s controversial decision. For Arguelles (2017,
275), the Marcos burial “resuscitates authoritarian fantasies of the
Philippine nation while de-legitimizing democratic legacies of the
EDSA People Power.” While it is true that Duterte was a key actor in
giving the late dictator a state burial, a more in-depth appreciation of
the issue compels us to go beyond the Duterte administration, go back
to the past and put in plain view the long-running attempts of the
Marcoses to rehabilitate the memory of their patriarch in varying
degrees of accommodation with several of the preceding administrations.
Existing literature points to the potency of human remains to
become repositories of meanings and discourses of change for the
society surrounding it. Anne-Marie Cantwell (1990, 614) argued that
individuals turn to the remains of the dead especially in times of
political instability, that is, how corpses can become icons to which
individuals impute their vision of change and the society they want.
Cantwell (1990, 615–24) gave examples of this in history where
human remains have been turned into relics by the living as they are
“searching for a definition,” from “cults of royal saints” in medieval
Western Europe, the mummification of remains of Egyptian pharaohs,
to the Andean Incas. While human remains have the form and force
to represent and legitimize a particular sociopolitical order, Cantwell
(1990, 626) wrote that societies also turn to the desecration of the
dead as an expression of the people’s aversion towards the current
order of things, such as the exhumation of the royal graves in Saint-
Denis during the French revolution in an effort to expunge the
memories of the reign of the monarchs. In 1817, what was left of the
remains of the Valois and Bourbon royal families were reburied on the
grounds of Saint-Denis as an attempt towards legitimation of the newly
ascended King Louis XVIII.
In order to “animate” the study of political transformations that
happened in “postsocialist” Eastern Europe, Katherine Verdery (1999)
explored the meaning-making practices that surrounded the repatriation
and reburial of human remains. Following the fall of the Soviet Union,
states like Romania, Hungary, and Croatia started the repatriation of
the remains of their “cultural treasures” like musicians and painters

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who died abroad either in exile or asylum, in order to “refurbish
national identities” that were, for the longest time, subsumed under
the Soviet blanket. Dead bodies were used as “symbolic capital,” meant
to accompany their reconsolidation of political power, and in certain
respects, of global standing, as a result of the devaluation of what they
previously considered as political capital after the fall of communist
parties. Political aims, therefore, benefit from the sacredness, the sense
of awe that the living holds over dead bodies. Furthermore, she posited
that the symbolic effectiveness of human remains lie in their ambiguity,
not only their materiality (following Cantwell 1990), producing
symbolic capital depending on the observer’s disposition, the dead
person’s story (or at least the aspects that are being emphasized), and
the context by which the dead body is placed.
Finn Stepputat (2014) added another dimension to the study of
dead body politics. While maintaining that the sheer materiality of
human remains warrants a close investigation, his edited volume
sought to demonstrate how death becomes an occasion for the state to
exercise its sovereignty. An article by Lars Ove Trans (2014) in the
edited volume pursued the story of the repatriation of Julio, a migrant
from Zapotec Indian community in San Pedro Yalehua, Oaxaca in
Mexico, who died in Los Angeles. In the process of bringing home
Julio’s remains, his family found themselves having to steer the rules
and claims of varying political communities. But more than this, the
repatriation has unwrapped notions of nationhood and belonging.
The federal state of Mexico has been supportive of repatriating the
remains of its people, and this is because the return of departed
Mexicans fit into a political narrative of the state and the “diasporic
consciousness” among the migrants, that their “final allegiance is
demonstrated by their choice of burial site” (Trans 2014, 83). Stepputat
(2014) thus shifts the attention to state capture of the dead to show
the different meanings invested in dead bodies.
Based on the salient literature reviewed, there appears to be a trend
in dead body politics scholarship toward routes of power. Dead bodies
can be both icons of legitimation and repositories of meanings for
societies in transition (Cantwell 1990), used as social capital (Verdery
1999), and can also become objects of the state’s exercise of sovereignty
(Stepputat 2014). Embedded in the manipulation and repositioning
of human remains by the living, therefore, are discourses of power and
notions of nationhood.

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MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
In this paper, the corpse of the late dictator is seen as a corporeal
symbol for memorialization, which is central to the creation of
mythologizing narratives about the man and his regime. Marcos’s dead
body was kept above-ground and displayed for decades, has accumulated
a cult following, has attracted rumors regarding its authenticity, has
become an object of people’s rage, and has been used by his family in
political negotiations with administrations that succeeded him. The
mere materiality of his remains played an important role in stirring so
much divisiveness. Ascertained by existing works on the topic, dead
bodies not only represent the past, but are also intimately associated
with the existing order, and for purposes of this paper, current
interests. The rehabilitation of Marcos’s image, undertaken through
the crusade for a burial in the LNMB, is not just for the tarnished
memory of the dead man and his regime, but for the extant political
agenda of his living family members. Dead body politics, therefore, is
concerned with how human remains have intermingled with the
politics of the living. In the Philippine context, it is tied to the
conversion of dead bodies into relics that have the potency to generate
multiple meanings and therefore create polarities that in turn sustain
and consolidate political bases.
THE DYING WISH OF JOSEFA MARCOS
As an important prelude to the drama, we begin with the dying wish
of Marcos’s mother, Josefa. Marcos was already seriously ill when he
and his family fled the Philippines for Hawaii on February 25, 1986,
the height of the People Power Revolution. Then President Corazon
“Cory” Aquino banned Marcos and his family from returning to the
Philippines, fearing that their return would “destabilize” her already
shaky government.
An early attempt at coming home was upon the death of Elizabeth
Marcos-Keon on December 15, 1986.2 The next day, Cory called an
emergency cabinet meeting where they anticipated that Marcos may
request to come home for Elizabeth’s funeral. Prior to this, there was
a report that a radio station in Manila broadcasted a speech from
_________________
2. Pro-Marcos writers such as Salvador Escalante and Augusto de la Paz (2000) claimed
that Marcos sought US President Reagan’s help to return to the Philippines in
light of Elizabeth’s death. The US State Department allegedly replied and said
that Marcos should take it up directly with Cory’s government.

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Marcos saying that he wanted to spend Christmas in the Philippines
(Associated Press 1986a). Several taped messages were also sent to his
supporters saying that he wished to return to the country. Meanwhile,
Cory’s cabinet unanimously decided to ban Marcos from coming
home. Presidential spokesman Teodoro Benigno threatened arrest if
Marcos came home for his sister’s funeral or for the holidays (Reid
1986). The following day, Marcos’s ailing mother wrote to the
ministries of defense and foreign affairs saying, “The loss of my elder
daughter, coming after the forced departure of my son, is almost too
much for my old and infirm body to bear . . . I have little time left in
this world. This visit may be my last opportunity to see my son. I can
only pray it will be granted” (Associated Press 1986b). The day before
this letter was sent, another Marcos sister, Fortuna Marcos-Barba, said
that they had delayed telling their mother about Elizabeth’s death, and
that they never told her the full story of her son’s ouster (Associated
Press 1986a). In a press conference, Benigno said that they had
anticipated this request, but citing “national interest,” the ban on
Marcos’s return remained. He went on to say that the government was
willing to let Josefa leave for Hawaii, and offered to shoulder the
transportation expenses (Associated Press 1986b).
Two years later, on May 4, 1988, Ferdinand’s ninety-five-year-old
mother died of cardiac arrest. Hours before her death, in a letter to
Cory, Josefa allegedly said that her dying wish was to have her son by
her side on her deathbed. In a carefully crafted emotional letter to the
president (unsigned but furnished with her alleged thumbprint), Josefa
implored Cory to let her child, who was at the time also in critical
condition, come home to bury her (Reaves 1988, 8). News reports
pointed to a custom among Ilocanos of waiting for the eldest child to
come home before burying the family matriarch (Murdoch 1989, 7).
A few weeks after Josefa’s death, Cory made a concession: Marcos’s
three children can come home to visit their deceased grandmother.
Oliver Lozano, lawyer and spokesperson for the family, responded that
the Marcos children will not go home without their father. At that
time, Marcos loyalists flocked to the streets to demonstrate against
Cory’s restrictions and were quick to frame the issue of Marcos and his
family’s return into that of human rights (Washington Post 1988, 5).
One can find this ironic not only because of the Marcos regime’s tawdry
human rights record, but also because when Josefa was still alive,
Marcos and his family had no qualms politicizing the health of their
matriarch. After eight years of hospitalization, the Aquino government

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paid for Josefa’s hospital bill that reportedly amounted to USD
57,333, because the Marcoses claimed that they could not afford it,
which was of course untrue (Tribune Wires 1986, 21). Gambling on
Josefa’s well-being was another maneuver to score cheap political
points against Cory’s administration.
Upon her death, the Marcoses made sure that Josefa’s body was on
full display (Le Vine 1988). They delayed her burial for four years to
pressure Cory into allowing the Marcoses to go back to the Philippines.
Josefa’s body was treated monthly by the famed mortician Frank
Malabed; her expensive gowns were routinely changed and her makeup
retouched frequently (Murdoch 1989,7). Despite Josefa’s prolonged
wake, Cory did not yield.
The Marcoses then turned to their legal options. They filed a
petition with the Supreme Court questioning Cory’s powers in
prohibiting them from returning home. Consistent with the earlier
clamor of Marcos loyalists, their petition invoked their “liberty of
abode and right to travel.” The high court ruled on September 15,
1989 that the president was indeed entitled to determine whether or
not the Marcoses can return home on the basis of her “residual
unstated powers” as the chief executive “to safeguard and protect
general welfare” (Marcos v. Manglapus, GR No. 88211, September 15,
1989). Upon the death of Marcos two weeks after the ruling was
released, the family filed a motion for reconsideration. Again, the
motion was denied articulating that the death of Marcos did not
change the circumstances specified in the earlier court decision (Marcos
v. Manglapus, GR No. 88211, October 27, 1989).
Indeed, Josefa’s dying wish became a rallying point for the
Marcoses’ return to the Philippines. Pressure also came from anti-
Marcos groups and individuals (Drogin 1989, 1) to reunite Marcos and
Josefa when both were still alive (Associated Press 1988, 6), and Cory
certainly did not go unscathed. This marked the Marcos family’s first
attempt to use a Marcos corpse to send their message to the Philippine
government. As one observer aptly puts it, Josefa’s body, which was
under vigil for years and which had accumulated a cult following, was
not just the remains of Imelda’s mother-in-law. It was “another stick
with which to beat Mrs. Aquino, who won’t let Mrs. Marcos bring the
body of Ferdinand home in the way she wants” (Fathers 1991, 11). But
before Marcos’s return, we backtrack to tell the story of his dying
wishes.

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THE DYING WISHES OF FERDINAND MARCOS
A person’s dying wish or huling habilin conjures a melancholic and
sentimental scene of a person in her or his deathbed. It is a compelling
mental image for most Filipinos, in that one is duty-bound to honor
a loved one’s final request. The importance of the huling habilin is
reflected in the Filipino (Christian) custom of including (almost always
as first agenda) in what we call today as “last will and testament” or
testamentos during the Spanish period, the testator’s wish for their final
resting place. This includes how they would like to be buried,
sometimes with specifics on the ceremonies itself, and the person or
persons who will be responsible for implementing these wishes.
The first mention of Marcos’s alleged dying wish was to “be
allowed to return to the Philippines,” which he reportedly said when
he was rushed to a hospital in Hawaii due to heart failure (Sydney
Morning Herald 1989, 8). In February 1989, urged by Imelda, then vice
president Salvador Laurel flew to Hawaii. Laurel claimed that in his
hospital bed, Marcos told him this: “Just let me die in my own country.
I want to be buried beside my mother” (Laurel 1997, B14). The ailing
Marcos purportedly instructed Laurel to convey a message to Cory:
that Marcos wished to give 90 percent of his wealth to be distributed
to the Filipino people, with only 10 percent to be left for his family.
In his biography, Laurel regretted that Cory refused to listen to
Marcos’s alleged settlement, suggesting that it could have saved the
Philippines from the ensuing debt crisis (Diaz-Laurel 2005, 187), a
problem that Cory’s administration inherited from Marcos. Cory
remained firm that she would not allow Marcos to return to die and
be buried in the Philippines (St. Cloud Times 1989, 10).
Since Cory made the recovery of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth a
top priority with the creation of the Presidential Commission on
Good Government through her very first executive order on February
28, 1986, the Marcoses dangling their plundered riches for political
accommodation have become a familiar gambit on their part in the
succeeding years. And Marcos bequeathing all his earthly possessions
to the Filipino people is an old trick. Upon reelection in 1969, he
made a pronouncement that all of his “material possessions” had been
transferred to a non-profit to be known as Ferdinand E. Marcos
Foundation for eventual distribution to all Filipinos (United Press
International 1969, 1). This Marcos lie is fundamental in the growth
and proliferation of scammers trafficking in this marvelous possibility

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MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
of Marcos directly giving back his loot to every Filipino (see Ariate 2017
for a more recent example).
After more than three years of exile in Hawaii, on September 28,
1989, Marcos died. Marcos had been “a frail, chronically ill man with
multi-system abnormalities,” the most life-threatening of which was his
renal problem (Aruiza 1991, 349). He succumbed to cardiac arrest.
Ferdinand Jr., or “Bongbong,” announced his father’s death. Bongbong
declared what was supposed to be his father’s final wish: “His
instructions to us were to bury him in the Philippines, and we are
continuing to hope that he’ll be allowed to go home” (Los Angeles Times
1989, 7). Imelda, on the other hand, said that her husband was to be
cremated and his ashes scattered in the Philippines “to fertilize his
country” (Philadelphia Inquirer 1989, 18). In another instance in
October 1989, Bongbong declared, “There’s one point I want to make
perfectly clear and that is, the final resting place of my father is going
to be Ilocos Norte” (Associated Press 1989b, 6).
A ban on moving Marcos’s remains was put in force by the United
States Federal Aviation Administration at the request of the State
Department. No aircraft carrying the body of the former dictator could
fly from Hawaii (or any location in the US) to the Philippines. The
measure was put into effect as early as June 1989, two months before
Marcos passed away (United States Department of State 1990). A
similar restriction was implemented by the local Civil Aviation Board
(Villanueva 1992b).
Meanwhile, Imelda was determined that Ferdinand would not be
buried in foreign soil. Marcos’s body was treated and kept in a
temporary refrigerated crypt in the Valley of the Temples Memorial
Park in Hawaii until they could return to the Philippines. She
exclaimed, “Not only will it be a political statement, it will be a
spectacle—an international spectacle to have Marcos (lie in state) here”
(Gannet News Service 1989, 4). For Marcos to be buried in exile would
leave a lasting image of a once glorified but overthrown despot. Despite
this pronouncement, it was reported that a few days before Marcos’s
death, Imelda requested interment for her husband at a war veteran
cemetery in Hawaii through her Washington lawyer, Richard Hibey,
only to be denied by U.S. officials (Wright 1989, 1).
Unmoved by the death of Marcos and amid exhortations from
both pro- and anti-Marcos groups saying that even in death, the man
has the right to return to his country, Cory was determined not to
allow the return of the late dictator’s body (Drogin 1989, 1). Officials

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in Washington upheld Cory’s security assessment regarding the return
of Marcos’s remains. In a statement, Cory said,
In the interest of the safety of those who will take the death of Mr.
Marcos in widely and passionately conflicting ways, and for the
tranquility of the state and the order of society, the remains of
Ferdinand E. Marcos will not be allowed to be brought to our country
until such time as the government, be it under this administration or
the succeeding one, shall otherwise decide (Associated Press 1989a,
10) .
Declared before the witnessing public, the wish supposedly uttered
by the dying man changed several times even after his death.
WHAT THE MARCOSES WANT, THE MARCOSES GET
The standoff over where to bury Ferdinand Marcos is the latest
example of ‘body politics’—a Filipino game Corazon Aquino’s
supporters once played themselve s to rally a nation a nd topple a
dictator…The object is to play on the Filipino’s almost mystical respect
for the dead to promote the cause of the deceased and the fortunes
of the living (Associated Press 1989c, 7).
Midway through Cory’s term, Imelda was acquitted of fraud and
racketeering charges in the United States. She threw a victory party
wherein she echoed that it was her “foremost desire” to reunite Marcos
with his mother (Our Wire Services 1990, 5). In August 1991, Cory’s
government allowed Imelda to return to the Philippines in order to
face tax fraud charges—but the ban on the remains of her husband was
sustained (Times Staff and Wire Reports 1991, 11). Imelda declared
that with her return, her mission was to “rehabilitate” the name of her
husband and reunite him with his mother first before both of them
could be buried (Fathers 1991, 11).
In October of the same year, Cory finally approved the return of
Marcos’s remains, on the condition that it shall be flown directly to
Laoag, Ilocos Norte and shall be buried within nine days beside his
deceased mother. But Imelda envisioned a grand procession in the
country’s capital to signify her return with her husband’s dead body.
She refused the government’s condition and said that she was determined
to pursue her husband’s sacred dying wish, which was to be buried in
the LNMB with full honors, as a former head of state (Ilocos Times
1991). Given the family’s political fortunes at the time, this was
obviously a longshot.

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For someone who was about to face numerous criminal charges,
Imelda’s tone was reconciliatory as she stepped on Philippine soil for
the first time after five years in exile (Associated Press 1991, 4).
Wounds from the Marcos regime had not healed, and yet she was vocal
about her resolve to rehabilitate the image of her late husband. But
upon her return, Imelda seemed to have lowered her expectations as
to what she could realistically demand from the current government.
She expressed that she would only bring home the remains back to the
Philippines if it could be buried near Manila, specifically “on a hillside
outside Manila…as a simple soldier” (Tierney 1991b, 4). Such display
of the late dictator’s remains was exactly what Cory was apprehensive
of, in fear of causing disorder in her already unstable administration.
From 1986 to 1987, she faced six attempts to overthrow her—most of
which were farcical coups staged by forces that remained loyal to
Marcos.
Short of two weeks of landing in Manila, rumors that Imelda
intended to run for president started swirling around, and in January
1992, she made it official (Associated Press 1992a, 4). Conveniently,
Imelda accepted Cory’s original concession for an Ilocos Norte burial
shortly after she announced her presidential bid (Associated Press
1992b, 45). This compromise was but a step for Imelda, who was
accustomed to getting her way; she made it clear that an Ilocos Norte
burial would be temporary and her husband’s remains will be transferred
to Manila, where he supposedly wanted to be buried. The country
then witnessed Imelda waving her new passport in front of a spectating
crowd, ready to leave for Hawaii to fulfill the final wishes of her late
husband (Associated Press 1992c, 20). Plans were underway for a
burial ceremony bound to happen in April of that year, right during
the peak of the election season. But just two weeks before the
scheduled transfer from Hawaii, Cory announced that Marcos’s
remains cannot return before election day on May 11. Then Executive
Secretary Franklin Drilon expressed that the decision was intended to
prevent potential turmoil that such public display of the corpse might
cause (Reswow 1992, 11). Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who ended up
in second place in the presidential race, promised a state burial for
Marcos as an attempt to woo the Ilocano vote (Lande 1996, 17).
Barely a week after election day, as Imelda trailed sixth in the
presidential race, she announced that she will boycott the hearings of
the multitudes of cases filed against her as “personal civil disobedience.”
She believed that she could have won the elections if not for electoral
fraud (Reuters 1992). Meanwhile, as guaranteed by palace officials,

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talks about burial plans resumed after the elections. On May 28, even
before the final results had been turned in, Drilon announced that they
were prepared to listen to proposals from the Marcos family regarding
the burial of their deceased patriarch (Villanueva 1992a). Imelda lost
the presidency to Fidel Ramos.
Just two months after Ramos’s inauguration, Bongbong, then
elected to the House of Representatives, filed House Resolution 80,
which called for the return of Marcos’s remains to the country and the
provision of state honors befitting his stature as former president. Less
than half of the lower house at the time approved the resolution.3 Not
long after that, the Ramos administration resumed talks with the
Marcoses. Ramos directed Rafael Alunan III, who served at the time as
the Secretary of Interior and Local Government, to negotiate the burial
arrangements with the Marcos camp, represented by Roque Ablan. A
closer examination will show that the agreed-upon terms with the
Ramos administration were even more stringent than the preconditions
made earlier by the Cory administration, which the Marcoses flatly
refused.
The first condition was that the body shall not be paraded around
or even pass Manila—the Marcoses stayed true to this, when the body
landed in Ilocos Norte in September 1993 (New York Times 1993).
Ramos’s second condition was that instead of being conferred state
honors, Marcos should instead receive military honors fit only for an
army major—(allegedly) the highest rank he obtained during the Second
World War. The family rejected this provision and regarded it as an
“insult.” Bongbong, who was the family’s spokesperson at the time of
the negotiations for burial arrangements, insisted that his father “was
not merely a major” (Glauberman 1993). As we know, the Marcoses
did not fulfill the third condition either, which was to immediately
bury Marcos’s body (Schmetzer 1993).
Before Marcos’s body was flown out of Hawaii, a wake was
organized by his family and supporters in Farrington High School in
Kalihi in Oahu. The body was then brought to Guam, where his casket
was again displayed to supporters. But the late dictator’s return to the
_________________
3. House Resolution No. HR00008 0, “Resolutio n Entre ating th e Executi ve
Department of Government to Allow the Return of the Remains of the Late
President Ferdinand E. Marcos to the Philippines to Lie in State at the Malacanang
Palace and to be Accorded a State Funeral with all the Courtesies Befitting a
Former President of the Republic of the Philippines within Ten (10) Days from
Arrival,” filed on August 13, 199 2, http://www.congress.gov.ph/legis/.

13
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
country on September 7, 1993 was the true spectacle. Songs were sung
and rituals were performed as hundreds of women wept in the crowd.
His “black-lacquered, gold-handled casket” was placed on a public bier
at the airport (Times Staff and Wire Reports 1991, 11) and was
transported to St. William Cathedral in Laoag as it was carried by a
horse-drawn hearse. The body was displayed overnight in front of the
governor’s office and was moved to Batac the next day to be displayed
beside his still unburied mother (Associated Press 1993a, 6).
News outlets did not miss the subtext of this “performance.” One
report noted that “Marcos’s body is being displayed like the relic of a
saint in his home province of Ilocos Norte and the melodrama created
there is meant to wipe out throughout the rest of the Philippines any
lingering memories of the disastrous legacy of the Marcos years” (Sydney
Morning Herald 1993, 12). Another account said, “Family and supporters
of the deposed president are trying to use the occasion to try to
rehabilitate Marcos’ image . . . The Marcos family purchased air time
on a national television network to broadcast an hour-long documentary
on the accomplishments of the 20-year Marcos administration”
(Guerrero and Reid 1993, 3).
Inevitably, the ceremonies attracted Marcos cultists.4 Bernabe
Abella, a former intelligence officer during the Marcos regime and at
the time of the burial, leader of the Gold Eagles cult, revealed that
Marcos secretly founded cults to “use mysticism against both the
Communist and Muslim rebels in the south” (Guerrero 1993, 13).
With the passing of their charismatic leader, they metamorphosed into
a clique that worshipped him as their god. In this congregation, “God
the Father is Ferdinand Marcos, God the Son is ‘Bongbong’ [...] and
the Holy Spirit is Imelda Marcos. They are the Holy Family” (Associated
Press 1993b, 12). Meanwhile, true to the family’s word, two days after
Marcos’s body returned to the Philippines, his mother Josefa was
finally buried. She was kept refrigerated and displayed in their home in
Batac for almost five years after her death (Fathers 1991, 11).
HOW THE UNBURIED MARCOS WAS KEPT “ALIVE”
While it would seem that the issue about the late dictator’s body
should have ended with its return to Ilocos Norte, it turned out that
_________________
4. Frank Cimatu, a veteran journalist, has a more detailed account of the Marcos
cults in Maceda, Cimatu, and Robles 2012–13, 232–37.

14 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
it was just the beginning. His widow refused to bury him until the
government granted their demands. Marcos’s body became a morbid
curiosity for more than two decades—that is, if it was still his real corpse
displayed for public viewing. Interviewed by an Australian correspondent
Mark Barker in 1996, Imelda said that the same sculptor responsible
for waxing the corpse of the late Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin was the
artist who waxed Marcos’s remains.5 She further exclaimed, “He says
it’s his masterpiece. Some say that, of all the projects I ever did, this was
the best: to make someone who was dead look like he was alive, and
it was done in record time.” Flippant about the possibility of his
husband rising from his silk bed and saying “Hi!,” Imelda turned more
sentimental and said: “Before, I would take him for granted. Now, he
is with me all the time. The longer he is dead, the more perfect he
becomes” (Barker 1996, 168).
Accounts saying that the dead body on display in Ilocos was a mere
replica—with the real corpse buried beneath the glass coffin appeared
in the news as early as 1994 (Akron Beacon Journal 1994, 47) and
resurfaced frequently after that. The questionable authenticity of
Marcos’s remains has been the subject of unceasing murmurings.
When the local electric cooperative cut off the electricity in the
mausoleum in 1996 because of the family’s failure to pay around PHP
5.643 million in unpaid bills, journalist Frank Cimatu claimed that
he witnessed Marcos’s body melting from the heat (Cimatu 2010, viii).
In 1998, amid the public outrage over Estrada’s decision to bury
Marcos in the LNMB, Cory publicly said that the body was just a
mannequin. Heherson Alvarez, citing as his source a nun close to the
Marcoses, claimed that Marcos’s remains had already been buried a
long time ago. Ostensibly, the body displayed in Batac was just a wax
replica flown from Boston (where it was allegedly made) to the
Philippines “in pieces—head, hands, and other parts—by his widow,
Imelda Marcos, when she was allowed to bring the body home” (Carey
1998, 7). Marcos’s dead body had reached the status of an urban
legend. Even school kids visiting the mausoleum doubted the
authenticity of the displayed wax-like corpse. Frequented by visitors all
_________________
5. The team responsible for maintaining Lenin’s corpse has publicly acknowledged
some of their works (the embalming of Kim Il S ung and the maintenance of Ho
Chi Minh’s corpse, for example), but Ferdinand Marcos’s body is not one of them.
Marcos’s mortician Frank Malabed, in his many interviews regarding Marcos’s
body, never mentioned having cooperated with anyone, especially those who were
responsible for maintaining the late So viet leader’s remains.

15
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
year round, the mausoleum of Marcos’s body was joined by a museum
that housed a wide variety of Marcos memorabilia from the time he was
a soldier, including his supposed war medals, to the years he served as
president. Based on our own visits, in 2013, the museum in the
Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center (the official name of the
mausoleum compound) was reconfigured to follow the plot of the
earlier published Marcos mythology, For Every Tear, A Victory by
Hartzell Spence.
There is one more character to this plot, and his name was Frank
Malabed, the famed mortician responsible for making Marcos look
“alive.” Malabed, who was deemed by many as the country’s “mortician
to the stars,” hailed from a family in the same business. In the 1960s,
he tagged along when his father came to work as a mortician in the US
Clark Air Base, where thousands of corpses of soldiers who fought in
the Vietnam War were prepared for their journey home (Agence
France-Presse 2012). Interviewed in 2012 as Imelda insisted in her
clamor for a hero’s burial for her husband, Malabed revealed to the
Inquirer that he “pumped in special cavity fluid to make sure the body
remained intact for 25 years” (Morella 2012). Though Marcos was his
most controversial client, he was also responsible for embalming
Benigno Simeon “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.’s body right after his assassination,
among many other big names. He was also the man behind Josefa’s five-
year-long wake. Responding to hearsay that the longevity of Josefa’s
body was a “miracle,” he calmly responded that it was just due to
formalin, frequent baths, and makeup (Friend 1989, 18). There was an
apparent interplay between the authenticity of Marcos’s displayed
corpse and Malabed’s reputation as the “mortician to the stars”
(Morella 2012). After the state burial conferred by the Duterte
administration to the late dictator, and amid renewed speculations
that the body was a mere replica, Malabed sustained that he had just
examined the body “by hand” two months prior and declared it to be
in good condition (Morella 2016).
MARCOS’S CORPSE AS A BARGAINING CHIP
This paper traced the developments leading to the final version of
Marcos’s dying wish, which according to his family, was to bury him
in the LNMB “among his fellow soldiers.” This, however, begs another
question: what are the undercurrents that lie beneath the crusade to
bury him in the LNMB?

16 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
Cemeteries, in themselves, possess a character of “sacredness”
because it becomes, for the loved ones and for the public, a context for
memorialization, and a “context for grief” (Rugg 2000, 261). On June
16, 1948, President Elpidio Quirino signed into law Republic Act
(RA) 289, “An Act Providing for the Construction of a National
Pantheon for Presidents of the Philippines, National Heroes, and
Patriots of the Country.” The main intent of RA 289 is “to perpetuate
the memory of all the Presidents of the Philippines, national heroes
and patriots for the inspiration and emulation of this generation and
of generations still unborn.” In keeping with this, Quirino signed
Presidential Proclamation 431, which allotted land for the “national
pantheon.” This parcel of land, however, was utilized by Ramon
Magsaysay’s (Quirino’s successor) administration for what we now
know as Quezon Memorial Park. In 1954, Magsaysay issued Executive
Order 77 which directed the reinterment of remains of war veterans
from Bataan and elsewhere in the country to the Republic Memorial
Cemetery in Fort William McKinley. A few days later he signed
Presidential Proclamation 86 which changed the name of Republic
Memorial Cemetery to Libingan ng mga Bayani since the former name
was “not symbolic of the cause for which our soldiers have died, and
does not truly express the nation’s esteem and reverence for her war
dead.” Marcos, in 1964, through Presidential Proclamation 208,
allotted 142 hectares of the Fort Bonifacio Military Reservation for
“national shrine purposes” (Quezon 2016). Persons who may be
allocated a plot in the LNMB were specified in the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) Regulation G 161-373 issued during Cory’s
administration (this was later on republished, the latest version of
which was in 2000, G 161-375).
At the height of the Marcos burial controversy in 2016, there had
been debates regarding the status of LNMB as a “national pantheon,”
citing RA 289. The petitioners argued that as contemplated in the law,
the purpose is “to perpetuate the memory of all the Presidents of the
Philippines, national heroes and patriots for the emulation of this
generation and of generations still unborn,” and as such provides for
the legal standards for interment at the cemetery. AFP Regulation G
161-375, on the other hand, simply contains implementing rules for
RA 289, and thus should not violate its intent. Thus, according to the
petitioners, the violation of human rights and the systematic looting
of public coffers during his regime disqualify Marcos for a plot in the
LNMB. The majority decision of the Supreme Court upheld that

17
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
Duterte’s decision to inter Marcos in the LNMB does not violate any
law or jurisprudence. The high court ruled that the petitioners’
interpretation would put into question the legality of the burials of all
the other remains in the cemetery, and that it would encroach on the
authority of the executive branch in the designation of plots in the
LNMB. They further argued that an LNMB burial does not confer the
status of a “hero” to the late dictator.
The idea of an LNMB burial as the dying man’s wish first appeared
during the latter part of Cory’s administration, as they were publicly
negotiating for the return of Marcos’s remains. However, the idea of
burying Marcos as a war veteran was contemplated even before he died,
when Imelda requested (and was eventually rejected) for a burial beside
American war veterans in the National Memorial Cemetery of the
Pacific during their exile in Hawaii. At the time, she cited that a burial
in the said cemetery was just fitting for her husband because during the
Second World War, he allegedly fought alongside American combatants
(Wright 1989). From crusading for a burial in the Philippines, to one
in Ilocos, then in Manila, and finally in the LNMB, the “dying wish”
of the late dictator seemed to hone in on this ultimate burial site as the
Marcoses regained more political clout.
When Joseph Estrada, who served as mayor of San Juan from 1969
until the end of the Marcos regime, was elected president in 1998, he
immediately scheduled the burial of Marcos in the LNMB. It is worth
mentioning that Imelda also ran in the eleven-person presidential race
in 1998. Seeing that she was lagging behind in the opinion polls, she
withdrew her candidacy and threw her support behind Estrada. Earlier
in the election period, then Vice President Estrada also called for the
abolition of PCGG; he asserted that the agency was no longer fulfilling
its roles, and thus its functions should be transferred to regular courts
(Manila Standard 1997). In this campaign trail, he also made a
statement that the then Leyte first district representative Imelda
Marcos should be extended executive clemency from her graft conviction
laid down by the Supreme Court in 1993 (Manila Standard 1998).
Estrada made the decision about Marcos’s burial in the LNMB
even before he was seated in power (Burgos and Lacuarta 1998).
Cement was already poured on the foundation of what could have
been Marcos’s tomb site beside President Carlos Garcia’s grave some
weeks before Estrada was sworn in on June 30, 1998. And since these
were still the final days of Ramos’s presidency, he ordered to stop the
work being done on what could have been Marcos’s grave (The Times

18 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
1998). Imelda reportedly agreed to Estrada’s provision that the
government would not bequeath the late strongman a state burial
(Associated Press 1998a, 3). Then President Estrada made preconditions
of his own: (1) “No organized groups would be allowed along the route
to the cemetery, (2) the rites should be strictly religious and the funeral
should be limited to the immediate Marcos family of not more than
50 persons, and (3) no political statements would be permitted”
(Reuters 1998, 9).6 However, due to the uproar from anti-Marcos
groups and individuals, the Marcoses backed away (Aquino 1998, 9).
The New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines
threatened to kidnap the late dictator’s family and their associates if
Estrada continued with the scheduled interment in the LNMB. Family
members of war veterans even threatened that they would exhume their
dead and move them elsewhere should the coming administration
continue with its plan (Town Talk 1998, 3). Estrada reckoned that such
mayhem was not the best way to begin his presidency. He admitted that
it was a miscalculation on his part, thinking that burying Marcos in the
LNMB would end the bitter tensions between pro- and anti-Marcos
camps. Estrada then urged Imelda to bury the remains of her husband
in their hometown in Batac (Associated Press 1998b).
For a brief period in 1999, the year after the furor surrounding
Estrada’s acquiescence to the Marcos burial in the LNMB, and also her
first year as a district representative of Ilocos Norte after the EDSA
Revolution, María Imelda Josefa “Imee” Marcos proclaimed that they
were deserting their claim for a plot in the LNMB. The late dictator’s
eldest daughter said, “I want a beautiful island like the burial site of
Princess Diana for my father.” She continued that “a hill overlooking
the South China Sea would be an ideal location” (Sydney Morning Herald
1999, 8).
Barely three years in power, Estrada was toppled by the “People
Power II” revolt or “EDSA Dos” as a result of the public’s outrage over
the various corruption scandals that he was embroiled in. His vice
president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, succeeded him. During the Marcos
regime, she was identified with the opposition (following her father’s
footsteps), contributing anti-Marcos economic analyses to the Philippine
Signs.7 Her road to politics started with a Department of Trade and
Industry appointment from Cory, who also supported her during
EDSA Dos. Macapagal-Arroyo began her term with questions on the
_________________
6. Numberings were added by the authors for clarity.
7. See http://www.bantayog.org/signs/.

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MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
legitimacy of her ascent to the presidency (Estrada v. Desierto, G.R. No
146710-15, March 2, 2001).
During Macapagal-Arroyo’s term, one of the strongest calls to lie
to rest Marcos’s remains expectedly came from Ilocos. However, the
Ilocanos were not inclined towards a burial in Manila, much less at the
LNMB. They wanted Marcos to be buried in his home province, where
they believed he was most valued. There was once a proposal to
establish a “Libingan ng mga Bayaning Ilocano,” where Marcos could
be interred alongside Ilocano revolutionaries Gen. Artemio Ricarte
and Fr. Gregorio Aglipay. According to the family’s spokesperson Lito
Gorospe, at the time (September 2002), Imelda considered several
options for burial sites, all of them were said to be located in Batac.
One of the options, said Gorospe, was Mariano Marcos State University,
a state-run university named after the late dictator’s father (Arzadon
2002).
Macapagal-Arroyo’s reelection in 2004 was marred with accusations
of electoral fraud. In 2005, an audio recording bearing her conversation
with election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano about rigging election
results circulated far and wide. In no time, former associates started
jumping off her ship: a handful of the members of her cabinet resigned;
calls for her own resignation hailed from the ranks of her supposed
allies (Hutchcroft 2008) . This crisis in Macapagal-Ar royo’s
administration and her struggle for political survival became the
context of succeeding negotiations with the Marcos family.
Macapagal-Arroyo’s term was a peculiar chapter in the Marcos
book. Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration was clearly enervated by the
scandal back in June 2005. It is in this context that Macapagal-Arroyo
called for “reconciliation” with different elements in her administration.
The politically savvy Imelda was among those who obliged. She
pursued reconciliation with Macapagal-Arroyo and was reported to be
in “constant communication” with palace officials regarding Marcos’s
burial in the LNMB (Adriano 2005). On the other hand, Imelda’s
children claimed to be part of the opposition; the same alliance was
joined by groups who ousted their father from power. Imee opposed
Macapagal-Arroyo’s policies on diverse planes, but this would be most
exemplified by her signature on the impeachment complaint filed
against Macapagal-Arroyo in 2005 (Porcala and Molina 2005). In one
of the supplemental complaints filed by one of the Marcos family
lawyers, Oliver Lozano (GMA News Online 2006), he included as a basis
for indictment Macapagal-Arroyo’s refusal to entertain a 75-25
compromise deal on the Marcos wealth as renegotiated with Imelda,

20 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
which he claimed could have been a solution to the hounding
economic crisis (GMA News Online 2007). But on the day the
impeachment complaint was put to a vote in the lower chamber, Imee
was nowhere to be found. She later explained that her stance on
Macapagal-Arroyo’s impeachment “weighed heavily” on her. At the
time, rumors spread that her absence was an upshot of a deal between
the family and the Macapagal-Arroyo administration regarding the
LNMB burial of her father, which she of course denied. One must also
note that Oliver Lozano had a reputation for being a “serial filer of
impeachment suits.” During Macapagal-Arroyo’s term, he was reported
to have filed the first yet the “weakest” impeachment complaints.
Pundits say that these ineffectual complaints were filed in order to
maneuver around the rule on double jeopardy, or the restriction
preventing an accused from being tried again on similar charges. The
charade perpetrated by Lozano and Imee points to mutually beneficial
political accommodations between the Marcoses and Macapagal-
Arroyo.
Prior to this, Macapagal-Arroyo called for “closure,” which was
effectively a cue for the Presidential Commission on Good Government
to settle with the Marcoses. Despite opposition from its former
chairman Jovito Salonga, then Commissioner Ricardo Abcede revealed
that the talks between Imelda and the Philippine government had
already begun (Tiongson-Mayrina 2006). In a compromise deal, the
Marcoses shall give the Philippine government access to their ill-gotten
wealth. After which, at the minimum, the Philippine government and
the Marcos family will have to agree on how they will subdivide the
amount. The dismissal of cases filed against the Marcoses may also be
an element of such a deal. There is a dubious coincidence between the
negotiations regarding the Marcos burial in the LNMB and the
commencement of the settlement agreement on Marcos wealth.
Despite talks between Imelda and Macapagal-Arroyo in the prior
years, the latter’s nine-year term ended without concrete developments
on the LNMB burial. There could not have been enough room to
negotiate because of the Marcos children’s public stance against
Macapagal-Arroyo. But in hindsight, one can reasonably argue that
Macapagal-Arroyo’s unpopularity might have played a role, even more
so than the Marcos children’s public stance against her administration.
Her net satisfaction rating by the end of her term was -17 (and this is
a stellar grade compared to her -53 rating by the end of the first quarter
of 2010) (Social Weather Stations 2010). With such a divisive issue
that indeed had the force to open wounds from the martial law years,

21
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
not going through with Marcos’s LNMB burial must have been a
calculated decision on Macapagal-Arroyo’s part.
Remarkably, Marcos’s immediate family seemed to be on different
pages regarding the burial issue, at least during Macapagal-Arroyo’s
term. Bongbong and Imee in particular, similar to her 1999
pronouncement, might have been open to, if not more biased towards
discontinuing the campaign for a burial in the LNMB and entomb
their father somewhere else just to put an end to the issue. Imelda, on
the other hand, remained persistent. Political opportunism was
displayed in plain sight: Imelda, who was the only immediate family
member not serving in public office other than her daughter Irene, saw
the reconciliation phase of Arroyo as an opportune time to lobby for
the interment of her husband in the LNMB. When Arroyo was in most
need for allies, Imelda jumped to her rescue. On the other hand, Imee
and Bongbong might have seen coalescing with the unpopular Arroyo
as damaging to their own political careers at the time, and therefore
placed themselves in the opposition. At a certain point, as discussed
later in this paper, differences in opinion among the family members
about the final resting place of their patriarch would eventually end as
they would converge towards the version of the dying wish that best
suited their political interests.
During the term of Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III as president,
namesake and son of the slain opposition leader to Marcos, Ninoy, and
former president Cory, the arena for contestation for the Marcoses
shifted to parliamentary channels. This may be due to the fact that
there would be little space for the Marcoses to negotiate with the chief
executive (despite Bongbong being elected as senator) about the burial
issue, as Noynoy and his close associates made clear during their 2010
election campaign.
In 2011, Salvador Escudero, a former member of the Marcos
cabinet and by then representative of Sorsogon’s first congressional
district, filed a resolution calling for the interment of Marcos’s body
in the LNMB. He was convinced that knowing the sentiment of the
country’s elected representatives would be the best way to put an end
to the decades-long debate. Despite the resolution obtaining 216
signatures,8 Noynoy refused to act on the resolution because he said
_________________
8. HR01135 s. 2011, “A Resolution Urging the Administration of President Benigno
C. Aquino to Allow the Burial of the Remains of Former Pres ident Ferdinand
Edralin Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani,” filed on Ma rch 23, 2011,
Congress.gov/legis.

22 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
that any decision he will make on the issue might be construed as
“biased” (Cheng 2011). Instead, he authorized then Vice President
Jejomar Binay to undertake a study and make a recommendation on
the issue. After numerous letters were sent to different groups in civil
society and members of the academe, and after online surveys were
conducted to get the public’s pulse on the issue, Binay recommended
that the best compromise would be to bury Marcos in Ilocos Norte
with full military honors (Esplanada and Burgonio 2011).
Binay prematurely declared that he was able to convince the
Marcos family with his proposal; Bongbong Marcos said in a later
interview that they were not yet consulted about the matter (Tan
2011). In 2016, Abigail Valte, former spokesperson for Noynoy—in
response to Binay’s claims that Noynoy’s government missed the
opportunity to put an end to the burial issue because the president
failed to act on his proposal—revealed that the reason why nothing
came out of Binay’s proposal was because Bongbong refused a burial
in Ilocos Norte and insisted that his father be buried in the LNMB
(Adel 2016). Despite this, before supposedly refusing Binay’s proposal,
Bongbong said publicly that he was open to a burial in Ilocos Norte
if it puts an end to the controversy (ABS-CBN News 2011). Recall that
in 1989, Bongbong said quite definitively that his father should be
buried in Ilocos Norte.
In June of 2011, Juan Ponce Enrile Jr., son of Marcos’s former
Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, filed House Bill 4876 that
proposed allocating 25 percent of the land occupying LNMB’s land for
a burial site dedicated to former Philippine presidents. This section of
the cemetery would have been called “Libingan ng mga Pangulo”
(Presidents’ Cemetery). The younger Enrile believed that this would be
a good compromise to finally put closure to the issue (Office of Rep.
Juan Ponce Enrile Jr. 2011). Allowing the remains of Marcos to be
buried somewhere he categorically qualified seems to be an attempt to
remove value-judgements from the debate. Yet, the bill was not even
put to a vote. Predictably, the government led by Cory and Ninoy’s son
did not confer Marcos with a burial in the LNMB. The issue however,
was revived during the 2016 presidential elections through the campaign
of former Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
One important trip in Duterte’s campaign trail was in Ilocos
Norte. While he was there, he promised Ilocanos that if elected
president, he would allow Marcos to be interred in the LNMB “because
he was a great president and he was a hero,” and because doing so would

23
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
supposedly result in “nationwide healing” (Ranada 2016). As a result
of Duterte’s pronouncement during the election, his eventual win in
May 2016, and the intensified debates regarding Marcos’s LNMB
burial, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP)
promptly circulated a pamphlet debunking Marcos’s war records,
which were often cited as basis for granting him a place in the LNMB
(NHCP 2016). A little over a month after being sworn in, Duterte
reiterated his resolve to finally bury Marcos in the Heroes’ Cemetery.
The next day, martial law victims rushed to the Supreme Court to
petition against Duterte’s statement (Pasion 2016).
As it was in 1989, the decision was again up to the Supreme Court.
After numerous petitions filed against Marcos’s LNMB burial, the high
court issued a status quo ante order on the president’s decision to inter
Marcos in the LNMB. With this in effect, the body of the late dictator
could not be moved to the LNMB without an order from the court.
The status quo ante order was supposed to last until October 18 but was
extended until November 8, 2016 (Rappler 2016). Just when the
petitioners thought that the move by the Supreme Court was a good
sign in favor of their cause, the high court rebuffed the petitions and
upheld the president’s decision (Tan 2016). As in Marcos v. Manglapus,9
Ocampo v. Enriquez10 also put into question the executive powers of the
president (Candelaria and Herbosa 2016, 10). The latter decision
reinforced that the president has powers under his office to allow the
interment of the late Marcos in the LNMB which is “in a parcel of land
of the public domain devoted for the purpose of being a military
shrine.” It was also within Duterte’s determination, as cited by the
decision, that to bury the remains of the ousted president would lead
to “national healing and forgiveness” (Ocampo v. Enriquez, G.R. No.
225973, November 8, 2016). Essential to the Supreme Court decision
was the argument that burying Marcos would not confer him the status
of a hero. It argued that the privilege of interment has been loosened
_________________
9. The case was named as such because Ferdinand Marcos was one of the petitioners
who called for his and his family’s return to the country while Raul Manglapus,
acting at the time as the Secretary of Foreign affairs, was one of the respondents.
10. The case was named as such because Saturnino Ocampo, journalist and former
Bayan Muna representative, was one of the group who filed the petition against
an LNMB burial for Marcos while Rear Admiral Ernesto C. Enriquez, in his
capacity as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Reservist and Retiree Affairs of the AFP,
was one o f the respondents. Enriquez was the one who gave the directive to the
Commanding General of the Philippine Army to provide interment services with
military honors to the former President Marcos.

24 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
up over the years to include non-military personnel such as widows of
former presidents and secretaries of national defense.11 The court ruled
that though the Marcos regime’s human rights violations record may
nullify his status as former president, it does not take away the fact that
he was a former soldier, Secretary of National Defense, and a Medal for
Valor awardee.12
As if to prove their claim about Marcos’s dying wish, the Marcos
family released his last will and testament dated March 17, 1982,
wherein he said, “I desire that my remains be buried according to the
rites established by law and with dignity suitable to my position and
other personal circumstances” (ABS-CBN News 2016). The release of
Marcos’s last will and testament supposedly confirmed that Marcos
really wished to be buried in the LNMB, as the family claims. Clearly,
he did not specifically state this; the last will and testament was rather
silent on the specifics of his final resting place. Other versions were
released by Marcos supporters, one of which was Erick San Juan (1998)
in Raiders of the Lost Gold. Again, none of these specified that he wanted
to be buried in the LNMB.
In the morning of November 18, news of the private and
unannounced burial rites given to the late dictator stunned the public.
This supposed attempt to attain “nationwide healing” by Duterte
prompted nationwide demonstrations, which recollected not only
human rights violations and the looting of the national treasury by
Marcos but also condemnation of the newly seated president for
allowing the controversial interment rites. The protesters yelled and
brought placards that bore statements like “Marcos magnanakaw hanggang
libingan” (Marcos, a thief even in his grave) and “Hukayin, hukayin”
(exhume him).
Within the same day, the family released professionally-captured
and edited snippets of the burial, which are commonly commissioned
for weddings and birthday parties, same-day edit as they call it. Bearing
the internet hashtag #SalamatApo (Thank you, venerable father), longer
versions were uploaded days later on YouTube showing the entirety of
the tribute program for the late dictator. Marcos’s purported
accomplishments and war feats were narrated by the ceremony’s host
as the video panned alternatively from his casket to his children sitting
_________________
11. This took effect in 1986, as mentioned earlier, when AFP Regulation G 13 1-373.
identified the individuals eligible for a plot at the LNMB.
12. Ibid.

25
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
in the front row. Clips from this record were also used in the Marcos
centennial tribute video that featured ordinary folks, Marcos’s supporters
(some of whom are from the academe), and the Marcos children with
their individual anecdotes about their father (PH Today 2017). All this
was reminiscent of the pro-Marcos media blitz that followed the arrival
of Marcos’s remains in 1993.
Even before public outrage settled, Raissa Robles (2016), a veteran
investigative journalist, published an article that put a spotlight on
Marcos’s grave. Normally, graves are six-foot deep excavations of earth;
special equipment is used to lower the coffin to the ground. But what
some people saw from online photos and footages was that Marcos’s
grave was big enough to fit not only the coffin, but several people
inside. In one of the photos from the ceremony, four men were carrying
the coffin into what seemed to be a tiled inner chamber. Robles argued
that it is possible that Marcos’s “secret underground chamber” is
related to the “hydraulic refrigeration system” whose design was
commissioned by Imelda years back and up to this moment, is still in
her possession. This feat of engineering will allegedly keep the late
dictator’s body from deteriorating. If this is true, and despite Marcos’s
dying wish finally granted, what is with the family’s fixation with
keeping Marcos’s remains from decay? Unless, of course, the additional
space in the grave is meant to accommodate other family members. As
mentioned, wives of deceased presidents can also be buried at the
LNMB.
On November 21, Bayan Muna Representatives Satur Ocampo
and Neri Colmenares filed a petition to declare in contempt the
Marcos family and key members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines
and the Department of National Defense for the surprise burial. Later
in the day, Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, filed a motion to the
Supreme Court for the exhumation of Marcos’s remains. He wanted
the body to undergo a forensic examination to determine whether it
is indeed the late dictator’s remains or if it is a replica. Earlier in
November, Ariate and Reyes (2016) also made an argument that the
1935 ruling against Marcos in the Nalundasan murder case could be
used as a basis for barring Marcos’s interment in the LNMB (and
eventually, his exhumation). Marcos, along with his two brothers
Mariano and Pio and brother-in-law Quirino Lizardo, filed eight
separate complaints against Calixto Aguinaldo, the prosecution’s
main witness, accusing him of false testimony even before the trial of
the Marcoses had begun. This was against the rules of court, and thus

26 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
the four men were found guilty of contempt of court. While Justice
Jose Laurel acquitted Marcos of the murder case, the contempt verdict
against the three Marcoses and Lizardo was sustained. However, it
would be up to legal experts to determine whether this verdict can be
considered as a violation of AFP Regulation G 131-375, which
disqualifies individuals who have been convicted with finality for “an
offense involving moral turpitude.”
THE MARCOS DEAD BODY POLITICS
Various versions of Marcos’s dying wish, including his mother’s, served
to bolster the family’s political agenda at distinct points in time.
Imelda and her family used Josefa’s dying wish to create public pressure
for their return to the country. Thereafter, the moribund Marcos
wished to come home to die in his country. The return of his family
to the country with his remains was framed as an act of honoring his
“sacred” final wish and that of his mother’s as an attempt to conceal
the political opportunism that hounded their comeback. Notions
about death and around the relationship between mother and child
were used to change the narrative from political to “moral.” Msgr.
Domingo Nebres,13 a priest close to the Marcoses was quoted saying,
“This is not a question of politics; [but] a moral question” (Le Vine
1988). It was clear that the issue was political in nature. The refusal to
bury Josefa until the family and Marcos’s body were allowed to come
home and invoking their right to travel and abode, were political means
to this one end: the Marcoses reclaiming their place in Philippine
politics.
The saga quickly escalated into a battle between the Marcoses and
the newly-installed government led by Cory. It was clear that Imelda
was determined to rehabilitate her image and that of her dead husband.
And Cory was equally resolved not to let her succeed. The tugging
between Cory and Imelda reached its peak when Imelda was able to
come home to face tax fraud charges. Imelda unequivocally refused an
Ilocos Norte burial, which they originally demanded when Marcos
died in exile in 1989, but saw it opportune to agree right after
announcing her presidential bid. It was clear that the body and the
_________________
13. He was also the prie st who officiated Marcos ’s temporary e ntombment in Hawaii
and is associated with the Marcos loyalist organization called Friends of Imelda
Romualdez Marcos, or FIRM.

27
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
narratives surrounding it were instrumental to her political agenda at
the time.
The first mention of an LNMB burial was only by the end of Cory’s
presidency. The late dictator’s corpse eventually arrived in the country,
not under the auspices of Cory but that of Ramos, Marcos’s cousin.
The dying wish became more specific: the dead Marcos then wanted a
burial in the LNMB “among his fellow soldiers.” With minor
permutations from the Marcos children, this became the final version
of the dying wish that the family carried through the succeeding
administrations leading up to Duterte’s. Since the burial ground is
primarily a cemetery for those who have fought in the war as well as
former Philippine presidents, the cause to bury Marcos in that specific
cemetery is discernibly attached to the man’s projected and highly
questionable image as a war veteran.14 However, it is important to note
that in recent years, the family had been consistent with saying that
Marcos should be buried as a soldier; though many of their allies still
harked back on his “accomplishments” as a statesman. It is within the
family’s interest to avoid making allusions to Marcos’s reputation as
the former head of state, at least immediately after Duterte was elected,
since the images of atrocities and plunder were still fresh in people’s
memories. His war record, on the other hand, is one that is less
accessible to people’s knowledge and recollection and therefore, a
more potent narrative for myth-making. The attempts to bury Marcos
in the LNMB became crucial as the Marcoses geared up for succeeding
electoral battles. Chronicles of Marcos’s past achievements, real or
fictional, became important as his living family members vied for
renewed national prominence. The political maneuvers of the Marcoses
show the powerful potential of dead body politics. They can deconstruct
the political baggage that comes with an infamous family name like
Marcos and reconstruct it into favorable narratives.
_________________
14. To illustrate, Imee was interviewed multiple times after the Supreme Court ruled in
November 2018 that Marcos can be buried at the LNMB. She repeatedly emphasized
that her father was a soldier at heart, in her own words, “sundalong sundalo ang
palaisipan.” She quipped that her father religiously attended ceremonies for
Bataan Day Veterans’ Memorial, et cetera, and would go to the hospital in V.
Luna or Veterans Hospital even if there are more famous doctors in other clinics.
A claim belied when Marcos himself started suffering from renal failure. Instead of
going to said hospitals, he was treated in secret by medical specialists in Malacañang.
For a record of Imee’s statement, see GMA News (2016).

28 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
Lest we forget, there is another undercurrent to the LNMB issue
that was already touched upon earlier in this paper: the Marcos
narrative that they are victims of political persecution by the government,
starting with that of Cory. In a pamphlet entitled Ferdinand E. Marcos:
World War II Veteran, Hero, President, written by Remigio Agpalo (1993),
University of the Philippines professor of political science and known
Marcos supporter, Marcos was described as a “vilified hero,” and the
denigration of his record as a war veteran was said to have started when
he ran for president against Sergio Osmena Jr. in 1969. The message
was that the revelations regarding the fabrication of Marcos’s numerous
military distinctions were mere black propaganda crafted to serve the
interests of his opponents. The pamphlet then continued to trumpet
Marcos’s alleged prowess and sacrifices during the war (see also Fajardo,
Adevoso, and Sayoc 1997). This same narrative was echoed in pro-
Marcos books published by the Katarungan at Katotohanan Foundation
Inc., among many others (see for example, Escalante and De La Paz
2000; Sohmer, Escalante, and De La Paz 2000).
In another story, the Marcoses claimed that they were the ones who
had experienced injustices and not the ones who pillaged state coffers
while in power. For example, in the wake of planning Marcos’s burial
in 1992, there were concerns that the transfer would be delayed
because the family could not shoulder the expenses that chartering a
plane from Hawaii to Laoag would entail (Associated Press 1992d).
They framed themselves as victims: Imelda even said that her family
might have to live in the slums of Tondo upon returning home (Tierney
1991a, 62). Prior to Imelda’s return to a life of imagined poverty, she
and her entourage lodged in a luxury hotel in New York. Surrounded
by four “high-priced American lawyers,” she said in a press conference
that she will come home “penniless” (Los Angeles Times 1991, 2). These,
of course, are all tied with the overarching narrative that all the
succeeding administrations refused to lay to rest a dead man, a “simple
soldier,” the way he supposedly wanted.
With no exception, all the succeeding administrations needed to
deal with the Marcos burial issue. Though Cory was initially successful
in keeping the Marcoses at bay, she had to make several concessions in
the middle of her term. Ramos mobilized his cabinet to negotiate with
the Marcoses about Ferdinand’s resting place. Estrada decisively ruled
in favor of the Marcos family’s claim for a plot in the LNMB even before
he was seated in power. He could have proceeded but was stopped by
the public outrage, halting abruptly what was supposed to be the

29
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
“honeymoon” stage of his presidency. Although major developments
were not seen during Macapagal-Arroyo’s term, the debate was still
alive and rumors about settlement between her and Imelda afflicted her
term. During the tenure of Noynoy, the way the game was played had
changed. The history between the two families made it obvious that
there would be no negotiating, at least not in the same manner the
Marcoses negotiated with Noynoy’s predecessors. Possibly rooting
from this lack of elbow room, the cause took another course: from
direct dialogues to a more legislative and in some respects, “participatory”
route. Much like Estrada, current President Duterte, who repeatedly
said that Imee was one of the few who supported him during his
presidential campaign, was resolute in allowing the burial in the
LNMB, but unlike the former, uncompromisingly so. Indeed, we see
that the changing demands of the family about their patriarch’s final
resting place was performed in the backdrop of their shifting political
fortunes upon their return.
There was a robust contestation on the meanings surrounding this
sacred ground for “heroes.” The petitioners said that giving an LNMB
burial was tantamount to dishonoring the people’s revolt in 1986 and
condoning human rights violations committed during the martial law
years. The official decision of the Supreme Court had a more legalistic
take: it expressed that because the rules regulating who may be buried
in the LNMB has been loosened throughout the years, therefore it is
not as “sacred” as the petitioners appraise (Ocampo v. Enriquez, G.R.
No. 225973, November 8, 2016). Some of the protesters demanded
for an exhumation because Marcos does not deserve to be interred in
such hallowed grounds. As the spontaneous nationwide protests
following the burial would tell us, the Marcos camp was not able to
convince everyone. There was enough public outrage to mobilize
thousands but not sufficient to bend the Duterte administration’s
resolve. From Robles’s feature about Marcos’s grave, it seems like the
story has not ended for the Marcoses. They may still have more cards
to play given the family’s preoccupation with keeping the body intact,
thus “alive,” readily viewable, and still symbolically powerful.
The prolonged campaign to grant their family patriarch a state
burial served as a potent rallying point for the memorialization of
Marcos’s achievements, fake or otherwise. Among others, this crusade
functioned to keep the Marcos name afloat, and was a powerful tool
for polarizing opposing sides to the burial issue and generating more
impassioned constituencies supportive of their cause. Marcos’s dead

30 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
body was used to manufacture the many fictions surrounding the late
president, one of which is the myth that he was the most decorated
soldier in the Second World War. The protracted pursuit for an
LNMB burial “among his fellow soldiers” was a necessary hallmark to
seal the legitimacy of his alleged war exploits. True enough, burying
him in the Heroes’ Cemetery “does not make him a hero,” whatever
Imee meant when she said it, but it did give a legitimizing mold to the
decorated war veteran narrative that was at the time propped up by
Duterte.15 Echoing Verdery (1999), a dead body’s ambiguity, that is,
the fact that it can no longer speak for itself, can induce an infinite
number of interpretations.
Weighing in on the Marcoses’ project to bury Marcos in the
LNMB, we attempted to show that (1) the Marcos family was
inconsistent with Marcos’s dying wish and these changing demands
were calculated moves designed to benefit their specific political
agenda at different points in time; (2) the late dictator’s remains were
used as a material symbol for his memorialization and parallel to that,
for the furtherance of favorable narratives about his regime, and; (3) the
body has been a vital tool, if not a central instrument, in the family’s
negotiations with succeeding administrations starting with Cory up
until Duterte, who had varying degrees and modes of accommodation
for the Marcos family. In retrospect, if Marcos’s remains were buried
in Hawaii when he died in 1989, the Marcoses would have just sought
for other ways to return from exile and eventually make a political
comeback. The family still retained sufficient political and economic
capital despite their humiliating exile in 1986, perhaps still enough to
revive their influence and rehabilitate their sullied image, but the
sacredness and the ambiguity that enveloped Marcos’s preserved
remains allowed them to go back with a symbolic capital that proved—
and continue—to be powerful.
We have, in this article, also attempted to illustrate how a dead
body has interacted with the politics of the living. But there were
certainly more aspects that may prove to be interesting themes for
further exploration—for instance, the vestiges of the cults that deify
Marcos (and for some, his family), their worldviews, and their affinity
with Marcos’s dead body. But more than this, the establishment of
................................................
_________________
15. Alfred McCoy (2000) wrote about how Marcos created civic rituals out of war
commemorations during martial law. According to him, thes e rituals have been
essential in the trumpeting of his own (alleged) war heroism that were in turn,
used for political means.

31
MASANGKAY AND DEL MUNDO BURYING MARCOS
quasi-religious groups and the fabrication of his war exploits give us a
glimpse of the larger enterprise of conceiving a personality cult—
initiated by Marcos and propped up by his close associates even after
his demise. The products of which indeed resonated with the Filipino
political psyche, and to this we owe much of the signifying power of
his dead body. Despite the fact that we had to go back three decades
to trace the events and declarations surrounding the late dictator’s
remains, the issue continues to figure largely in the present political
order. For one, the Marcoses continue to hold and contest local and
national posts. Over the decades, Marcos’s remains, real or wax, had
been used as a political tool, an object of both veneration and
indignation, and a material form through which the state has exercised
its power all at the same time.
In 1983, Marcos’s political nemesis, Ninoy, was assassinated at the
tarmac of the Manila International Airport, now his namesake.
Ninoy’s blood-stained, all-white suit garbed his mutilated body. His
widow decided that her late husband’s body shall be displayed and
paraded in its abject state. Thousands of Filipinos hailing from all over
the country flocked to Manila to mourn the death of one they
considered as a “modern day martyr.” Maria Zamora (2008, 5) said that
Ninoy’s body “ignited a collective sensual social experience and became
a vehicle for a nationalist communion of belief.” This experience, she
remarked, served as an important prompt leading to the EDSA
Revolution that toppled Marcos’s two-decades-long rule. Fast forward
to 2009, Cory’s death spawned clamors for the presidential run of her
son who previously commanded little public attention during his then
short stint as a senator.
Philippine politics is replete with examples of dead bodies animating
the politics of the living. They appear to have the potency to bolster a
person’s political career and end another’s. Much to the understanding
of the Marcoses, dead bodies, and in general, death, appears to have the
capability to strike a sensitive chord with the Filipino public.
Conceptions surrounding death and dead bodies, however diverse, are
a vital part of the Filipino political landscape, and thus have the power
to generate conditions of polarities that can be exploited for certain
political ends.
Marcos buried in the LNMB may not even be the end of this saga.
The Marcoses would have to be constantly on guard and continue to
spend their political capital just to keep their patriarch where he is at.
They have to keep on churning propaganda and commissioned history

32 AHEAD OF PRINT KASARINLAN VOL. 31 NO. 2 2016
to justify the presence of Marcos in that cemetery lot. Efforts that will
no doubt create countervailing narratives from those critical of the
Marcoses and Marcos’s regime. They would have been keenly aware
that in Spain, Francisco Franco, a dictator like Marcos, after being
buried in the Valley of the Fallen for forty-four years, was exhumed and
transferred to a low-key grave beside his wife (BBC News 2019). From
a three decade saga of burial next comes the saga of exhumations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The first draft of this paper was presented by the first author in the
conference “The Remains of a Dictatorship: The Philippines under
Marcos” by the Ateneo de Manila University held on August 3–4,
2017. Later on, the second author gathered additional data and greatly
expanded the paper. The authors would like to thank Joel F. Ariate Jr.,
Miguel Paolo P. Reyes, and Elinor May Cruz for their help in crafting
and improving this paper and the Center’s former director Ricardo T.
Jose for his constant support.
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_________________
CHRISTIAN VICTOR A. MASANGKAY was a research associate at the Third World Studies Center
and is currently a medical student at the University of the Phi lippines College of Medicine.
Send correspo ndence to the author at cama sangka y@up.edu.ph.
LARAH VINDA DEL MUNDO is a research associate at the T hird World Studies Center and
is a graduate student at the History Department of the University of the Philippines Diliman.
Send correspondence to the author at lbdelmundo1@up.edu.ph.