Reinventing Marcos: From Dictator to Hero

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

President Ferdinand E. Marcos held power for 21 years and lost power in four days. What happened and why is recounted in this memoir by Keith Dalton, a decade-long former foreign correspondent in the Philippines. He writes of a ruthless and repressive dictatorship – responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, imprisonments, torture, and ‘disappearances’.

Through despotism, nepotism, and corruption, Marcos built an empire of greed until he was overthrown in a People Power revolution in 1986. Decades after his death, Marcos has been ‘reinvented’ – mythologised and propagandised – by social media disinformation which claims it was a ‘golden’ age and Marcos was the nation’s best-ever president. This false legacy helped Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. win the presidency in 2022.

Dalton remembers an autocrat and a ‘bloody’ age when Marcos politically gutted and economically plundered the nation. Reinventing Marcos is his account of the 10 years he was there.