Marcos Of The Philippines A Biography

First released in 1969, during a time of great uncertainty for the Philippines, this unauthorized biography of one of the most intriguing women in the world was banned in her own country. For writing it, Carmen Pedrosa, with her family, was exiled to London for 20 years.Despite that, The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos became a local and international hit, selling out all of its print runs.Now, decades after the end of Martial Law, the book returns to tell the story of Imelda Romualdez-Marcos to a new generation.A modern Cinderella tale, The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos tells of how she rose from being a destitute child to becoming the most powerful woman of the country. Starry-eyed, penniless, and provincial, Imelda was in search of good fortune in Manila. Then came Ferdinand E. Marcos, a knight in shining armor, rescuing her from poverty and misery. "e;I will make you the First Lady of the land,"e; he promised her.Complete, detailed, and replete with facts and documents that have been painstakingly hidden from the public by the administration's image-makers, her life story unfolds, one truth at a time. It explains Imelda's much vaunted charisma that, in President Marcos' own words, garnered one million votes in the 1965 elections. She is a person who is difficult to be indifferent to. This book tells us why.

Examines the life of the Philippine political leader whose presidency was viewed by some as a dictatorship.

Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Phillippines.

In 1966, Imelda Marcos was "e;rich, young, and beautiful, an Asian Jacqueline Kennedy."e; Years later, Benigno Aquino would call her "e;another Evita Peron,"e; referring to her ruthless ambition and seemingly insatiable desire for wealth and power. By 1986, she was in exile in Hawaii, having been driven from the country she and her husband had led for over twenty years.In Imelda Marcos, Filipino journalist Carmen Navarro Pedrosa tells the full story of Imelda's life: her tragically poor childhood and her subsequent drive to succeed socially, financially, and politically.A naive young woman from the provinces, Imelda garnered attention in 1953 as the winner of the Miss Manila contest and caught the eye of a rising young congressman, Ferdinand E. Marcos. After a courtship of eleven days, they were married. Under Ferdinand's stern tutelage, Imelda would emerge as his most important political asset and, later, as one of the wealthiest, most powerful women in the world.Based on years of research and in-depth interviews with both friends and foes of the Marcoses, this biography traces Imelda's life from her poverty-stricken origins to her present state of exile, providing insight not only into her character but also into the demise of the Marcos regime and the current turbulent political situation in the Philippines.

During February 1986, a grassroots revolution overthrew the fourteen-year dictatorship of former president Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. In this book, Jose V. Fuentecilla describes how Filipino exiles and immigrants in the United States played a crucial role in this victory, acting as the overseas arm of the opposition to help return their country to democracy. A member of one of the major U.S.-based anti-Marcos movements, Fuentecilla tells the story of how small groups of Filipino exiles--short on resources and shunned by some of their compatriots--arrived and survived in the United States during the 1970s, overcame fear, apathy, and personal differences to form opposition organizations after Marcos's imposition of martial law, and learned to lobby the U.S. government during the Cold War. In the process, he draws from multiple hours of interviews with the principal activists, personal files of resistance leaders, and U.S. government records revealing the surveillance of the resistance by pro-Marcos White House administrations. The first full-length book to detail the history of U.S.-based opposition to the Marcos regime, Fighting from a Distance provides valuable lessons on how to persevere against a well-entrenched opponent.