I had been invited to lunch with Mrs. Ariyoshi the day after I arrived, and I was hoping that she had been able to appeal to Mrs. Marcos on my behalf. Ariyoshi informed me instead that Mrs. Marcos would not see me. She assured me it had nothing to do with me personally; it was just that a policy had been made against interviews.
She said that Mrs. Marcos was sorry I had made the trip from New York for nothing. If I called the Marcos house immediately, she said, Mrs. Marcos herself would explain why it was impossible. Ariyoshi had done all that she could. When I called, Mrs. Marcos came immediately to the telephone. She was strong-voiced and definite.
She had not, she reminded me correctly, ever promised me an interview. With all these cases pending against us all over the world, an interview might prejudice people against me. This is not the right time for me to give my side of the story. There is such an overwhelming force against us. As much as possible we would like to keep our silence for the time being. She hesitated again. She gave me the address: Kalanianaole Highway. Of course, I already knew where she lived; everyone in Honolulu knew.
I had driven by the house every day since I had been there, and once I had parked my car nearby and walked along the beach to the Marcos place.
I was able to look through the shrubbery and stare at the house for fully five minutes before two guards, sitting on chairs and chatting together, noticed me.
The security provided by the state had been taken away from the Marcoses three and a half weeks after they arrived in Hawaii; these guards were part of a volunteer security force made up of pro-Marcos members of the Filipino colony in Honolulu. They had walkie-talkies but no guns that I could see; however, when I realized that they had spotted me, I quickly turned and walked away. The houses are said to be in the names of two well-to-do Filipinos. The Marcoses cannot admit owning the houses, for fear the present Philippine government will put a claim on them.
For example, an approach had been made through an emissary for the Marcoses to rent one of the great houses on the fashionable Caribbean island of Mustique, but because Mustique is a favorite vacation retreat for members of the British royal family, it was thought that the Marcos presence might prove embarrassing.
Each Sunday after Mass, which is said privately for them in the house, members of the pro-Marcos Filipino community in Honolulu arrive with food, flowers, and money for the couple and their entourage.
In the beginning of their stay, demonstrators collected in front of the house with signs saying, marcos, murderer, go home or honk if you want the marcoses to leave. To the distress of the neighbors, the honking went on all day and all night. Since the bombing attack of Libya and the nuclear fallout of Chernobyl, however, the press has turned its attention away from them, and the demonstrations have stopped, but the former First Family remain in a sense incarcerated, behind locked gates.
There are neighbors close by on both sides, with no walls or fences between the houses. Shrubbery and a high wooden fence with two gates that are kept locked at all times protect the house from the highway. I waved and yelled through the fence, and the gate was finally opened when I made it clear that Mrs. Marcos was expecting me. Five or six old cars littered the short driveway. Parking was difficult, and the guards were unhelpful.
The entrance to the single-story, shingle-roofed, ranch-style house was visually marred by an electric-blue tarpaulin strung up haphazardly between two trees to protect the guards from the sun. Beneath it stood a wooden table and a couple of chairs.
On the table were a plate of ripening mangoes and several empty Pepsi-Cola cans. Entering the small front hallway, a visitor is immediately confronted with the presidential seal, which fills an entire wall. Next to it on a pole is the flag of the Philippines. The house consists of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a lanai, a sort of porch furnished like a living room which is a feature of most Hawaiian houses.
Next to the house is a separate one-room guesthouse. There are, I learned, more than forty people living here. Most of the original furniture has been removed or replace by rented furniture.
A plain wooden table on the terrace was covered with a white plastic tablecloth and surrounded by card-table chairs with mgn rental stenciled on the back. In the living room were several television sets, a VCR, and both audio and video recording equipment. A Honolulu rumor has it that the Marcoses ruined their friendship with President and Mrs. Reagan by videotaping a private telephone conversation they had with them and later giving the tape to television stations.
An upright piano and a synthesizer were pushed against the wall of the lanai. On practically every table surface there were mismatched bouquets of tropical flowers, many wrapped in aluminum foil or tied with homemade bows, unwatered, dying or dead. There were flies everywhere. About a dozen men in Hawaiian shirts were seated about the room. In a gray suit, shirt, and tie, I felt overcitified.
President Marcos, we were told, had a toothache and was at the dentist, but the First Lady would be with us presently. For the first time it occurred to me that all the people there had been summoned, as I had, to see her. I made conversation with a Filipino journalist from New York who had worked in the consulate when Marcos was in power, and with Anthony Castillo, the pop singer from Manila, who told me that one of the first things Corazon Aquino had done was abolish all the cultural programs started by Imelda Marcos.
All the artists in the country, he said, stood behind the Marcoses. And then the First Lady entered the room, the strong scent of heady perfume preceding her. She moves in an extraordinarily graceful manner; even in those simple rooms she was like a queen in a palace.
All of those seated jumped to their feet the moment her presence was felt. Marcos was again dressed as she had been dressed for every public appearance since she arrived in Hawaii: the green dress, black patent-leather shoes, and pearl earrings and ring which were obviously costume jewelry.
Her black hair was majestically coiffed. She gave instructions to a servant to offer coffee to everyone. She greeted a university professor and discussed briefly a paper he was preparing. She exchanged affectionate words with a group of Filipinos who had come from California and New York to participate in the wedding-anniversary celebration.
She pointed out to another visitor a huge color photograph in an ornate gilt frame of the president and her with their children and grandchildren which had been an anniversary gift. I understood before she came to greet me that I was part of a morning levee, one of a group being given an audience and a few words of greeting. She offered her hand. Her crimson fingernails had been carefully manicured with white moons and white tips. She is, at fifty-seven, still a beautiful woman.
We exchanged a few unmemorable words. When I conveyed greetings from the people who had brought me into contact with her, she indicated that I should take a seat on the lanai. Then, on instructions from her that I was not aware of, the room cleared and we were alone. Imelda Marcos had been described to me by a friend who knew her well as a woman who understood luxury better than anyone in the world. Flies buzzed around us in great profusion, but she seemed not to notice them.
She never waved them away. I had the feeling that she had simply ceased to pay any attention to the surroundings in which she was living. There is a sense of tremendous sadness about her, but if she is at times despondent, she manages to shake herself into positive pursuits.
They tell how Imelda abolished mechanized street cleaning in Manila and dressed the homeless of the city in yellow-and-red uniforms and provided them with brooms and the title Metro Aide—instead of street cleaner—so that the streets would be immaculate around the clock.
On a balmy evening a little over a year ago, Malcolm Forbes gave a dinner cruise around Manhattan aboard his yacht, The Highlander, in honor of Mrs.
While the party was still in progress, a lady-in-waiting went around the ship and issued impromptu invitations to a select number of Mr. On arriving there, guest were taken up to the sixth-floor discotheque, where an enormous supper had been laid.
As the festivities came to an end and guests started leaving, Mrs. Marcos proved again that there were inner circles within inner circles by asking a few people to stay behind so that she could show them the private floor of her mansion, where her bedroom and sitting room were. Two large leather caskets, each about the size of half a desk, were brought out by maids. Each contained seven or eight drawers filled with jewelry, which were emptied onto the floor so that the remaining guests could try them on.
That was said to be her favorite late-night entertainment, to forestall going to bed. A Madison Avenue jeweler who specializes in estate jewelry told me that Mrs.
Marcos had a passion for canary diamonds until last year, when the color yellow became associated with the ascendancy of Corazon Aquino.
The town house was furnished out of a Park Avenue triplex maisonette that had belonged to the late philanthropists Mr. Leslie R. Instead she bought the entire contents of the enormous apartment so that she could do up the Sixty-sixth Street town house in just a few days in order to be ready for a party she was giving for Adnan Khashoggi. Although she was reverential about royalty, she had been known to upstage the crowned heads she revered.
She once arrived at a party for the shy and retiring Queen of Thailand, for example, with her own television crew to film her being received by the queen.
This is a good period for enlightenment. I have no bitterness in my heart. Disinclined to be questioned, she was more than inclined to talk, and for the three and a half hours that the promised ten minutes eventually stretched into, she talked nonstop on a variety of topics as if she had been starved for conversation. If I sometimes asked things that she did not wish to comment on, she kept talking as if she had not heard me.
Thirty minutes into our visit, I asked if she minded if I wrote down something she had said so that I would be able to record her words accurately. I felt I was watching a well-rehearsed performance as she expounded at great length on the subject of love, couched in a series of mystical, Rajneesh-sounding philosophical phrases.
Love has only one opposite. The opposite of love is not hate. Marcos lost her election bid to military leader Fidel V. Ramos and soon found herself in another court battle.
Her conviction was later overturned in by her country's supreme court, the same year in which she withdrew from her second presidential run. Imelda Marcos smiles as she celebrates her 85th birthday at her late husband president Ferdinand Marcos' hometown of Batac town, Ilocos norte, north of Manila on July 2, A first lady no longer, Marcos has struck out on her own as a political force. She won her first election since returning from exile in the mids, serving as a member of the country's House of Representatives for several years.
In , she won the election to become the representative for Ilocos Norte province, the area where her late husband was born and where the Marcos family still wields political clout. Two of her children are in politics as well. Marcos, however, may never fully emerge from the shadows of her past.
Though most of the civil and criminal cases filed against the Marcoses have been dismissed, Imelda continues to face legal challenges. The story of Marcos has continued to fascinate the media, with a disco-oriented and somewhat controversial musical about her life, Here Lies Love , presented by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim in at New York's Public Theater. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
Corazon Aquino was the 11th president and first female president of the Philippines. She restored democracy after the long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Known for running a corrupt, undemocratic regime, Ferdinand Marcos was the president of the Philippines from to before fleeing to the United States. Marco Rubio was elected to the U. Senate representing Florida in After an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he was re-elected to the Senate in Venetian merchant and adventurer Marco Polo traveled from Europe to Asia from to After his execution, he became an icon for the nationalist movement.
In , he became the 16th president of the Philippines. Ramon Magsaysay became the seventh president of the Philippines in and is credited with restoring law and order during the Philippine crisis of the s. Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo led his country to achieve independence after fighting off both the Spanish and the Americans.
Manny Pacquiao has won world boxing titles in eight different weight divisions and is considered one of the world's best boxers. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Historical Getty Images. Andy Warhol and Imelda Marcos in Ron Galella Getty Images. Imelda Marcos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Imedla Marcos and Doris Duke at a Hawaiian dance festival in Bettmann Getty Images. Marcos in an image from The Kingmaker.
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