Exposing the Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos

UPDATE: The online version of the exhibit may be accessed here.

Exposing the Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos 

An Exhibit

23-27 September 2024
Palma Hall Lobby
UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
UP Diliman

In authoritarian propaganda, photographs are a means to misdirect and obfuscate, glossy layers of lies that render the oppressors and plunderers objects of obeisance and desire, of envy and amiability, rather than of resistance and contempt. 

The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos was a publication of the National Media Production Center (NMPC). The sole task of NMPC then was to “be responsible for the preparation, production, and dissemination of mass media materials for the Office of the President/Prime Minister.” The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos is an undated booklet, though based on its content, it could not have been published later then 1981. It was likely included in packets containing other publications ghostwritten by intellectuals for Ferdinand E. Marcos which were intended for an international audience and Malacañang guests. Excluding the cover, it is a slim 16-page full-color publication set at letter size (8x11 inches). In it are eleven photographs of Marcos and his family at the height of his authoritarian rule. 

This was masterful propaganda, rendering the dictator into dad, the autocrat as family man; all care and companionship, the tyrant as a loving father. The trick was to never widen the vista from the familial. The one looking at Ferdinand Marcos, at his supposed private presence, was then imbued with a sense of intimacy, of being part of his family. The portrait of the dictator and his family became an inviting rather than a stultifying presence. 

It is this circumscribed and deceptive view that must be widened through historical inquiry so as to situate Marcos and his family within the abject reality of the nation they have oppressed and plundered. As Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s 107th birth anniversary was celebrated again this September as well as the 52nd year since he declared martial law—both while another Marcos is ensconced in Malacañang—it is the intent of the Marcos Regime Research (MRR) of Third World Studies Center (TWSC) to strip away the conjured benevolence of The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos, exposing the power of propaganda that made the Marcos dictatorship a desirable facade of power rather than a prison where one’s humanity was denied. The means to do so come mostly from materials that the Marcoses themselves have kept in Malacañang, which eventually ended up as part of the digitized archive of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). The remnants of their private dealings while luxuriating in the power that they have taken by force from the people through martial law is the other private face of the Marcoses that the PCGG files and other materials expose. This collection of historical materials should be considered public documents. What the Marcoses kept away from the public in their long years in power are the very ones that the MRR program utilizes to critique and expose the guarded private realm where the Marcoses plotted with and supported one another, surrounded by cronies and sycophants, to exercise their almost unbounded privilege in siphoning state resources into their own private, familial repositories. 

Here then are the supposed snapshots of the Marcoses' private lives, made more complete with receipts, letters, and court judgements among others, all proof that when it comes to the Marcoses, the private is publicly funded.