‘False Nostalgia’

The book “False Nostalgia: The Marcos ‘Golden Age’ Myths and How to Debunk Them” is written by JC Punongbayan (Ateneo de Manila Press, 2023), a scholar with impressive credentials. A Rappler columnist on economics, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE), where he earned his doctorate and also graduated summa cum laude in 2009 and was awarded the Jose Encarnacion Jr. Award for Excellence in Economics and the Gerardo P. Sicat Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis. He was one of ten recipients of the 2024 Ten Outstanding Young Men Awards. According to Professor Solita Monsod of the UPSE: “This book is going to be perhaps the most lethal weapon against the so-far partially successful attempts (thanks to social media) to tout the 20-year Marcos era (January 1966 to February 1986) as the Golden Age in Philippine history.”

The author examines 50 claims that have been made regarding that period and he debunks every one of them with data and past studies.

The book is also a culmination of seven years of scholarly research.

There are 18 chapters and each chapter starts with a common myth or misconception about martial law and the economic aspects of the rule of Marcos Sr., which is followed by a quick rebuttal.

Although there have been several books and articles about martial law, this book is differentiated by the use of data from various sources.

The first chapter deals with the myth that the Philippines was the richest or the second richest country in Asia during the Marcos dictatorship. On a GDP per capita basis, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore were already richer than the Philippines in 1965, the start of the Marcos regime. Ten years later or by 1975, four more countries would be richer than the Philippines on a GDP per capita basis: Brunei, Macau, Malaysia and Taiwan.

By the end of the Marcos regime in 1985, additional countries became richer than the Philippines: South Korea, Maldives and Mongolia. The worst data revealed that the Philippines was the region’s economic leader in the 1950s or a decade before Marcos took over.

Another chapter claims that the Marcos era was the “Golden Age” of Philippine agriculture. One claim is that it was Marcos who established the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The IRRI was in fact established by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations in 1960, five years before Marcos was elected president.

Another myth was that it was Marcos who invented the Nutribun and eliminated hunger. In fact, the Nutribun was the result of a project by the USAID and developed by nutritionists at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1967 and introduced to the Philippines in 1970.

Hunger became acute during that period and the worst hit was Negros in the 1980s because of the collapse of the sugar industry. In 1985, as many as a million people in Negros Occidental went hungry. Oxfam America started a feeding program and found out that about 100,000 children were malnourished.

By 1986, Oxfam reported that one in five Negrense children were malnourished. Infant mortality soared to nearly double the national rate and most of the deaths were caused by malnutrition.

I think this is the reason that Western Visayas was one of the few regions where the Marcos Jr. presidential campaign did not fare well.

The collapse of the sugar industry due to mismanagement and monopoly by Marcos cronies is a story that is covered and analyzed in the book.

According to the book, based on statistics, poverty worsened after Marcos took over in 1965.

Another chapter in the book deals with claims about infrastructure. However, many of these infrastructure projects proved to be needless and inefficient. One example is the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. This project cost about $2.3 billion and took about a decade to build. To this day, the project has not produced a single kilowatt of electricity.

Another myth that the author writes about is that prices were low and that inflation rate was also low. Punongbayan showed statistics and graphs revealing that prices were volatile and that inflation reached historical highs. A chart shows that the highest annual post-war inflation rate in the Philippines was recorded in 1984 when it reached 50 percent.

Another claim that the book clarifies is that Marcos fought the oligarchy. According to Punongbayan, Marcos supplanted the old elite by creating a new elite. In 1998, Imelda Marcos was quoted as saying in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer: “We practically own everything in the Philippines from electricity, telecommunications, airlines, banking, beer and tobacco, newspaper publishing, television stations, shipping, oil and mining, hotels and beach resorts, down to coconut milling, small farms, real estate and insurance.”

The best way I can think of winding up this column is by quoting human rights lawyer Chel Diokno who wrote about the book: “The countless lies and disinformation on social media about the so-called Golden Age of martial law have created a huge divide in our country. This book will help put a stop to the spread of false narratives and bring to light what really happened during one of the darkest periods in Philippine history. JC Punongbayan has done a splendid job of setting the record straight and upholding the truth.”