They packed anything valuable that they could carry with them when the go signal to leave was given. Some Marcos loyalists and members of the household were assigned to burn official documents that would incriminate the Marcos regime.
The events started to get tense and bloody, but they were still not affecting me personally because my travel going home was far from the military camps, and from Malacañang Palace where the events were unfolding.
My way home was on the other side of the world, I might say.
As usual, I went home late that day, through Baclaran where I took two jeepney rides to San Pedro, Laguna, where my mother was living with me.
It was there that I watched the TV coverage of the storming of the official residence of President Ferdinand Marcos, his First Lady and his family. Although, I was not on the site when the actual invasion by the population took place, I was horrified watching the event developing into chaos and anarchy.
Describing the chaotic situation on the night the Marcosses left the country, Isabelo T. Crisostomo in his ‘Cory: Profile of a President’ book, said:
‘An hour after Washington confirmed that former President Marcos and his family and party had left the country…, thousands of people surged like a mighty tide into the Palace and began to ransack and pillage it. Shouting the new President’s nickname, the jubilant masses smashed their way into the white-walled, historic building, official residence of all Philippine Presidents beginning with the great and justly famous President Manuel L. Quezon.
Once inside the regal Palace, the hysterical, maddened mob began to explode firecrackers, burn books, destroy furniture, hurl appliances, framed pictures, telephone sets, small cabinets and lamp posts, everything they could lay their hands on, out of the windows. Decent people who were merely curious and anxious to have a glimpse of the presidential Palace were elbowed, thrashed and trampled by the rampaging flood of ‘emancipated humanity,’ a considerable number of them represented by thieves, kleptomaniacs and the frustrated seeking to wreak vengeance on a despised leader by stealing or destroying some discarded tokens and symbols of his regime.’
The following morning I was back at work and noticed that only a few of my employees had reported for work, and many were telling stories of how they spent the night at EDSA or Malacañang Palace, where the so-called confrontation between the Marcos loyalists and the military, spearheaded by RAM, the Ramos and Enrile military-headed group, had taken place.
Late in the afternoon and busy at work, I got a call from the late Carol Afan, a friend and co-worker. She was an official of the National Library who was considered by many as instrumental in producing much valuable researches on Philippines history and culture.
She was a nationalist and protector of Philippine culture. She was asking me to join her and two others from the National Historical Institute to document the destruction in the historic Malacañang Palace that happened the night before.
The other two NHI employees were a researcher and a photographer.
But before going to Malacañang Palace, a thirty minute trip by car, our group was brought to a house in Makati which was teeming with people from all sectors of society. There I also met a former classmate, a co-fraternity member during my college days. He told me that he was settled now in Mindanao.
It was at this residence that I encountered power brokers for the newly installed government.
It was like a market place selling, not goods, but power and influence.
My former classmate, knowing that I was with the group of persons very close to President Cory, asked me right there to help him secure a political place in Mindanao, where he was then a local leader. In some parts of the house, others were busy establishing the ‘right’ contacts.
I was introduced to the group by Carol Afan as being from the NHI and as one who would help document the cultural destruction that happened in Malacañang the night before.
We arrived at Malacañang Palace in a van, with other members of the group; some of them seemed to me to belong to high places. We entered the main entrance, which by that time was already under the control of the military that General Ramos had assigned to stop that ‘long night of unreined pandemonium and mob insanity as passions long seething and pent-up continued to burst into explosions of joy and hatred reminiscent of what happened as an immediate aftermath of glorious Roman conquests.’
Before we started our task, we were, the NHI designated photographer, asked to go around the Malacañang Palace grounds, and to make some photographic documentation. We went downstairs, but before going out to the grounds we found the legendary thousands of shoes owned by then First Lady Imelda Marcos and expensive ‘ternos’, as well as a number of newly constructed wooden crates which were not used due to the haste the group leaving the Palace.
We then went to the room of Marcos and found evidence of his deteriorating health—the lupus machine and the padded toilet seat; then, the regal look of then First Lady Imelda Marcos’ room mesmerized us; it was reminiscent of a room fit for a queen. It had a huge bed, with a hanging mosquito net and expensive furniture.
Papers were littered everywhere. Despite the thrashing it got from the angry mob the night before, one could still see the opulence of her lifestyle.
With the photographer, we went around the ground floor and then outside, and found mounds of still smouldering official documents; some were half-burned, including bank statements, which we collected and placed in a bag.
After documenting the surroundings by NHI camera, we went to the room of then First Lady Imelda Marcos where a small adjacent room was located. It was said that it was in that room where Imelda used to keep her well-known and expensive jewelry. We arrived when the other part of the group was already opening boxes of jewelry.
I noticed some of them were not just interested in making a list of the pieces of jewelry, but were more curious and excited to find out the carats or value of the jewelry they were handling and listing. Some watches had the faces of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, all Swiss-made.
On our part, from the ‘cultural agencies’, as official representatives of the Philippine government, we were given pens and ruled yellow paper to make itemized lists of the contents of each box of jewelry assigned to us.
As the members of the group were busy with their tasks examining the jewelry—rings, necklaces, watches, brooches, earrings, and many body fashion ornaments—we concentrated on listing how many gold necklaces, rings, male or female rings, and other items there were in each box assigned to us.
We were not rushing our task, after all, we were just producing a list of the jewelry items found in that room, as big as a five-star hotel room, full of cupboards and open shelves where boxes of valuable items were stocked, some still in their original brand name boxes.
Hours later, we were told to complete our list, even unfinished, as we were leaving. I did not complete my box, so I just shoved my yellow ruled paper listing the items inside that box assigned to me. I left my box and let someone seal it with sticky tape.
While looking around the room, I saw jewelry boxes were still scattered everywhere, showing that there had been a chaotic effort the night before when the Marcos retinue left, attempting to pack valuable items from the room and nearby guest room adjacent to then First Lady Imelda Marcos’ bedroom.
As we were leaving, the military assigned by General Ramos wanted to body search us individually for anything that we might have picked up or looted from the jewelry room.
However, we all protested and told the guard we would not be body-searched.
At the height of the negotiation, and to prevent any confrontation between the military and the civilian supporters of Cory, the military commander assigned to Malacañang gave way and let us go without checking us bodily. I learned later that someone, a member of the Cory family, strongly protested and stated how she was related to the President.
Many of the group were happy and delighted for a job well-done. From Malacañang, we went to a house in Makati briefly, then to a small restaurant in Malate where we spent the early morning chatting and eating shabu.
We were served boiling soup in which we cooked prepared pork, shrimps, beef, vegetables, fish and other food items prepared and ready on each table we occupied. It was like a luao, without music.
The following afternoon, I got another call from Carol telling me that I was being invited again, including my photographer, to go with the group to Malacañang to continue our documentation work.
Sensing that what we were doing would take a long time and not within my jurisdiction, besides having other work to do, I begged off and said that I had important tasks to complete.
Many years later, already settled in Australia, I was informed that a popular newspaper columnist wrote in his column revealing our group’s nocturnal visit to Macañang, the night after the downfall of the Marcos regime. I tried to get a copy of that article, to find out if he wrote truthfully about what happened during that night of ‘documenting history’ in the Palace but could not find one.
In newspaper articles that were published later concerning the Imelda riches, it appeared that there were three sets of jewelry involved, and one of them refers to the jewelry cited here and having found their way into the vault of the Central Bank of the Philippines.
From ‘When in Doubt, Salute!: Surviving Malacañang During Martial Law ’ by Remy Calangi Alejandrio and Benjie de Ubago.