The numbers — 70,000 detained, 35,000 tortured, 3,200 killed — represent the victims of President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ era of martial law, from 1972 to 1986. They mark one of the darkest periods in the Philippines’ history.
That darkness is enveloping the nation and its diaspora once again. In May 2022, 38 years after his family was exiled from the Philippines in the People Power Revolution, Bongbong Marcos Jr. was elected to a six-year presidential term alongside Vice President Sara Duterte, the daughter of former president and authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte.
Marcos and Duterte supporters romanticize martial law as a “golden age,” but many Filipinos — including Filipino Americans like us — reject this distortion of history.
