When she married Ferdinand, Imelda did not suspect that she was tying herself to a consummate actor whose backstage life was drastically different. She did not know, for example, that he already had a common-law wife, and that he was already the father of three. A simple provincial naif, Imelda suffered at his hands a string of nervous breakdowns that transformed her into a relentless Filipina Medea, the enchantress who helped Jason gain the Golden Fleece but whose methods were frowned upon in polite society. Once Imelda grew used to the idea of falsification, she plunged vigorously into reconstructing both their histories. In his mother’s hometown of Sarrat, Imelda rebuilt the Marcos “ancestral home” to create a museum. The original house was only a simple storefront. When she was finished, it was a fine hacienda complete with air conditioning and exhibit cases containing Ferdinand’s shortpants from preschool days and assorted medals he never earned, including a U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor adorning a Marcos mannikin.
She did the same for herself, buying and remodeling one of the grandest houses in Manila, referring to it thereafter as her childhood home. In Tacloban, on the island of Leyte, she built a monument to herself, christening it the Santo Nino Shrine. Everyone in Tacloban called it “the Imelda Shrine.” Set in a formal garden shaded by royal palms, the $30 million pink concrete palace looked like the box her shoes came in, furnished by someone who thought the Romanovs ordered Fabergé eggs by the dozen. The guest suites contained elaborate dioramas, crèche scenes depicting immortal moments in the First Lady’s life: Imelda bestowing the wonders of modern technology on her “little brown people”; Imelda with Mao Tse-tung; Imelda with Muammar Khadafy. These miniatures were how she wanted to be remembered, not for three thousand pairs of size 8½ shoes, five hundred size 38 brassieres, and two hundred size 42 girdles.
On the second floor was a grand ballroom for imperial receptions. Silver his-and-her thrones sat before a faintly erotic floor-to-ceiling oil painting of Imelda rising from the sea like a Botticelli Venus. Beside the thrones stood the celebrated Santo Niño of Pandacan, a two-foot-tall ivory figure of Baby Jesus, dressed in the gold brocade damask cape and seven-league boots of a Spanish conquistador. On a more curious note, by the entrance to the throne room there was another shrine, tucked away in a corner, celebrating the mysterious origins of Ferdinand Marcos — a life-size statue of the Chinese pirate Li Ma-hong, who tried to establish his own dynasty in the Philippines in the sixteenth century. Ferdinand often hinted darkly that he was a direct descendant of Li Ma-hong. Since nobody knew he was 75 percent Chinese, they thought he was admitting to having the morality of a pirate.
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To understand the peculiar grip Ferdinand had on the Philippines, it is first necessary to see why the Chinese occupy such an important position there. Chinese had been coming to the islands in small numbers since before the tenth century, while the Vikings were sacking monasteries in Europe. A few traders settled along the coast of Luzon, bringing with them silks, ceramics, metals, and mirrors to exchange for gold with the lowland Malays and mountain tribes like the terrace-farming Igorots. They maintained a modest trading link with Amoy, Canton, and Hainan, which were only a few days away by junk.
When Ferdinand Magellan anchored off Cebu in 1521, he found a scattered world of Malay stilt villages and fisherfolk living in aquarian harmony. Each community consisted of a few hundred people headed by a datu, or chief. Magellan was slain by warriors led by Datu Lapu-Lapu, and his crew completed the first circumnavigation of the world without him. It was not long before a flood of Spanish priests and conquistadors arrived in the islands to put matters right.
The Philippines grew rich on New World silver from Mexico. A small number of Spaniards in Manila (rarely more than a thousand) sent galleons filled with Chinese goods to Acapulco, where these luxuries were eagerly received, and the galleons returned to Manila laden with precious metals. After the Spanish traders in Manila took their cut, the rest of the silver and gold went to China to pay for its products, through Chinese middlemen in the islands. In this way, Manila became an important Chinese financial center as early as the sixteenth century. Around each Spanish settlement grew a support community of Chinese, who provided everything needed in the tropics, including energy. The way the Chinese handled their gold and silver and moved it around the Orient from Amoy to Hanoi and the Indies was never fully understood by the Spaniards, or any Westerner who has come to the islands since.