Among the chapters relevant to my objective were the following: Chapter Four, “The Book”; Chapter Five, “The Richest Woman in the World”; Chapter Six, “Sacrifice the Queen”; and the Epilogue, “The Shoes Matched.”
Except in the Philippines, too few especially among her friends around the world knew her story. So I put together a book that would encompass how the former First Lady amassed the kind of wealth and power that led Cosmopolitan Magazineto name her as one of the richest women in the world.
I asked Cosmopolitanwhat their reason was for describing her thus. They replied that it might be true that there were many women far richer than she was but none would match the chutzpah with which she made use of an entire country’s resources as her own. As soon as she ceased to be First Lady, that wealth vanished like a pierced bubble.
There are two lessons in The Rise and Fall of Imelda Marcos: one is about how private needs impinge on public lives, and the other is that Imelda’s story ought to be a reminder that greed and avarice are crimes that don’t pay. As the writer of this book, I hope I have done my job to make others remember.
With its e-publication, I hope to reach many more readers, Filipinos or otherwise, than I had when this book first appeared in print in 1987.
Carmen Navarro Pedrosa
April 2013