📍Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
1917 – 1986“I was born Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos on the 11th of September 1917 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, in the northern Philippines, the son of a lawyer and politician. I was a lawyer, a war hero — controversially — and a politician of extraordinary gifts who became President of the Philippines in 1965. I declared martial law in 1972 and governed as a dictator until 1986 when the People Power Revolution swept me from power and into exile in Hawaii, where I died in 1989. My wife Imelda's three thousand pairs of shoes became the symbol of our regime's excess. We stole between five and ten billion dollars from the Philippines. The Ilocos Norte childhood gave me the northern Filipino values of hard work and family loyalty that I applied to the construction of a kleptocracy.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Bonner, R. Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (1987), Times Books; Seagrave, S. The Marcos Dynasty (1988), Harper & Row