A Century of Frustration and Failure: On Philip Bowring’s “The Making of the Modern Philippines”

THE MANILA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT rose on a bayside field surrounded by tin-roofed shacks. When I first visited Manila, in March 1986, the main terminal looked outdated, with rain stains on its concrete-and-glass facade. The cream-colored linoleum floors were scuffed, and the corridors smelled of industrial cleaner and cigarette smoke. A chaotic queue shuffled to check in at the immigration desk, where clerks were casually eating their lunch. The atmosphere was festive, people everywhere shouting the singsong greeting, “Mabuhay!”

At the time, the immediate aftermath of the fall of Ferdinand E. Marcos and the triumph of Corazon C. Aquino, tens of thousands of Filipinos were taking to the streets to celebrate the “People Power Revolution,” and hundreds of international correspondents (some reports put the number at 2,000) were descending on Manila. Among them was Philip Bowring, an English journalist based in Hong Kong, where he was the editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Now, nearly four decades later, in his new book The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, Bowring takes on the turbulent 500-year history of one of Southeast Asia’s least understood and most unappreciated countries. Bowring’s data-packed text—full of details, characters, and statistics—comes as the Philippines seeks to reforge its frayed ties with the United States, partly for economic reasons, partly to restore its high standing among US allies in the Pacific, but mainly to ward off China’s intensifying threat in Southeast Asia.

It seems surreal, even taking into account the odd twists and turns of Philippine history, that the new president of the Philippines, seated in the Oval Office with President Biden in early May, is Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr.

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From the United States, the Philippines evokes Hollywood images of World War II battles, the Bataan Death March, General Douglas MacArthur in aviator sunglasses, pipe clenched in his teeth, wading ashore on the island of Leyte to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese.

Bowring sets off the first half of the book with Spain’s 300-plus-year reign, followed by the 48-year American occupation, and the 75 years of independence, democracy, and tumult that followed. In painstaking detail, he seeks to solve the puzzle—why and how the Philippines is like nowhere else.

The country feels different from the rest of Asia. The archipelago is strung along the South China Sea, with more than 7,000 islands fragmented by religions, languages, and cultures. It has 114 million people, and therefore one of the most populous nations in Asia. It is one of two predominantly Catholic nations in the region (the other is East Timor) and the only one to have been colonized by two Western powers, Spain and the United States. Its Malay culture was so influenced by Spain and the Catholic Church that its identity sometimes seems more Latin than Asian.

Over the millennia, the country has endured colonialism, paternalism, wars, and poverty. It has also hit high marks. In the 1950s, after it achieved independence from the United States on July 4, 1946, the country thrived. It enjoyed a democratic system, and higher literacy and income rates than most of Asia, including South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, countries that now surpass it. But today, in the 2020s, Bowring writes that,

despite two decades of reasonable economic performance, it is widely seen as having failed to match most of its neighbours in income growth and progress in education. It remains better known for natural disasters, flamboyant leaders, political violence and sporadic insurgencies, and for its major export—its own citizens finding work abroad which they could not find at home.

Bowring looks to the past for reasons why the Philippines has failed. The Catholic Church and conversion to Christianity had a profound impact on Filipinos. The church ran the colony, playing a bigger role than the Spanish military and the rulers in Madrid. Filipinos were unable to build an anti-colonial force; their leaders were captured or killed. Spain’s rule ended in 1898, when it lost the Spanish–American War and handed over the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico to the United States.

President William McKinley appointed William Howard Taft, a federal judge and future president, to govern the Philippines. Soon, hundreds of young Americans arrived to teach the English language and American ways to “our little brown brothers,” as Taft called Filipinos. Within 10 years, in 1907, the Philippines held its first US-style elections. Decades later, the 1934 Tydings–McDuffie Act gave the Philippines self-rule and promised independence in 10 years.

In the mid-1930s, the United States was already a global power, and the Philippines was a key strategic piece against expansionist Japan. Douglas MacArthur, whose father had once governed the country, was appointed field marshal to the Filipino army. Six years later, only months before Japan’s attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941, MacArthur was appointed commander of United States forces in the Pacific.

The commander’s first major battle, the Japanese attack on the Philippines just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was a defeat. His Filipino troops withdrew to Bataan Peninsula, and MacArthur, his family, and staff retreated to Corregidor Island. MacArthur acknowledged defeat, but President Roosevelt awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor and ordered him to Australia to take charge of all United States forces in the Pacific. MacArthur and his entourage took days to reach Australia, first on PT boats from Manila to Mindanao, then on B-17s to Australia, and finally on a train to Melbourne. There, not in Manila as commonly believed, MacArthur, speaking about the Philippines, declared, “I shall return.”

The Japanese occupation of the Philippines nearly broke the Filipino spirit. The Battle of Manila killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. The city was partly burned down, heavily damaged. The Manila Hotel, where MacArthur had lived, was attacked, its facade pockmarked with bullets.

MacArthur did return. On October 20, 1944, he waded ashore on the island of Leyte. That now legendary moment would set off the Battle of Leyte Gulf, by some estimates the largest in naval history. Japan lost half of its fleet. Three thousand Americans were killed. But US forces prevailed, and in February 1945, MacArthur declared Manila liberated. A few months later, he left the Philippines to become governor of Japan.

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The postwar period brought independence but little sociopolitical change. The elite remained entrenched. The United States signed a deal to keep its huge naval base at Subic Bay and the Clark Air Base for 99 more years, and tightened economic and trade agreements in its favor. The country’s politics, animated by inflated stories of wartime heroism, remained driven by personal rivalries among the elite and an ambitious younger generation.

None was more devious and ruthless than Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, who became president in 1965. In 1939, he had been convicted of the murder of his father’s political rival in Ilocos Norte. But he appealed his case to the Supreme Court and won. Downplaying his criminal record and pitching himself as a war hero, Marcos was elected to the legislature in 1949. His personal life was murky. He had children with a daughter of a prominent family but refused to marry her. Instead, in 1954, he married Imelda Romualdez, a former beauty queen known as the “Muse of Manila.” Early in their marriage, Imelda kept to the background but soon evolved into a major figure on the campaign trail, entertaining adoring crowds with her singing, always dressed in the floor-length gowns with butterfly sleeves that became her signature dress.

Marcos’s rule from 1965 to 1986 is undoubtedly the centerpiece of modern Filipino history. Under him, Manila was a Potemkin village created for big money, political loyalists, and foreign interests, not least those in Washington, DC. Ronald and Nancy Reagan came visiting, the Marcoses were guests of honor at the White House, and Imelda’s mammoth Cultural Center of the Philippines and her support of the arts earned her the international celebrity she madly sought.

But increasing student unrest and urban violence threatened the country’s stability, and Marcos moved quickly to crush it. He declared martial law in September 1972; suspended civil liberties; exiled, jailed, or killed opponents; and muffled the media. The military clamped down.

Washington wasn’t surprised. Bowring cites a 1971 State Department document that foretold Marcos’s moves: “He has already decided to try to extend himself in office by one means or another after his present term expires.” The White House and the US Congress saw martial law as a necessary step to restore order and confidence in the Philippines.

Marcos’s business might have gone on as usual but for the assassination of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. on his return to Manila from exile in the United States in August 1983. Aquino was shot on the tarmac at Manila International Airport by members of the armed forces under the command of a top general who, many believed, acted on Marcos’s orders.

An inquiry in Manila delivered guilty verdicts, but a Marcos-stacked court cleared all the accused. Money began to leave the country, the economy shrank, the left-wing opposition grew, Catholic bishops took to the airwaves and pulpits, and office workers and public servants launched protests in the streets.

In Washington, a select group of cabinet members and high-level policymakers explored ways to get rid of Marcos. His authoritarian regime was not the only problem—the Marcoses were accused of looting the Philippine economy of billions of dollars. Pressed to do something, President Reagan agreed to put economic pressure on Marcos but balked at throwing him out of office. White House emissaries, in person and by telephone, tried to persuade Marcos to reform his regime. He refused.

Instead, he announced a snap election for February 7, 1986. The opposition nominated Aquino’s widow, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, who had zero political experience (but had a cadre of American, English, and Filipino advisors), to run against the president. Killings, bribery, and intimidation marked the campaign. On election night, vote boxes went missing and the count was slowed to enable Marcos to rig the total. But an independent tabulator, partly funded by the United States, put Cory Aquino ahead. Refusing to concede, Marcos declared victory.

Anti-Marcos demonstrators gathered by the thousands to protest and take over the streets. Cory Aquino took refuge in a convent in Cebu. The military was split. And in Washington, Reagan remained reluctant to move against Marcos.

The crisis exploded on February 22, when Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and General Fidel V. Ramos, vice-chief of staff, revolted openly against Marcos. Their troops, mostly officers of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), captured two military camps in the capital. Throngs of Cory supporters gathered around the camps, carrying statues of the Virgin and kneeling in front of tanks.

Secretly, Washington allowed rebel helicopters to refuel and rearm at Clark Air Base, and the US military mission in Manila eavesdropped on radio traffic, revealing Marcos’s secret orders to his troops. Confronted by the crisis in Manila, Reagan issued a public plea to Marcos to quit: “Attempts to prolong the life of the present regime are futile … a solution to this crisis can only be achieved through a peaceful transition to a new government.” Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, acting with Reagan’s knowledge, called Marcos in Manila. Again, Marcos pleaded, but Laxalt warned him, “I think you should cut and cut cleanly. I think the time has come.”

A US helicopter carried Marcos, his family, and his cronies to Clark Air Base and then on to Hawaii and exile.

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Cory Aquino received immense personal respect at home and abroad. She affirmed democracy, civil liberties, and freedom of the press, and brought about some reforms and a new constitution. But she was vulnerable. The military, business figures, and political players saw her as weak. Rumors of coups circulated around town. In her first two years in office, she survived two coup attempts carried out by the same officers who had helped to install her. The ominous sirens and sandbags piled around the presidential palace, and Cory’s plaintive voice over the radio and on TV, calling for the rebels to surrender, shook the capital’s security, the economy, and her popularity.

Aquino’s presidency ended in a series of disasters. An earthquake killed 1,500 in 1990; Mount Pinatubo, a volcano, erupted in 1991, burying homes in ash; and a typhoon killed several thousand. She suffered a major electoral defeat when the Senate rejected an extension of the US bases agreement. The withdrawal of US military spending further damaged the country’s economy. Before leaving office, she tapped General Ramos, who had protected her against the coup plotters, as her successor.

A string of able, average, mediocre, and incompetent presidents followed Aquino. Ramos kept the country on a smooth economic track, but Marcos loyalist Joseph Estrada, a heavy-drinking gambler and former movie star, was impeached. Cory’s son, Benigno Aquino III, carried out some reforms but didn’t live up to expectations.

None of them was more dangerous than Rodrigo Duterte, a former Marcos loyalist and powerful mayor of Davao elected in 2016. Brutal, anti-elitist, profane, and no friend of Washington, Duterte swore to end drug traffic and kill narco traffickers, dealers, small-time pushers, and users. His profane attacks on the Pope and President Barack Obama endeared him to populists, and his attacks on the United States appealed to leftists. He was vulgar and sexist, admired by a misogynist population. His campaign pumped up his strongman image, even when the drug war, which claimed thousands, was partly a cover for the killings of Duterte’s political, personal, and business rivals.

By 2022, at the end of his term, Duterte was finished. He had failed to meet his “Build, Build, Build” promise, and the drug killings and disastrous pandemic outcome had revealed the malfeasance, incompetence, and chaos of his government.

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The second half of the book includes a dozen academic chapters—perfect for think-tank studies—on Filipino politics, economics, migration, trade, capitalism, religion, poverty, and foreign policy.

At the end of his book—completed before the crucial June 2022 presidential election—Bowring concludes that the fundamental reason for the country’s failures is a political and business system run by and for the elite: “By some measures, the Philippines needs a revolution, to throw off the old elites, end monopolies, open up to foreign competition, prioritize education, eliminate large-scale smuggling and enforce taxes.” That’s very unlikely to happen.

In office less than a year, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who at 65 is still known by his nickname “Bongbong,” has already gone a long way to rehabilitate his family name. The New York Times calls him “one of the Philippines’ most transformative foreign policy presidents.” His approval rating stands at 78 percent. His mother, Imelda, recently retired from the legislature but still has her sway; his sister, Imee, is a senator; and his son, Ferdinand Alexander (Sandro) Marcos, is a congressman. It seems clear that the Marcos restoration is well on its way.

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Luisita Lopez Torregrosa is a journalist and award-winning author with a focus on cultural trends and political and media profiles.