Here goes nothing!: Politics. Philippines. I have no idea. Yikes.

As a child, my understanding of my heritage was simple. My best example is about food. Since my mom is Filipino, and she cooks food, anything she makes (including perogies or cornbread) I considered "Filipino food." Ah, silly, simple, young me.

And then I reached grade 4. We had to cover current events in class. I had no idea what that meant. I watched "Kids news" on KVOS12 at almost 8am every weekday morning before finishing breakfast and heading to school. They reported mostly about positive events, and sometimes community events. I felt like I was always in the know for local news. But school-worthy current events had to be bigger than the puppy parade happening this coming weekend. So I asked my parents to help. I ended up reading an article about the former Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos and some of the many bad things he'd done. I can't remember the details. All I understood was that this type of person should have probably not been the ruler of a country. I had a hard time with the article. I did poorly for my report. I thought it was because I wasn't really a Filipino. I struggled to understand Canadian politics, so Filipino politics was surely too advanced for me. And of course, my only connection to the Philippines were the long distance phone calls my parents would have to make at odd hours of the day... They would speak in Tagalog or Kapampangan, but talk more loudly and slowly than usual so I could catch on to the conversations. I probably only understood 50% of what was happening. I ended up being quite discouraged about my heritage. Can you blame me though? My parents left that country for a reason. I often heard it wasn't a safe place to raise a family. So I was not in a rush to learn more, or even to try and prove them wrong.

Fast-forward to today. I'm an adult. I read the news all the time. I do my best to understand all sorts of politics. And yet, I feel just as confused as I was in grade 4 when it comes to the Philippines. Again. 

I know I don't know enough about my heritage. I strive to learn, but it confuses me endlessly. Lately, I see my Facebook feed split over the politics in the Philippines. And of course it's about my first ever current events subject matter, Marcos. Those of you like me know it's tough asking any grandparents, parents, aunties or uncles about the Marcos era. There's too much emotion tied to their generations and his reign. It's pretty tough to find legit articles to read too. I feel like there's no such thing as writing without a bias when it comes to the Philippines. 

My need to understand is driving me to redeem my fourth grade self and do some independent research on Marcos. I already gathered why people don't like him. But I would like to read for myself why he was so ethically and morally unsound. I will also search to understand why there are people who like him. I'll eventually look for archives and microfiches at the library. For now, I'll dig online. 

This article I found was originally published in The New York Times in January of 1986 by Jeff Gerth. It talks about Marcos' wartime role in the Philippines, and how it was all discredited. It's long and thorough. It only tells part of what his controversial life was about. If you read it, let me know what you think about it. I haven't read anything as informative as this about Marcos before so I'm quite happy to now have some of this info in my brain. 

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/23/world/marcos-s-wartime-role-discredited-in-us-files.html?pagewanted=1