Martial Law, Distorted Histories, and the Philippines’ “Golden Age”

By Jill Parreno, writing from Clemson University.

(This article was originally printed in the Spring 2026 edition of our print magazine. To see the entire magazine, click here.)

In 1975, Ferdinand Marcos told Amnesty International in an interview that his administration had arrested over 50,000 Filipinos over the martial law period. Many decades later, stories of those victims remain buried—overshadowed by narratives that continue to glorify the Marcos era. Many would wonder why such a time period marked by imprisonment, censorship, and human rights abuses comes to be remembered by some as a “golden age”. The answer lies within how the Marcos regime shaped how history was remembered through propaganda, censorship, and education, with these distortions continuing to influence Philippine politics and society in the present day.  

Martial law officially began on September 22, 1972, at midnight, following an assassination attempt on Marcos’ Defense Secretary, where there were no casualties and no identified perpetrators. Officiated through Proclamation No. 1081, martial law was the turning point for a media-wide blackout. News and radios completely ceased broadcasting, flights were grounded, and political opponents were arrested en masse. While there is no one clear reason, the Marcos administration cited the growing need for civil reforms in the fight against rising communist threats and rebellion from the Filipino people as the cause of martial law. At the time, many Filipinos were protesting against the Marcos administration. In particular, the First Quarter Storm occurred in the first quarter of 1970—a period marked by political demonstrations and civilian protests. Marcos capitalized on the rising unrest, leveraging political instability to consolidate power by suspending Congress, canceling elections, and establishing himself as a prime minister under a new parliamentary system. Violence during protests was used by the administration to further justify the consolidation of power.

Marcos’ regime centered heavily on media censorship, driven in part by a fear of negative publicity. To control public perception, journalists were arrested and charged with “conspiring with the Left,” while major media outlets like ABS CBN—one of the country’s largest media networks—were shut down unless they complied with government-approved narratives. Through his established Media Advisory Council, the administration was able to tightly regulate critical content about Marcos and limit publicized dissenting voices. Instead, only television channels owned by Marcos’ allies and business partners were allowed to operate and broadcast to the Filipino public, ensuring that the information received reinforced and uplifted the regime’s image rather than challenge it.

Despite strict censorship laws, Filipino journalists and activists came together to establish underground publications known as the “mosquito press”—a term coined by Ferdinand Marcos to liken critical press to mosquitoes: irritating but not a total threat. Although small in scale, the mosquito press provided an alternative to government-controlled information, allowing many Filipinos to access accounts of real events deliberately hidden from the public. By reporting incidents such as extrajudicial killings and government corruption, these publications allowed Filipinos to question narratives pushed by the government and organize boycotts, particularly against state-controlled media. However, this work came at a significant risk. Journalists who challenged the regime were harassed, imprisoned, and in some cases, assassinated due to their reports, posing an extreme danger for citizens involved in the rebellion against censorship. Activists were detained without due process and separated from their families or subjected to torture. Forced confessions were a common scenario, with the administration resorting to extreme methods such as physical assault on the suspicion of conspiracy, which separated families and created an unusual, repressed environment growing up for children—sometimes referred to as “prison babies”—who were raised apart from their parents and placed in prison camps.

Even after the fall of the dictatorship, the control over public narrative by the Marcos family did not disappear, continuing instead through strategic storytelling. Much of the misinformation that emerged during Ferdinand Marcos’ time in office has often overshadowed verified accounts with narratives that deny human rights abuses and recast opposing political figures as villains through myths and conspiracy theories to deflect criticism. These curated narratives have persisted through generations and continued to distort how historical events are understood over time, especially in the era of social media. The utilization of platforms like Facebook and YouTube influencers to rebrand the reputation of the martial law era has been wildly successful, instead framing the era in a more nostalgic light and minimizing or ignoring its abuses. The time period, which is referred to as the “golden age,” is often portrayed as a period of growth through the mass construction of public transportation, hospitals, roads, and other overly ambitious developments, while simultaneously disregarding the failure of several mega-infrastructure projects and rising poverty levels at the time. These developments came along with Marcos’ Bagong Lipunan or New Society campaign, which many Filipinos now believe to have been a prosperous and orderly time, despite the massive corruption schemes that came along with this new order.

For many Filipinos, escape became the only means for survival. With the wealth inequality gap growing and economic instability deepening under the Marcos administration, the government introduced the 1974 Labor Export Policy to combat unemployment and rising poverty. While framed as an economic solution, the policy led to the migration of thousands of Filipinos, particularly in sectors such as healthcare. Many left not only to find work, but also to escape the repressed and unstable environment that martial law created. The economy started to rely on remittances being sent home from abroad, contributing to the growth of the Filipino diaspora, while losing many skilled essential workers to international companies.  

This large-scale migration had unintended consequences for how martial law is remembered by the general populace. Many of the individuals who directly experienced repression left the country and migrated to countries like Canada and the U.S., taking their firsthand accounts with them. Their physical absence meant gaps in memory where younger Filipinos were less likely to hear personal testimonies from those who lived through the regime, and more susceptible to propaganda schemes targeted to promote the Marcos family due to the lack of knowledge and sanitized narratives.

The manipulation of memory is continually reinforced through formal education as well. Many of the written textbooks presented in civics curricula in Filipino schools present the martial law era through whitewashed lenses or complete erasure, subtly downplaying the severity of the crimes against Filipinos and balancing these negative events with infrastructure achievements. Nostalgic revisionism and selective education components in formal and informal media work together to influence historical memory over time and eventually allow for distorted interpretations of the events of martial law to develop generations after the fact. 

 The consequences of distorted historical memory were especially evident during the 2022 Philippine Presidential Election, when Ferdinand Marcos’ son, Bongbong Marcos, won in a landslide. A significant portion of younger voters were exposed to and believed disinformation about Ferdinand Marcos’ legacy, showing strong correlations between exposure to misinformation and his son’s candidacy. Many stories that circulated during the election period claimed that the Philippines was one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia during Ferdinand Marcos’ administration and that no arrests of Marcos’ critics were made during martial law, both of which were later debunked. While many other components, such as promotion by former President Rodrigo Duterte, played a part in Bongbong Marcos’ presidential win, election-related disinformation was widely cited as a contributing factor in his electoral success. 

Martial law, despite coming at a profound human cost that lasted for generations, is an example of how long-term normalization of distorted narratives can continue to impact modern politics. With the modern-day impacts of the Marcos legacy, contemporary Philippine politics is a reminder of the importance of remembering and amplifying hidden voices; serving as a cautionary tale of how historical revisionism through propaganda and censorship can preserve disinformation decades later, influencing modern-day politics.