US envoy: ‘Marcos a chess player, par excellance’

FOR those who feel the need to know more about Philippine history but detest the partisan, colored narrative, a more lucid and surprisingly fair account can be read online from the Office of the Historian, US State Department.

The Office has been declassifying records from its foreign agencies and this includes the US Embassy in Manila. So far, the most interesting volume for the Philippines is the Foreign Relations Series and already available is Volume XX on Southeast Asia, 1969-1972, which spans the early years of the administration of Ferdinand Marcos.

Filipinos would not be surprised at how the US admired Marcos for his intelligence and deep understanding of the weaknesses of the Philippine political system. While sometimes wary of him and his wife Imelda Marcos, they understood that deep down, they were pro-America and anti-communist.

The US ambassador in the Philippines at that time (1969-1973), Henry Alfred Byroade, described Marcos as a “chess player, par excellance.”

“It is usually possible to predict that he will choose as his next move one or two or three options that seem open to him – yet we cannot be certain just which one of these the next sealed envelope will contain,” Byroade said in an official telegram to the State Department on September 27, 1972.

Byroade’s note was sent six days after the proclamation by Marcos of martial law in the Philippines.

Despite the US government’s official denial, the Office of the Historian documents confirm that American officials were aware from the start that Marcos was planning to impose martial law, given the increased Communist threat and deterioration of peace and order, including a series of bombings, in the capital city.

In fact, Ambassador Byroade had a conversation about Marcos and the Philippine situation with US President Richard Nixon at the White House on January 15, 1971. Nixon observed that the country was a “disaster area” although Byroade pointed out progress in several areas including rice production under the Green Revolution program, fiscal reforms, and an effective population control program.

Politically, though, the situation was grave because of “serious disturbances” as political forces hostile to Marcos were reported to be stirring up tensions and preparing to take over key installations in Manila. Marcos apprised Byroade of an intelligence report that $8 million worth of guns had been purchased by opposition elements in Hong Kong.

Byroade also told Nixon that the anti-Marcos forces were led by Eugenio Lopez (misspelled as “Argenio” in the official memorandum of conversation) who, he said, was one of the richest men in the Philippines, brother of Vice President Fernando Lopez, “and the worst enemy of the United States there.” Byroade likewise reported that the current crisis in the Philippines was Lopez’s doing, incuding supporting strikes by jeepney drivers.

“In addition, there was unprecedented campaign of villification against Marcos, also against the US, in the newspapers owned by the Lopez interests, which comprised the majority of the Philippine press. All of this added up to a very nasty situation,” Byroade said.

Finally, Marcos informed Ambassador Byroade during a conversation in Malacañang that “he might find it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and establish martial law in the city of Manila.” Marcos wanted to know if the US government would support him or work against him, Byroade told Nixon.

Nixon responded that the US would “absolutely” back Marcos up – “to the hilt” – “so long as what he was doing was to preserve the system against those who would destroy it in the name of liberty.”

The US officials were aware that Marcos was not entirely motivated by national interest but pragmatically or cynically noted that this was something that the US had already expected from Asian leaders.

“The important thing was to keep the Philippines from going down the tube, since we had a major interest in the success or failure of the Philippine system. Whatever happens, the Philippines was our baby,” the memorandum further stated.

Historians of the future will see the Marcos dictatorship as a complex era, which had both good and bad aspects, and certainly far from the “yellow” narrative that it was an entirely a dark period.