By itself, from monuments to town arcs to marquees to signages, memorials are art forms, or at the very least, it must rely on art to render visible the memorialization being made. The act of memorializing historical actors by naming places after them or putting up monuments or plaques is usually taken both as a political and cultural gesture. It valorizes the actor and serves as an index to a society’s values and historical understanding. Through time, should it last, these memorials also inform a people’s collective memory and identity. In their most superficial function, memorials are markers for addresses and directions, transport stops and gathering points; signages of transience. Or they are hallowed sites, anchors of unwavering belief on who must be honored and put on a pedestal.
Thus, in the case of the Marcoses, to survey and locate these sites is to make visible the terrain of loyalties to the Marcoses, to preserve and put on display the remnants of the Marcos regime, and to offer to the public a network of memorials and remembrances, a still shifting contour of our collective memory as the Marcoses bear upon them.
Throughout the country are at least seventy “Marcos sites”—which include public art and monuments, (historical) markers, museums and libraries, and schools, hospitals, and a stadium (still, even after the EDSA Revolution) named after the Marcoses or the New Society/Bagong Lipunan—as we discovered after a preliminary online search and from previous fieldwork conducted in Ilocos Norte. Our initial inventory excludes roads, bridges, and similar infrastructure; barangays and towns; and possibly rooms or building floors named after the Marcoses. Of these, the majority are in Luzon: twenty are located in Metro Manila; seven located within a 1-2 hours drive from Manila; at least twenty in Ilocos Norte; twelve in other provinces in Region I, Region II, and the Cordillera Administrative Region; and at least one each in Quezon, Tarlac, and Bataan. Budget permitting, we hope to be able to visit all of these sites to photograph them and, if possible, obtain additional information from those often within close proximity of the sites (or otherwise regularly come in contact with them) or from those tasked specifically with describing the sites/artifacts (e.g., museum guides).
These photographs, with captions/descriptions, will be made publicly accessible via the Marcos Regime Research program’s website, diktadura.upd.edu.ph. A map of the country showing the location of these sites will also be made accessible through the website. Pictures/information about sites not visited but identified and verified will also be uploaded, with permission and due credit, to the site. The public will be encouraged to submit information about other “Marcos sites” that they would like to be included in the online inventory. It is envisioned that the map/inventory will grow over time. In the future, artistic responses to the sites included in the inventory can also be featured on the website.