Early life

Imelda was born on July 2, 1929 in Manila, Philippines to Remedios Trinidad (died 1938) and Vicente Romuáldez, brother of Philippine Supreme Court Associate Justice Norberto Romuáldez. Her paternal ancestors were from a land-owning family in Tolosa, Leyte with mixed Visayan and Spanish ancestry. She has five other siblings: Benjamin (1930-2012), Alita, Alfredo, Armando, and Concepcion who spent their childhood in San Miguel. After their mother died in 1938, the family moved to Tacloban, where they were raised by her servant Estrella Cumpas. She claimed to have met Douglas MacArthur when he landed in Tacloban at the end of World War II. She speaks Tagalog and English, the languages of Manila, as well as Waray, the language of Tacloban. She is Roman Catholic.

Imelda returned to Manila in 1950 at the request of her cousin Daniel, where she worked in a music store on Escolta street as a singer to attract customers. She took voice lessons at the music conservatory of the University of Santo Tomas. Imelda later joined a beauty pageant known as Miss Manila where she placed second but was named the Muse of Manila after contesting the results. She briefly dated Benigno Aquino, Jr. in the early 1950s before she met her future husband. On May 1, 1954, Imelda married Ferdinand Marcos, a Nacionalista Party congressman from Ilocos Norte. The marriage resulted in four children: Imee (born on November 12, 1955), Ferdinand Jr., aka Bongbong (born on September 13, 1957), and Irene (born on September 16, 1960), and an adopted girl named Aimee. She is the aunt of politician Martin Romualdez.

First Lady

Main article: Conjugal dictatorship

Imelda served as First Lady after Ferdinand Marcos was elected on November 9, 1965 as the 10th President of the Philippines. Her role in the presidency was controversial because she was involved in altercations, including one with The Beatles when the band allegedly snubbed her invitation for a state dinner at the presidential palace, and another with Dovie Beams for the actress' alleged relations with Ferdinand. On September 23, 1972, Ferdinand declared martial law and rewrote the Constitution of the country. As First Lady, she became "the other half of the conjugal dictatorship." She stirred controversy after an assassination attempt against her occurred on December 7, 1972, when an assailant tried to stab her with a bolo knife but was shot by the police. The motive appeared to have been her role in her husband's presidency but human rights dissidents believed it was staged by the government.

Imelda orchestrated public events using national funds to bolster her and her husband's image. She secured the Miss Universe 1974 pageant for Manila, which required the construction of the Folk Arts Theater in less than three months. She organized the Kasaysayan ng Lahi, a festival showcasing Philippine history. She also initiated social programs, such as the Green Revolution, which was intended to address hunger by encouraging the people to plant produce in household gardens, and created a national family-planning program. During the early 1970s, she took control of the distribution of bread called nutribun, which actually came from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Imelda was appointed in 1978 as a member of the Interim Batasang Pambansa (National Congress) representing Region IV-A and was also appointed as Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary, allowing her to tour the United States, the Soviet Union, Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Cuba. Throughout her travels, she became friends with Richard Nixon, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and Joseph Tito. A Wikileaks diplomatic note "claims she was waiting for Spain's dictator Franco to die so she could fly to Madrid for the funeral." She claimed her travels were needed to secure oil from Iraq and Libya, which she also said was instrumental in the signing of a peace treaty with the Moro National Liberation Front.

Imelda held the position of Minister of Human Settlements, allowing her to construct the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Heart Center, the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine International Convention Center, the Coconut Palace, the Manila Film Center, and the Calauit Safari Park. She purchased property in Manhattan in the 1980s, including the US$51 million Crown Building, the Woolworth Building in 40 Wall Street, and the US$60 million Herald Centre. She refused to buy the Empire State Building because she felt it was "too ostentatious."

Power struggle

Imelda was instrumental in the 1980 exile of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr., who had suffered a heart attack during his imprisonment. Martial law in the Philippines was later lifted in 1981 but Ferdinand continued to be president. While her husband began to suffer from lupus erythematosus, she effectively ruled in his place. Aquino returned in 1983 but was assassinated at the Manila International Airport upon his arrival. With accusations against her beginning to rise, Ferdinand created the Agrava Commission, a fact-finding committee, to investigate her, ultimately finding her not guilty.

On February 7, 1986, snap elections were held between Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino, the widow of Benigno Aquino Jr. Despite her husband claiming to have won the elections, allegations of vote rigging led to mass protests that would be later known as the People Power Revolution. On February 25, Imelda and her family fled to Hawaii. After they left Malacañang Palace, she was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 1,000 handbags, and pairs of shoes, the exact number of which varies with estimates of up to 7,500 pairs. However, Time reported that the final tally was only 1,060. The location where her shoes and jewelry were kept was later destroyed and the contents stolen and a painting of her was destroyed outside the Palace.

In October 1988, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, together with eight associates (including Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman and weapons smuggler believed to have been involved with her husband's regime), were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice. Tobacco heiress Doris Duke posted $5 million bail for Imelda. The Marcos couple's defense team was led by criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence. Actor George Hamilton, an unindicted co-conspirator, testified at trial under a grant of immunity, acknowledging that he had received a $5.5-million loan from an associate of hers. In July 1990, following a three-month trial, she was acquitted of all charges. By that time, Ferdinand had died in exile in Hawaii on September 28, 1989.

Later years

Main article: Electoral history of Imelda Marcos

Imelda was allowed to return to the Philippines by Corazon Aquino on November 4, 1991. The following year, she ran for president in the presidential elections on May 11, 1992, finishing 5th out of 7 candidates. On May 8, 1995, she was elected as a congresswoman of Leyte, representing the first district, despite facing a disqualification lawsuit in which the Supreme Court ruled in her favor. She sought the presidency again on May 11, 1998 but later withdrew to support the eventual winner Joseph Estrada and she finished 9th among 11 candidates. In November 2006, she started her own business, a fashion label that included designing jewelry. She was acquitted in one of her graft charges on March 10, 2008 by the Manila Regional Trial Court due to reasonable doubt.

Imelda ran for the second district of Ilocos Norte in the elections on May 10, 2010 to replace her son, Ferdinand Jr., who was running for Senate under the Nacionalista Party. During her term, she held the position of Millennium Development Goals chairwoman in the Lower House. In 2011, the Sandiganbayan's Fifth Division ordered her to return US$280,000 in government funds taken by her and her husband from the National Food Authority. She filed her certificate of candidacy on October 3, 2012 in a bid to renew her term as Ilocos Norte's second district representative. She won re-election on May 14, 2013. On October 16, 2015, she filed as a candidate for her third and final term.

Wealth

During her time as First Lady, Imelda was seen as a "symbol of excess" due to her expensive shopping sprees. On one occasion, she spent $2,000 on chewing gum at the San Francisco International Airport and, on another, she forced a plane to do a U-turn mid-air just because she forgot to buy cheese in Rome. Her collection of shoes, including by Pierre Cardin, now lies partly in the National Museum of the Philippines and partly in a shoe museum in Marikina. Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) damaged her ancestral home in Tacloban, which also serves as a museum, although she still retains homes in Ilocos Norte and Makati, where she resides.

Imelda allegedly owns Swiss bank accounts under the pseudonym "Jane Ryan". Switzerland's federal tribunal ruled in December 1990 that cash in Swiss banks would only be returned to the Philippine government if a Philippine court convicted her in a "fair trial." In March 2008, a judge in Manila in the Philippines acquitted her of 32 counts of illegal transfers of funds to Swiss bank accounts between 1968 and 1976, determining that the government had failed to prove its case. In 2012, she declared her net worth to be US$22 million and she was listed as the second-richest Filipino politician behind boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao. She claimed her fortune came from Yamashita's Gold, a semi-mythical treasure trove that is widely believed in the Philippines to be part of the Japanese loot in World War II. Her property used to include jewels and a 175-piece art collection, which included works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Canaletto, Raphael, as well as Monet's L'Église et La Seine à Vétheuil (1881), Alfred Sisley's Langland Bay (1887), and Albert Marquet's Le Cyprès de Djenan Sidi Said (1946).

Early in 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposed her daughter Imee among people involved in offshore banking. Imee was helping Imelda hide their wealth in the British Virgin Islands. In October 17, 2013, the sale of two Claude Monet paintings, L'Eglise de Vetheuil and Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, became the subject of a legal case in New York against Vilma Bautista, a one-time aide to her. Her secretary was sentenced in January 6, 2014. On January 13, 2014, three collections of her jewelry: the Malacanang collection, the Roumeliotes collection, and the Hawaii collection; along with paintings of Claude Monet were seized by the Philippine government. In 2015, a rare pink diamond worth $5 million was discovered in her jewelry collection. On February 16, 2016, the government of the Philippines announced that the three collections, valued at about $21 million, are to be auctioned off before the end of Benigno Aquino III's term on June 30, 2016.

Legacy

See also: List of awards and honors bestowed upon Imelda Marcos

Imelda is a fashion and pop culture icon in the Philippines. She is also known by the nickname "Steel Butterfly." In her home country, she is a patroness of the arts and culture. Frank De Lima impersonated her on his 1988 album The Best of De Lima. The second track on Mark Knopfler's album Golden Heart was inspired by her. She was the subject of the 2003 documentary film Imelda, which is about her life as a First Lady. On March 23, 2012, Carlos Celdran performed his Living La Vida Imelda in Dubai.

British producer Fatboy Slim and musician David Byrne created a concept album about her life called Here Lies Love. In the spring of 2013, The Public Theater in New York presented a staged musical version of the album starring Ruthie Ann Miles. An open-ended run returned to The Public Theater on March 24, 2014. A London production opened on September 30, 2014 at the Royal National Theatre.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]