Students of history or anyone else interested in the return of the Marcoses to power may want to grab this book that’s been cited as a more reliable source of what really happened in the Palace during the last days of the Marcoses in the Philippines in February 1986 than the Imee Marcos-produced movie, Maid in Malacañang.
The book, Ferdinand E. Marcos: Malacañang to Makiki, by his loyal aide-de-camp, Colonel Arturo “Art” Aruiza, has been republished and is now being exclusively sold by the Aruiza family.
The book was initially published in December 1991, but only a few copies were printed. It was thus only available in public libraries and private collections. Due to the limited access, some enterprising owners tried selling the book for an astronomical price of $4,995 or P279,720 on Amazon!
After the victory of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the May 2022 elections, the Aruiza family decided to republish the book, with a new cover plus a foreword by the new president.
“We want you all to be able to afford a copy of this historical book written by someone who stood by President E. Marcos until the very end,” said the Aruiza family.
The softbound book sells for P1,600 including the foreword by the President.
“The book is hand-sewn (not glued) and made of imported, high-quality paper. It has 540 pages and 40 pictures,” the Aruiza family told this writer after I ordered a copy of the book. The hardbound edition of the book has sold out.
In his foreword, Marcos Jr. said the book “captures the true essence of service and loyalty” of Aruiza, who stood by his father’s side until his death in Hawaii on September 28, 1989 or exactly 35 years ago last Saturday. Aruiza has been called the “Last Loyalist” since he served Marcos for 21 long years.
Marcos Sr. encountered Aruiza when the latter was assigned to help secure a San Miguel Corporation brewery in Mandaue, Cebu that the president visited in 1968. Aruiza, then a junior officer with the Philippine Constabulary, had been ordered not to let Marcos inside a room in the brewery since it had not yet been checked by security. “Mr. President, our advance security men told me to make sure you don’t enter this room,” Aruiza recalled telling Marcos Sr., who then told then Col. Fabian Ver to “Bring him [Aruiza] to Malacañang.”
The Aruiza family, represented by the late soldier’s wife, Eleanor, and other members of the family, all based in the US, was able to present copies of the book to the President in 2023. They asked him to write the foreword, to which he readily agreed. They’ve posted photos of their meeting with the president on the Facebook account promoting the book.
“This latest edition incorporates several changes to the earlier editions of this book,” Eleanor said in the book’s acknowledgments. “From the numerous handwritten comments left behind by Art in the margins of pages and Post-It notes within his personal copy to a creative redesign of the book to a thorough editorial review of the content, I am confident that this edition is a significant improvement over its predecessor prints.”
The President, the only son of the late dictator, considered Aruiza his “brother” due to the latter’s “devotion” to his father. When he spoke at Aruiza’s wake following the latter’s death due to cancer on July 9, 1998 at age 56, Marcos Jr. said his father and Aruiza got along well because both were “professional perfectionists.” You can watch the young Bongbong’s eulogy in this video below posted by the Aruiza family.
Marcos Jr. said Aruiza could have returned to the Philippines after bringing the late president to Hawaii but chose to stay with the Marcos family.
“He could have come home without any problem but he did not because he felt a sense of duty, of unfinished business and so he stayed on,” he said at Aruiza’s wake in the Philippines.
Fact checks
Rappler, Vera Files, and several others have cited Aruiza’s book for its faithful account of the events in Malacañang as the Marcoses were confronted by an angry mob during the EDSA People Power revolution.
Here are some of Rappler’s stories citing Aruiza’s book on what happened in the presidential Palace in February 1986:
- [The Slingshot] Malice in wonderland
- A made-up Marcos movie: False, misleading claims abound in ‘Maid in Malacañang’
- Marcos Family did not calmly escape from Malacañang
- Marcos did not give farewell speech to staff before fleeing Malacañang
“The story of those four days in February 1986, is told here from the Malacañang Palace side, the first time this has ever been done,” wrote Aruiza in the original book’s preface.
Aside from these, Aruiza book mostly tells the story of the former president’s life in Hawaii as he battled various illnesses and legal cases in the US. Aruiza said his accounts were based on his “personal notes and diaries” plus documents provided by doctors and lawyers in order to come up with an “intimate account of the nearly four years of Marcos’s exile.”
‘Spicy’ details
In addition, there are interesting pieces of information about Marcos Jr., such as how his parents were happy whenever Carla Bermudez, would pay a visit. Bermudez was a girlfriend of the President before he ended up with Liza Araneta. Fans of the Marcoses have posted photos of the mestiza Bermudez with Bongbong in Hawaii on various social media sites like TikTok. Online magazine Tatler in March 2022 reported that Bermudez was now based in Singapore with her husband and two kids. She was the cover of Philippine Tatler in March 2011.
“The president sat in our midst, quietly happy to see Ferdinand Jr. and Claudia together. Mrs. Marcos seemed reserved towards the young lady, but we all understood that,” Aruiza wrote in the chapter, “Endocrinologic Cripple,” on Marcos’ end-stage illnesses months before he died.
In the same chapter, he said: “Lunch the next day, Christmas day [1988], was exclusively for the Marcos family. Claudia made up for the absence of the much-missed eldest daughter, Imee. I could sense in the festivities that Claudia was being welcomed into the family. With these lunches for the children and Claudia, the staff looked foward to the long, difficult year ending well.”
The late Philippine Consul General in Honolulu Tomas “Buddy” Gomez, who was the country’s listening post in Hawaii during the years of the Marcoses in exile, had also endorsed Aruiza’s book, in an article he wrote for ABS-CBN News when I was still its editor-in-chief. That article is now no longer accessible on ABS-CBN’s general news website. I have, however, kept a soft copy of Gomez’s draft column.
“The book is well-written, professionally. Such literary output, graduates of the Philippine Military Academy are not normally known for. Arguably, however, the ‘remembering’ task could only be performed by the author himself,” Gomez said. He had bought a copy of the book for only P300 in 1992, but learned that three dealers were selling the book for US$738 or P41,160 on book e-commerce site, abebooks.com
“The actual writing and editing would have been undertaken by ex-Marcos, ex-Malacañang media operatives. I discount any participation by writers known to be Imelda acolytes, simply because of parts in the book revealing ‘not-very-nice’ gossipy snippets about Meldy,” the former press secretary of Cory Aquino said. “The book also includes a spate of human interest vignettes of hassles, intrigues, piques and spats within the Marcos Makiki household. Gossipy and juice, for spice.”
As expected, however, Gomez said Aruiza has “taken to task enemies, real and perceived, with angry words…Nothing nice at all about Juan Ponce Enrile, Fidel V. Ramos, the Aquino government, the media, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], and all entities and persons who would not serve their wonts and whims to which Marcosian dictatorial powers and practices have gotten them inured.”
Although the book, Gomez said, contained “some irrelevant errors of acts and misinterpretations of events and circumstances,” he appreciated the book’s “value as a primary source of Marcos’ last days.”
“I fully understand the inevitable reason for belly-aching against the world by way of Aruiza’s pained retelling. Unaccustomed to not being in control, the circumstance the Marcoses found themselves subjected to in their Hawaiian exile, the whining that the book characterizes displays withdrawal symptoms from addictive dictatorial powers,” Gomez concluded.
For those interested in ordering copies of the book, the Aruiza family has posted this link. – Rappler.com
