“Home Is Where the Loot Is: Mythmaking and Memorializing in Two Marcos Mansions”

The UP Third World Studies Center (TWSC) invites the public to a free lecture titled “Home Is Where the Loot Is: Mythmaking and Memorializing in Two Marcos Mansions.” Researchers Arrianne Fajardo and Aidrielle Raymundo (UP TWSC), Asst. Prof. Larah del Mundo (UP Department of History), and Prof. Joseph Palis (UP Department of Geography) will speak at the event. This project was funded by the UP Diliman OICA.

DATE: September 23, 2025
TIME: 10:00am to 12:00nn
VENUE: Pilar Herrera Hall, Palma Hall, University of the Philippines Diliman

A revolt notwithstanding, the Marcoses have never left us—and may never will. This forum explores an answer to why this is so. An answer that is more rooted in catching a glimpse of displays and signages than in the brute intramurals of elite politics; an answer found in naming and placemaking, in how power alters memory to erase vestiges of its corrupt history.

Have We Honored the Marcoses Enough? An Inventory of Memorials to the Marcoses and the Places Named After Them is a project of the Marcos Regime Research of the UP Third World Studies Center. It catalogs Marcos sites—those that mention, in celebratory or “neutral” terms, the supposed excellence and benevolence of the Marcoses—and by extension, the Romualdezes—during their conjugal regime. Through this inventory, we hope to render in bold relief the network of sites where life for almost the past half-century must every day reckon with what the Marcoses have left behind.

So far, we have identified over 250 Marcos sites. Across Luzon and the provinces of Leyte and Samar, we have visited nearly 150 of these: museums, parks, government buildings, houses of worship, barangays, schools, historical markers, and even a stadium and an airport.
To ground the lecture on the publicized “private spaces” of the Marcoses and how these contribute to their image-making, we revisit two mansions that the conjugal dictators built at the height of their power: the Malacanang of the North in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, and the Santo Nino Shrine and Heritage Museum in Tacloban, Leyte.

An ArcGIS StoryMaps webpage detailing the sites will be launched to the public on the day of the forum.

Source: UP Twsc Facebook