A Marcos golden era? Really? The writers in this book lived through martial law and tell it like it was—a fake and tarnished gold. Dictatorship and its aftereffects explode on the scene as twenty-two experts take us through the ups and downs of seven presidential administrations since that fateful 1972 declaration. Each specialist focuses on a particular topic. The resulting collection offers something for everyone. Under Society and Culture, readers can select from cultural politics, dictatorial fantasies, populism and authoritarianism, religion, urban poor organizing, indigenous people, Filipino-Chinese identity, and Filipino values in a global context. More interested in Political Economy and Governance? Explore party politics, electoral reform, media roles, the Constitution, population management, and crony economic governance. Still more? The Peace and Security chapters spotlight terror and violence, the move from Marcos Sr. to Marcos Jr., and the Left. Lessons and legacies, rigorously studied, give an informative fifty-year overview and end with a final chapter assessing the uncertain prospects facing us in 2022 and beyond. Almost everything you ever wanted to know about martial law and its long-term effects leaps out of these pages. Genuine gold right there in eighteen compelling chapters!

Was the Philippines really the wealthiest country in Asia during the 1970s and 1980s? Did martial law eradicate hunger and poverty? Did the Marcos regime produce a “golden age” of infrastructure? And did the Marcoses really fight the oligarchy and own a million tons of gold?
For decades, a myriad of myths about the Marcoses have proliferated and are being spread exponentially today in social media. So pervasive are these myths that the prevailing notion now—even among the youth—is that martial law was the “golden age” of the Philippines.
False Nostalgia aims to set the record straight. Weaving together hard data and facts in clear and accessible prose, this book aims to debunk the “golden age” myths one by one. In the process, it paints a clearer, more complete, and therefore more honest picture of the Philippine economy at that time. More than anything else, this book reminds us why—in this time of mangled histories and fragile memories—it has never been more crucial to fight for the truth and to never forget.

This book brings into conversation historians, journalists, political scientists, pundits, lawyers, and economists across generations as they engage in a collective assessment of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.’s regime. Extensive as well as incisive, the essays in this unprecedented anthology appraise different facets of this seminal period’s policies, programs, and personalities and reveal a complicated legacy whose full import and impact have yet to be thoroughly unpacked.