Opinion | Why I must confront the Philippines’ painful past — including my father’s role

1986 rally against the Marcos Dictatorship in which protesters hold up images of Escalante Massacre victims.

“I was 8 years old when the “people power” uprising toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986. I remember it as a terrifying time: My family was torn apart and I was forced to flee and hide. I felt I had been robbed of my home, childhood, country and culture. It took me decades to realize many things I believed about that period were lies — lies that are still being told.

I am the daughter of Gen. Fabian Ver. For 20-plus years, my father was Marcos’s right-hand man, the chief of staff of the armed forces and the overseer of the country’s intelligence and national security apparatus. He was the second-most powerful man in the country, fiercely loyal to the Marcos family.

I grew up being taught that the Marcos era was the country’s golden age. I believed that Marcos’s great achievements made our country and people flourish. In my 20s, Imelda Marcos, who was visiting our family after my father’s death in exile, told me that multiple public relations firms were smearing the Marcos name. I thought this was the reason many people described their rule as a “brutal dictatorship.”

I have lived in exile in the United States and Europe for most of my life. It was only recently, when I began doing my own research about the martial law era under Marcos, that I came to terms with the stories about my father and the Marcoses.”

Wanna Ver the co-founder of Kapwa Pilipinas, an organization focused on cultivating reconciliation for the survivors of martial law under the Marcos dictatorship, writes for The Washington Post

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