- Hi, everyone. I'm definitely getting sick
and I'm wearing my house dress, and that plant is wilting
away there in the background. But other than that, I'm feeling very positive
about this video today. We're gonna get through this together. In 1986, President Ferdinand
Marcos was overthrown by the people of the
Philippines, and for good reason. He was responsible for reprehensible human rights violations, extravagant personal
spending of government money, and corruption that the country
has yet to fully heal from. After being overthrown, Marcos
fled with his family to exile in Hawaii, where he died
in September of 1989. If things had ended there, he
would just be a bad dead dude, not an Iconic Corpse. But things did not end there. It's because of the controversy, travels, and the frankly bizarre
treatment of Marcos' body, that he becomes today's Iconic Corpse. (intense music) During Ferdinand Marcos'
20-year regime as President, (coughs) dictator, of the Philippines, he was hardly what most
would characterize as a hero. Having instated martial
law, Marcos is consistently characterized as having
plundered the country, raising the Philippine's foreign debt from 2.7 billion in 1972,
to 28.2 billion in 1986. The Marcos family and their
associates lived in luxury, while the country struggled. Even more horrifying is
the data that indicates that the military under Marcos' command, was responsible for
killing over 3,000 people, torturing 35,000 people,
and arresting 70,000 people. All to uphold his absolute
control on the country. In 2004, Marcos was
named as the second most corrupt leader of all time by corruption watchdog group,
Transparency International. We're number two, woo. (synthesized music) So in 1986, after the murder
of an anti-Marcos politician, the people of the Philippines took to the streets to protest, supported by the Catholic Church and bolstered by the rebel
members of the military. They called themselves the
People Power Revolution. After four days of protest,
Marcos, his family, and retainers boarded two US airplanes, arranged by President Ronald Reagan, and went into exile in Hawaii, in a mansion in the Makiki
Heights area of Oahu. And there the Marcoses
stayed in relative luxury, until 1989, when Ferdinand
died of an autoimmune disease, at age of 72. And from there, the games they did begin. Disfigured from his illness, the face of Marcos' corpse
was swollen from edema, which is the accumulation
of fluid under the skin. Embalmer, Frank Malabed,
who is known as something of an embalmer to the
stars in the Philippines, was charged with making
the dictator's face look more appealing postmortem. So when Marcos' face was drained of fluid during the embalming process, it quickly took on a shriveled appearance. So while Marcos' body remained intact and was embalmed as usual, his face had to be reconstructed with wax. While there was speculation that the body that lay in state was not real, Malabed maintains that aside
from the face and hair, the corpse was all Marcos. Once Marcos' body was
prepared, his wife Imelda, you know the lady with all the shoes, (bell chimes) placed him in a glass-top,
refrigerated casket at Byodo-In Temple in Kaneohe, Oahu. That's my hometown, you guys. There was a half-wax
embalmed Philippine dictator living in my town when
I was five years old. This is the closest I've ever
been to an Iconic Corpse, I feel like a celebrity. (camera clicks) Once there, Imelda spared
no expense for her husband, making sure that the air
conditioning in his casket was always running, and allegedly, had Handel's Messiah playing
inside the casket 24/7. ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ - Imelda supposedly even
rolled Ferdinand out for his birthday, so a group
of his followers and loved ones could sing him Happy Birthday. ♪ Happy birthday to your corpse ♪ (party horn blows) Marcos was there in the
temple for four years. Which means I actually lived
down the road from a half-wax embalmed Philippine dictator
in a air conditioned glass topped casket, playing
Handel's Messiah 24/7, from ages five to nine. ♪ Hallelujah ♪ - Ah, all right. While Marcos was in
residence at Byodo-In Temple with all the A/C and music and whatnot, the power company threatened
to pull the plug on Marcos if the family didn't pay their
thousands of dollars' worth of unpaid energy bills. Fortunately for them, a Marcos admirer stepped
in to pick up the tab. In 1993, the government, led
by President Fidel Ramos, who was a second cousin to Marcos, allowed Marcos' corpsicle to
return to the Philippines. However, instead of being
buried with a state funeral at the Heroes' Cemetery in
Manila as his family wanted, the government insisted
that he could only be buried in his home province of Ilocos
Norte, in the city of Batac. So Marcos arrived back in the
Philippines to much fanfare, greeted by his remaining loyalists. Malabed, the embalmer,
was on hand to attend to Marcos' admittedly decaying corpse, speedily repairing and redressing
the dictator for viewing. Malabed was very concerned
that people might see wet spots on Marcos' body and make bad comments. People are so picky. In Batac, Marcos' casketed corpse was laid next to his mother's,
who had been on display waiting for Marcos to return since 1988, when she died at 96. Marcos went on to be
displayed for over 20 years in a glass casket described
as looking like an aquarium, inside a specially-built mausoleum. This time, a source says,
Imelda piped in Mozart for her husband's corpse
instead of Handel. With a nearby Marcos Museum documenting his virtue and greatness, the double whammy Marcos memorials were supposed to lure tourists, but never ended up delivering
the way Imelda hoped. Folks were more drawn to
the casino and golf course in the area where Marcos once played. I personally think the
corpse is a bigger draw than a casino, but seven-year-old Caitlin never went to visit him when
he was right there in my town, so I'm one to talk, right? But through all this, Imelda
his wife still petitioned to have her husband buried in Manila at the Heroes' Cemetery. In life, Marcos had claimed
to be a highly decorated World War II hero, leading
a guerrilla resistance unit during the Japanese occupation. But upon further investigation, the claims were found
to be highly unlikely, if not entirely fraudulent. Those sticking points, combined with the actions
of his presidency, didn't really make him
Heroes' Cemetery material. However, in 2016, President Duterte, a man protestors have called Marcos' Tinder match made in hell, (sexy music) allowed Marcos' body to be
secretly moved to Manila and buried in the Heroes' Cemetery. When Duterte first announced his decision to give Marcos a hero's
burial due in large part to his own family's history of
loyalty to the Marcos family, and the fact that Duterte's kind of a Marcos fanboy, protests erupted. Taking to the streets and social media, the Philippines being the
most active social media users in the world, protesters
employed the hashtags #MarcosNotaHero, #MarcosBurialProtest, and #NeverAgain, among others. #freecharlesbyrne. #marcosnotahero. Victims of Marcos' regime asked the Supreme Court
to stop the burial. 30,000 people signed a
petition against the interment, calling it an affront to
the thousands of lives tortured and murdered during his reign. But in the end, the Marcos
family got their way. Duterte buried Marcos
in the Heroes' Cemetery, complete with a 21-gun
salute, and ended the almost 30-year odyssey of
Ferdinand Marcos' corpse. So there you have it. Ferdinand Marcos, dictator,
war hero, Iconic Corpse. (sighs) Tell us which Iconic Corpse
you want to see next. Your suggestions matter. This video was a suggestion from our fine viewers in the Philippines. (speaking foreign language) Hey, hi. Real quick, before ya
go, it's me, in my car, because everything I do is very
professional, and well done. That's not true, but you
know what is professional and well done, thanks to your
generosity is our podcast, Death in the Afternoon. We spent three days this weekend recording at this beautiful studio, with a fantastic engineer. And it's gonna sound just,
mm, mwa, mm, mm, beautiful. We're almost at our fundraising goal where we can send it off to be edited, and have original music put over it. And yeah, no pressure to donate, but there are some
really excellent rewards, signed books, signed postcards,
behind the scenes vlog. And at any donation, you're entered to win a signed merchandise package
with really cool stuff in it. So, yeah, we really thank you, and I think that it sounds fantastic. Hey, dude, I'm on FaceTime. I'm not talking to myself. (laughs) I'm talking to tens of thousands
of people on the internet. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. Iconic Corpse. (singing) (eerie music)
