Cult

Among the news that came out in the Philippines recently, one story seemed to be a milestone of sorts because it brought the never-ending epic tale about Ferdinand Marcos to a full circle: from sinner to saint.

Quite literally. The Associated Press reported that a religious cult in the northern Philippine mountain province of Abra worships the late dictator like a saint or a resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hundreds of followers in Abra and nearby provinces wear white cassocks and pray to a portrait that would make many ponder about biblical warnings of the rise of false prophets as a sign of the coming end of the world. The portrait is a reproduction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, except that the head is that of Marcos.

Philippine Catholic bishops have dismissed the portrait as sacrilegious and the cult as a lost, fanatical group.

But there could be something more than that.

Almost all of the members of the Marcos cult are impoverished peasants and rural folk who also are long-time Rizalistas, cultists who venerate Philippine national hero Jose Rizal as god. As such, Abra’s Marcos cult could be lined up among Rizalista groups, which are bizarre by-products of a long, historical struggle by Filipinos against colonialism.

In the late 1800s, near the end of Spain’s more than 300 years of colonial rule in the Philippines, some Filipino priests revolted and broke off from the Spanish-dominated Philippine Catholic church. The priests formed their own independent Christian church and imbued it with nationalism. The independent church later inspired the emergence of a few religious cults in rural areas worshipping Rizal, who was executed in 1896 in Manila by the Spanish for sedition.

The leader of the Marcos cult says that they’re essentially a Rizalista cult, which also began worshipping Marcos after the late Philippine president showed up in an apparition shortly after he died in 1989 and proclaimed himself a disciple of Christ. Cult leaders say that there is considerable biblical proof that Marcos was the prophesied government leader who would try to bring Filipinos happiness and prosperity.

The Abra’ s cult existence provides a new twist to long-running political enmity between pro- and anti-Marcos political forces in the Philippines.

Last month, tens of thousands of Filipinos protested in Manila and other major cities partly to condemn the return of Marcos’s family members and former associates to political and economic power. Outside the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila, they burned down effigies of Marcos’s widow, Imelda, and President Joseph
Estrada, whom they accused of being partial to the Marcoses and the businessmen close to the former dictator.

The cult’s emergence would certainly confuse an outsider in the Philippines these days. While many continue to feel strongly against Marcos, including about 10,0000 human rights victims who have won a class-suit for damages in a U.S. court., some Filipinos have begun to hang Marcos’s picture in their prayer altar.

“What keeps this cult alive is Marcos’s promise that this country can be great again.,” says Philippine anthropologist F. Landa Jocano. “But Marcos passed away, creating a break in the cult members’ aspiration. They long for him and his promise.”

Just like any other cults in the Philippines, the Marcos cult emerged from religious and economic roots rather than political ideals.