The Conjugal Dictatorship

The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos
About the Author
by Cris D. Cabasares, written in 1976
PRIMITIVO "TIBO" MIJARES Is a 44-year-old newspaperman’s newspaperman,
the highlights of whose life may even be more colorful than the man
he writes about In this book. For, really, what will Ferdinand E. Marcos be, If
you take away his self-serving and self-created World War II exploits?
Mijares went through that world conflagration experiencing as a young boy
a tragedy and horror that would have driven hardened and matured men starkraving
mad. He was but 12 years old when he came upon the mutilated bodies
of his slain mother, dead from the bayonet thrusts of Japanese soldiers, and
his father, dying from both Japanese bayonet and bullet wounds, in the smoking
ruins of their home.
Mijares was to narrowly escape death from the massacre and burning by
retreating Japanese soldiers of his hometown of Santo Tomas, Batangas, in
the Philippines, only because a few hours earlier he had led as the eldest child
his other younger sisters and brother out into the country to clear a field for
planting.
While his gunsmith father, Jose, was busy turning out home-made pistols,
called locally as paltiks for the resistance movement, young Mijares served as
the driver or cochero for the family’s horse-drawn rig, carretela, used in the
delivery of vinegar to outlying towns. In between supplying guns to the
guerrillas, the Mijares family was engaged in the fermentation of that liquid so
necessary to the Filipino palate.
When the Japanese military one day decided to commandeer all the horses
In the town, Mijares persuaded the Japanese to allow him to drive his carretela
home to unload the empty vinegar jars before surrendering his horse. But along
the way Mijares pretended to be yelling orders at his horse, although actually
he was shouting, in the local dialect unknown to the Japanese soldiers riding
beside him, to his townmates to hide their horses.
After World War II, the four Mijares orphans were distributed among their
mother’s uncles with the girls joining an uncle in Borneo, now Sabah, and the
boys staying in the Philippines. Tibo went to school near Baguio where his
uncle, an agriculturist, was stationed. He edited the high school newspaper,
was elected president of his graduating class and finished as valedictorian.
Mijares became the youngest editor of the Baguio Midland Courier, the
biggest city newspaper, in 1950. He became a full-pledge reporter the same
day he joined the defunct Manila Chronicle on August 15, 1951, covering all the
major beats.
Nights Mijares pursued his college studies, finishing his Bachelor of Arts
degree in 1956, and Bachelor of Laws in 1960, at the Lyceum of the Philippines.
He passed the Philippine bar examinations also in 1960.
Tibo figured in the most tumultuous events of his country. He was with
Arsenio H. Lacson, the best and most colorful mayor Manila ever had, when
Lacson, under the machineguns of armed forces armored cars, practically
cursed into retreat back to camp the first attempt to impose martial law in the
city.
Primitivo Mijares Page 4