About the author: Ferdinand E. Marcos (September 11, 1917– September 28, 1989), politician, dictator; please see profile in the Presidential Museum and Library website.
About the diary: The entries published on this site come from several sources. The diaries were written in longhand, more often than not, on official stationery, by President Marcos. There were some contemporary transcriptions, and transcriptions of portions of the diaries have been made over the years by different institutions, whether the Presidential Museum and Library, the Presidential Commission for Good Government, or media and the public. The diaries have not been officially published. However, a survey of the diaries was first published as Delusions of a Dictator: The Mind of Marcos As Revealed in His Secret Diaries, by William Rempel. See also his online article, The Marcos Diary: At the heart of a dictator, which introduced the latest edition of his work, now titled Ferdinand & Imelda: The Last Days of Camelot. The noted Philippine historian Ambeth Ocampo has been working on an annotated edition of the diaries.
We hope to have both scans of the diary pages and transcriptions of those pages online. The scans and existing transcriptions have been sourced as follows:
1. A set belonging to Manuel L. Quezon III, received anonymously as a large stack of Xerox copies:
1969 July, December
1970 January, February, March, April, May
1971 January, February
1972 September
1973 January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November
1974 May, August, September
1975 February, April, May, June, July
1976 February, April, May, November, December
1977 January, February, March, November
1978 February, October, December
1979 January
1983 January
These can be easily seen as being scans with a white background.
2. Other entries, provided by contributors or sourced from around the Internet: We are grateful to journalist Veronica Pedrosa for allowing us to include her transcriptions of the diary entries for September 20-23, 1972, and to reproduce the scans she used in her blog. March 9, 1970, November 10, 1970 and April 3, 1971 are taken from facsimiles posted online in William Rempel’s article linked to, above. These also have a white background. The text of the entries for March 28-29, 1972, come from a column of Ambeth Ocampo. Others are sourced from transcriptions of diary entries –without facsimiles of the hand-written originals. In these cases, the absence of a scan of the hand-written facsimile should caution readers that these are transcriptions.
3. The Presidential Museum and Library, which has a partial set of bound Xerox copies:
1970 January, February, July, August, September
1971 February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September
1972 October, November, December
1975 May
1977 March, April, May, June
These are easily seen as being scans with a brownish background. The PML very kindly also provided an initial transcription of these pages.
4. The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG): The PCGG in a Memorandum of Understanding in March 2016 with historians made digital copies of its holdings of the Marcos diaries available. They were provided organized into the following sets:
July-December, 1969
January-February, 1970
March-May, 1970
October 31-November 1-24, 1970
January 1-13, 1971
January 19 to February 1, 1971
February 1-17, 1971
February 18-March 8, 1971
March 9-23, 1971
March 25-April 1, 1971
April 2-14, 1971
April 15-25, 1971
April 26-May 10, 1971
May 10-June 16, 1971
June 17-30, 1971
July 1-31, 1971
August 1-31, 1971
September 1-31, 1971
October 1-31, 1971
November 1-30, 1971
November 25-December 29, 1971
December 1-31, 1971
January 1-31, 1972
February 1-29, 1972
March 1-31, 1972
April 1-30, 1972
May 1-31, 1972
June 1-30, 1972
July 1-31, 1972
August 1-31, 1972
September 1-30, 1972
October 3-31, 1972
November 1-30, 1972
December 7-31, 1972
January 1-31, 1973
February 2-28, 1973
March 1-31, 1973
April 1-30, 1973
May 1-31, 1973
June 1-30, 1973
July 2-31, 1973
August 1-27, 1973
September 1-30, 1973
October 1-31, 1973
May 1974
February 1975
April 1976
June 1976
November 1976
January 1977
February 1978
March 31, 1984
These can also be easily seen as being scans with a white background. These sets were also accompanied by transcriptions labeled as follows:
Marcos Diary Type Written Vol. 1 (1969-70)
Marcos Diary Type Written Vol. 2 (1971)
Marcos Diary Type Written Vol. 3 (1972)
Marcos Diary Type Written Vol. 4 (1973)
Marcos Diary Type Written Vol. 5 (1974-1984)
At present, there seems to be no complete collection of the diary, whether in original, handwritten form or as xerox copies, anywhere.