22/04/2026
Mariano Marcos was born in Batac, Ilocos Norte on April 21, 1895, to Fabian Marcos y Galimba and Cresencia Rubio y Manglal-lan. A farmer, the elder Marcos had served as gobernadorcillo and justice of the peace of Batac after the Philippine Revolution.
According to Robert Lapham, lieutenant in the US Army in World War II, Mariano Marcos was executed on March 8, 1945, as a Japanese collaborator by the Luzon Guerrilla Armed Forces.
Mariano Marcos was drawn and quartered - his hands were tied to two carabaos, which were then whipped to run in opposite directions. His body parts were then hung by ropes on the branches of a large tree in what is now the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University's Bacnotan campus, as a demonstration of what would happen to those who collaborated with the Japanese.
In his memory, a number of streets and schools, both in Manila and in Ilocos Norte, including the Mariano Marcos State University in Batac, and MMSU College of Education in Laoag City, were named after him.
Moreover, Marcos town, formerly a part of Dingras, Ilocos Norte, and created a town in 1963 by Republic Act No. 3753, was named in his honor. On October 24, 1982, the National Historical Institute paid him tribute by installing a marker at the Mariano Marcos State University in Batac, Ilocos Norte.
Because the Nalundasan murder trial resulting drew wide public attention in the years immediately prior to the war, Mariano's son Ferdinand was in an ideal political position to enter politics in the postwar years.
Ferdinand Marcos' rise to power was dramatic. He served three terms in Mariano's own former position as the Philippine House of Representatives as the Congressman for the second district of Ilocos Norte.
From 1949 to 1959. Between 1959 and 1965, he served in the Philippine Senate, where he became Senate President until he won the Philippine Presidential Election of 1965 to become the tenth president of the Philippines, staying in the position for 21 years.
