-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Mark John Sanchez, History(ies) of Authoritarianism(s) in the Philippines, The American Historical Review, Volume 130, Issue 1, March 2025, Pages 350–353, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae637
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
“My job is to go places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.” —Patricia Evangelista, Some People Need Killing, 5.
How do we make sense of the history of and return to authoritarianism in the Philippines? This is one of the central questions that scholars and creatives working on the Philippines have engaged since the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s. In recent years, there has been a renewed focus since the election of Rodrigo Roa Duterte to the presidency in 2016 and the return of the Marcos clan to Malacañang in 2022. There is a political urgency to work on Philippine authoritarianism as most people writing on the topic want to combat the resurgence of authoritarian rule in the Philippines and elsewhere. Four recent works, all dealing with the history and present of authoritarianism in the Philippines, provide insight into both the form and content of the study of dictatorship.
