From Marcos to MAGA: Leaving the Philippines in 1976 and Watching Authoritarianism Rise Again in Trump’s America
On August 19, 1976 , my sister and I left the Philippines. | JFR Perseveranda We loved our homeland—but under Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law, opportunity shrank and fear grew. My parents chose the uncertain promise of the United States over the certainty of repression back home. Nearly half a century later, on August 19, 2025 , I look at America and feel a familiar unease: the slow normalization of authoritarian habits, the kind my family fled. Joy Perseveranda, Edward Sumagui, David Dayan & J.F. Perseveranda 1976: What We Left Behind Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972 . By 1976, we lived with shuttered newsrooms, curfews, arrests without charge, and an economy sinking under cronyism and debt. Friends disappeared; student leaders were surveilled; truth became dangerous. In everyday life, it meant whispers in place of conversations, careful glances at checkpoints, and a constant calculation of risk. We learned as children what our parents never wanted to t...
