[Rear View] What were you doing in the 90s? Sweating, grumbling, and watching the start of the Marcos Restoration

With the oil crunch, a raging war in the Middle East, and other triggers for teeth-gnashing and doom-scrolling, I need to ask: why are you young ones so fixated on the 90s?

I understand this whole back-to-analog lifestyle thing. For traders in nostalgia, this flirtation with tito and tita stuff is driving sales of vinyl records, CDs and cassettes, film cameras, and digital point-and-shoots, any media or cultural artifact that whispers “touch me.”

But the 90s? Let’s see. The 60s and 70s are out. That’s boomer territory, and they – ok, we – won’t forgive you kids for that “Ok Boomer” snark. Gen X is gatekeeping the 80s, so that leaves the 90s, which is proximate and relatable enough since the icons of that decade are still alive. Older, but still breathing.

Responding to the question, “Hey, old dude, what were you like in the 90s?” those reels and TikTok videos posted mainly by celebrities from that decade do give off fuzzy, cuddly vibes. And I will admit, the 90s were an interesting decade for pop culture and technology, when the world was still adapting to life online and pretty much everything was still kinda analog.

And the music.

In the ‘90s, I was a working stiff in my thirties, regarding younger rock bands with the aloofness and cynicism of a wannabe cognoscente, yet pulled in by a vibrant, beer-and-sweat-soaked bar scene and bands like Yano, Eraserheads, Sugarfree, and the old guards The Jerks, Grupong Pendong, the supergroup Lokal Brown.

But other than building a rep as tambay sa 70s Bistro and kaladkarin sa inuman, I also straddled two different but conjoined worlds: journalism and politics. The view from the newsroom and the corridors of power was sobering.

The decade began at the twilight of the Aquino administration, when it dawned on us that the flame of the 1986 EDSA Revolution was guttering out, and the country, battered by coup attempts, economic mismanagement, and the brawl for political spoils, was heading into uncertain waters. And those horrendous power outages sugarcoated as “brownouts,” lasting for hours on end, left a population sweaty and pissed off.

The controversial election victory of Fidel V. Ramos, narrowly edging out Miriam Defensor-Santiago, brought us the reign of Steady Eddie: corny slogans, tobacco chomping, naughty winks to reporters, and tight tennis shorts that reportedly sent a certain socialite’s heart a-fluttering. Despite the scandals that required the forbearance of Ming Ramos to endure, among them an ill-fated attempt to extend his tenure, Ramos is remembered kindly. Which cannot be said for his successor Joseph Estrada. Ushered into office on the shoulders of the tired masses, Erap was kicked out by his vice president, the little lady with a mole, in an uprising early the next decade that could hardly be called a people power moment.

And through all of this, the brownouts, the coups, the political carnivals, the Marcoses were quietly, methodically finding their way back.

Firs came Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. By most accounts he arrived on Halloween in 1991, on a private jet from Singapore to Laoag Airport. The only son was welcomed home by hundreds of loyalists waving banners as if the EDSA Revolution had been a bad dream. Four days later, former first lady Imelda Marcos landed in Manila. Thus began the restoration in politics and in the society pages. 

By 1992, Bongbong had won a congressional seat representing Ilocos Norte, and Imelda was running for president, calling for the nation to be “great again” but finishing a distant fifth. It was too early for nostalgia. She would later run and win a congressional seat in the Romualdez bailiwick of Leyte. Bongbong would run for the Senate, lose, then retreat again to Ilocos Norte where, as governor, he built the persona of the silent worker.

Ramos, a Marcos relative, made their rehabilitation easier. He lifted the ban on the repatriation of Ferdinand Sr.’s body in 1993, allowing the embalmed dictator to be installed in a glass-covered crypt in his hometown of Batac, where loyalists came in their thousands to pay their respects to a frozen corpse. 

But as the Marcoses were fighting fiercely in the courtrooms, they were winning the war in the society pages.

Imelda, whatever else you say about her, knew exactly how Manila’s elite society worked. From the moment she arrived, she was back on the circuit with charity galas, fashion shows, attending dazzling birthday parties. The society and lifestyle sections of major newspapers, even those who were critical of the dictatorship, would run photos of her in pearls, designer gowns, with her trademark smile, throwing off some witticism. The stories were context-free, history-free. 

On the other hand, Imee cultivated her ‘90s media presence in the language of fashion and pop culture, a sophisticated, cosmopolitan Marcos, almost reluctant about politics. 

These extended media narratives shaped the perception of the Marcoses. Spread over the years, the stories, the photo spreads and glossy magazine covers would humanize the Marcoses, turn them into sympathetic personalities to a generation that hadn’t lived through martial law.

So, yeah, fantasize about the ‘90s. The music was real, the bar scene was real, and I’ll grant you the nostalgia. 

But the ‘90s were also the decade when a disgraced political family walked back into public life. And the media helped them do it, one society-page photo at a time. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.