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All that firepower is bound to lead to trouble, as the Philippine crime rate proves. According to the National Department of Investigation, crime in the Philippines jumped 51% last year, There were 8,750 murders (more than in New York), 5,000 rapes and 6,519 armed robberies. The national penchant for violence is reflected in Manila's thriving Tagalog-language movie industry. Currently packing them in at the Rialto is Fernando Poe Jr. in Switchblade, a film in which "the sacred treasures of a church and a dozen lives rest on the courage of one man and his skill with a blade made from the heart of a heavenly meteorite." Last week the 14 exuberant Manila dailies were bannering a real-life movie murder: two young toughs were gunned down while dining in the home of Actor Eddie Fernandez, who plays a James Bond type in such films as When I Am Still Alive and Living with Danger.
The Men from Esso. The real power in Manila—and the Philippines—is never so embarrassingly garish. In the leather-upholstered interior of the Casino Español, under the flutter of ceiling fans, the talk is of sugar prices and the new timber-cut in Mindanao as the members of Manila's power elite discuss their endeavors. Polished ilustrados in dark Italian suits and handsome women in bright mestiza dresses nod politely to aging Carmen Soriano and her 39-year-old son José Maria, heirs of the Soriano fortune (Cebu copper mines, Samar iron, Mindoro cattle and dairy, Mindanao mahogany and San Miguel beer). American businessmen from Esso and Caltex, Hawaiian Dole and General Foods, are prominent in the Manila Polo Club; the Phil-Am Life Insurance Co., with its filigreed, high-pillared headquarters in downtown Manila, symbolizes U.S. and Filipino cooperation.
The Catholic Church, which claims 84% of all Filipinos, is still a vast landholder and, despite a few far-sighted reformers, remains a bulwark of the ancien regime. As a result, a new church, the Iglesia ni Kristo (Church of Christ), is making inroads: since its founding in 1914 by an uneducated Manila hatter, it has acquired 3,000,000 members, who voted en bloc last year for Ferdinand Marcos.
Fierce & Naughty. It would take a hero to rule so complex a society, and the hardest thing to accept about Ferdinand E. Marcos is that any mortal could have tucked into 49 years as much action, adventure, heroism, devotion to duty, romance, singleness of purpose and accomplishment as he has. Born in the farming town of Sarrat, in Ilocos Norte province on Luzon's craggy northwest slopes. Marcos grew up under a code of spartan self-reliance. His father, Mariano Marcos, was a stern, humorless politician who refused comfort to any of his four children if they cried over injuries. "Don't start a fight," he advised brusquely, "until you know you can win it."
Marcos' grandfather taught the boy how to track wild animals in the mountains of Luzon. By the age of twelve, Ferdie was an expert pistol and rifle shot, and at 16 he became national champion in small-bore competition.