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The result of the American colonial experiment was trickle-down democracy. Concentrating on the practicalities of ruling the archipelago, U.S. viceroys allied themselves with the elite who held the rest of the country in feudal servitude. (Among the descendants of that elite: President Aquino.) The masses followed their masters who, intent on preserving their privileges, accommodated their American overlords. In turn, Filipinos integrated the Americans, turning them into ritual kin. Americans became big white brothers, inextricably bound to look after their little brown brethren.
Thus the Potemkin democrats of the islands idolized Jefferson but patterned themselves after the master manipulators of the time. Chief among them: the autocratic American darling, Manuel Quezon, the first President of the Philippines, and his prominent partner, Douglas MacArthur, perhaps the archetypal American for all Filipinos. These influences helped produce the quintessential Philippine politician of the later 20th century: Ferdinand Marcos.
Karnow traces these developments with authority and great insight, especially his spirited critique of America's dunderheaded rush into the archipelago at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, the scope of In Our Image has muted the drama of Marcos' inexorable downfall. Karnow provides fascinating new details about Ronald Reagan's reluctant abandonment of Marcos and his less than warm relationship with Corazon Aquino. But that story, the most familiar to contemporary readers, feels perfunctory and overly concise in the book. Set against the turmoil of the Philippine past, it is merely a loud echo of older patterns in the historical cycle of the islands.
The collapse of the Marcos government, however, is the paradigm of present- day Philippine politics and, as such, is well told in Impossible Dream, Sandra Burton's history-as-I-lived-it account of the assassination of Aquino's husband Benigno and its aftermath. As TIME's Hong Kong bureau chief from 1982 to 1986, Burton soaked up the Philippines' maudlin, heart-tugging, cutthroat, rumor-mad, pious, unethical spirit. Her book is not only the expected political thriller, full of intriguing Filipinos and meddling Americans, but a bizarre feudal drama set in a land where Sancho Panza, not Don Quixote, tilts at the monstrous windmills.
In Impossible Dream, the black-and-white and good-and-evil of modern legend become shades of gray and swirls of clashing colors. Corazon Aquino may be a housewife in Burton's account, but she is far from naive. Her husband appears with little of the sanctity he has assumed since his martyrdom. To many & Filipinos, Burton notes, "Ninoy" Aquino and Marcos were merely two sides of the same coin. Yet, ultimately, Ninoy is a sainted Machiavellian. Scheming and plotting, he returns from self-exile in the U.S., a gambler going for broke. His last courageous bet: that Filipinos are worth dying for.