People Power: Marcos Flees, Aquino Takes Philippines

Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines with twenty-two crates of cash, gold bars, and his wife Imelda's legendary collection of designer shoes, lifted off the palace grounds by American military helicopters bound for exile in Hawaii. His departure on February 25, 1986, ended a twenty-year dictatorship and completed one of the most remarkable nonviolent revolutions in modern history — four days that proved a dictator could be toppled by ordinary people standing in front of tanks. The crisis had been building since the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. on the airport tarmac in 1983. Marcos called a snap presidential election in February 1986, confident he could manufacture a victory against Aquino's widow, Corazon. When official counts showed Marcos winning despite overwhelming evidence of fraud — thirty computer technicians walked out of the tabulation center in protest — two senior military officers, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos, defected and barricaded themselves in military camps along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, known as EDSA. Cardinal Jaime Sin went on Radio Veritas and asked Filipinos to protect the rebel soldiers. Within hours, hundreds of thousands of people flooded EDSA, forming a human shield between the defectors and Marcos's loyalist forces. Nuns knelt before armored personnel carriers. Civilians offered food and flowers to soldiers. When Marcos ordered tanks to advance, the crews refused to fire into the crowd. The standoff lasted four days, broadcast live on international television. Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as president on the morning Marcos fled. She inherited a nation buried in $28 billion of foreign debt, with institutions hollowed out by crony capitalism. The People Power Revolution inspired nonviolent movements worldwide, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the protests in Tiananmen Square. The Philippines itself would revisit its Marcos reckoning decades later when Ferdinand Jr. won the presidency in 2022, demonstrating that the memory of dictatorship fades faster than its consequences.