“We have to watch the Lopezes and Montelibano. [sic] They are still sore for my veto of their franchise to operate a telephone and telecommunications company anywhere in the Philippines and the NuVue – a cable television company . . .
They are the worst oligarchs in the country. I must stop them from using the government for their own purposes. Piding Montelibano is working on the reclamation project of Republic Real Estate – pending adjudication in the courts. Iñing Lopez strongly urged that I appoint Piding as Secretary of Finance, as if the position were vacant. This was a repetition of the recommendation in 1965.”
From the above, one could foresee the collision course the two forces were headed. By the end of January, 1971, it was all-out, open war between the two camps. Marcos sent his Public Service Commission, the Solicitor General, Bureau of Customs, and Bureau of Internal Revenue to go over the highly lucrative Meralco’s books and operations with the sole purpose of cutting down its revenue. Meralco was the Lopezes’ main cash cow and cornerstone of their pre-martial law empire. (More on this war later.)
2.Cojuangcos - the core of the combined Cojuangco fortune is the large sugar and rice mill in central Luzon called Hacienda Luisita. From three Cojuangco brothers sprang three branches:
(a) the Jose Cojuangco branch. Two of his children with Demetria Sumulong were Jose, Jr. (‘Peping’) and Corazon who married Benigno Aquino II. Cory became president in 1986. Her son, Benigno III (Noynoy) served as president from 2010-16. (One of Peping’s daughters, Mikee is the current International Olympic Committee representative to the Philippines. Surely, that position is not available to the ordinary Juan and Josefa de la Cruz.)
(b) the Ramon and Antonio branch. Playboy Tonyboy comes from this branch whose fortune rests with controversial, majority shares of the premier phone company in the Philippines, the PLDT.
(c) Finally, the Eduardo branch from whom Danding, staunch Marcos ally and crony, came. While he was individually wealthy on his own, he prospered multifold over with his association with the dictator and was, of course, in competition with his cousin (b).
The above (minus the Aboitizes who are not Manila-based) are, more or less, the “ten families” which Imelda Marcos referred to in a recent interview as “owning nearly everything in Manila” when she came into power. Of course, she failed to consider what her own family and Marcos’ combined ownership of property came to in that estimation of hers.
[The Aquinos (of Tarlac) and Imelda’s Romualdez clan of Leyte were perhaps the two most alike and evenly matched wannabe families in terms of drive, ambition, energy, and sibling composition. Both families were composed of children of a first wife and the more go-getting batch of offspring from the second union. Both Imelda and Ninoy were children of their fathers’ respective second marriages. Imelda might also be referred to as “IRM” later in the book.
The second batch of Romualdezes (from Remedios Trinidad) consisted of six children: Imelda, Benjamin (“Kokoy”), Alita (Martel), Alfredo (“Bejo”), Armando and Conchita (Yap). There were five older children (from first wife Juanita), among them Lourdes, Victoria, and Dulce.
The eight Aquino brood were Maur (Maria Aurora Lichauco), Ninoy, Lupita (Kashiwahara), Tessie (Oreta), Agapito (“Butz”), Ditas (Valdes) and Erlinda (Vargas). The first batch had Billy, Tony, Mila, and Paul.
The Aquinos and Romualdezes are actually related by marriage through a Paz Gueco of Pampanga. Gueco married Danieling Romualdez, uncle of Imelda. At one point in the early 1950s, the two clans would have been joined again when Paz Gueco arranged to have a young Ninoy Aquino squire a young Imelda Romualdez, fresh from the province, around Manila. One can only imagine what the union of the two clans would have resulted in had Ninoy first gotten to and proposed to Imelda, rather than Ferdinand.]
Back to the other leading clans and families:
3.the Rufinos – first family of Manila theaters; owned prime Manila real estate due to their first-class theaters. Satellite families – the Pantangco; Padillas; Prietos.
4.the Jacintos (Iligan Steel Mills; and at one time, Security Bank). The Jacintos were one of the first families to run afoul early of Ferdinand Marcos, and their Security Bank soon became a top Romualdez-Marcos crony bank. Satellite families: RJ was married to an Arroyo; then Frannie Aguinaldo.
5.the Concepcions. Two branches—the Joe-Raul-Mely branch who owns Consolidated Foods, Republic Flour Mills, Selecta Ice Cream (among others), and the smaller one which owns the Carrier Air Conditioning franchise.
6.the Kalaws. A family flying under the radar but very well connected (in-laws to the Benitez, Cuenca, Estrada, Ilusorio and Katigbak families, among others); also have/had large land holdings in suburban Manila; and a few illustrious lady-legislators among their ranks.
7.the Aguinaldos (owned major department store in Manila, both pre-and post-war and before Heacock’s, Rustan’s, ShoeMart. Had logging interests and other businesses, e.g., the black pearl farm in Davao later sold to Antonio Floirendo.
8.the Laurels (like the Elizaldes—five sons of Jose P. Laurel, president of the 2nd Philippine Republic [the last one under Japanese supervision], thus a political family with a Batangas base; owned Lyceum University and the Philippine Banking Corp.)
9.the Padillas, a large clan whose most prominent member in the 1960s was Senator Ambrosio Padilla, whose wife, the glamorous Lily de las Alas, was compared as a rival to Imelda Marcos among the senatorial wives, but who held seniority over the Marcoses in the Senate pecking order. The Padillas had large logging concerns and owned Feati University and NAMEI. Ambrosio and Lily’s daughter, Josie, a celebrated Manila debutante, married a Rufino.
10.the Jose B. Fernandezes, a shipping family; the Maritima Steam-ship company; then Far East Bank.
It should also be noted at this point that, even though the Philippines has a population of over 100 million today, Manila is in the ten million-plus range and that the Philippine ruling elite is pretty much schooled in the western mold for over 130 years. The top two dozen clans are also pretty much interbred, and from that Manila had its own “400.” Even during the final years of Marcos rule, when the old, aristocratic families had to show their true colors and take a stand on either side of the divide (either with the established ranks or with Marcos and Imelda’s new cadre of millionaires and industrialists), there were still backdoor, interconnecting lines between the various, rival clans and families.
When I entered high school at the Ateneo de Manila, many of my classmates were from the wealthier, more established families and pretenders. I remember one classmate, the son of a Court of Appeals judge, who once said, “Oh, all those (leading) families survived by hedging their political bets—splitting and having some members align with one party, and others align with the other.” I, coming from a smaller, not well-connected family, took this seemingly very astute observation to heart.
C.Self-made Tsinoys (early families of Chinese origins but who learned the ways of the ruling Spanish aristocracy)—in no particular order:
1.Don Carlos Palanca (La Tondeña Distilleries)
2.Don Alfonso Yuchengco (the insurance king of the Philippines)
3.the Osmeñas (from Cebu; married de la Rama of shipping wealth. In 1961, socialite Minnie Osmeña was wed in an $8,500 Christian Dior wedding gown flown in from Paris, to Joselito Jacinto of the steel family, thereby superseding Irene Marcos-Araneta wearing a Euro designer, Roberto Balestra, wedding gown by some 22 years.)
4.the Ongsiakos – textiles and married well
5.the Ongpins – real estate, banking, high finance,