The FVR legacy

SINCE 1938, the presidents of the United States, starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, envisioned that they should have presidential libraries administered by the US National Archives, since anything that they do affects the nation and is part of their heritage. They even made a system enacted through the Presidential Libraries Act in 1955 (amended in 1986), of privately erected and federally maintained facilities to preserve and make accessible the papers, records and other historical materials pertaining to the presidency.

Among the Philippine presidents, I believe Ramon Magsaysay was the first to have an honest to goodness presidential center which is not just a mere museum but a repository of documents and made accessible to scholars by virtue of the creation of the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation and the construction of the Ramon Magsaysay Center after his death in the 1950s. His example was followed by the Jose P. Laurel Memorial Foundation in 1960 which had a piece of real estate on Roxas Boulevard (with Starbucks). Some are really just museums like Cory Aquino's, who in the last 10 years of her life devoted her time and effort into developing the Aquino Center in Tarlac, which she patterned after the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It was constructed in 2001. There is also the network of three Ferdinand E. Marcos Museums in Ilocos Norte; the NHCP museums for the Presidents Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon and Diosdado Macapagal; and an Elpidio Quirino portion at the National Museum Vigan, the former jail where he was born. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's childhood home in Iligan City is still preserved.