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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-14/boyet-mejares-sm.webp" alt="Manuel Mijares" loading="lazy" />
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(Boyet, in the foreground, his father, Primitivo, in the background)
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The Yellows have been transforming many deliberately concocted rumors into their version of history, which they now claim cannot be "revised."
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Here is one example: the alleged killing of Manuel "Boyet" Mijares, purportedly by being thrown off a helicopter. A Yellow writer melodramatized to tear-jerking levels - a whole page of the oversized book was devoted to his photo - this rumor by entitling the lead chapter of her mostly cut-and-paste book, as The Boy who Fell from the Sky. The book was reportedly bankrolled by Yellow businessmen who made sure it contained the propaganda they wanted by having an "editorial board" that included the Lopez clan's Manuel (though identified only as "Manolo Lopez").
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The chapter claimed that Mijares was tortured and killed in 1977 in a really brutal manner by Marcos' minions in revenge for his father Primitivo Mijares' defection as the strongman's covert PR operator in 1976. The elder Mijares had written a book that allegedly revealed the corruption of the Marcos couple, titled The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.
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An uncritical reader would certainly condemn Marcos to hell, and be a forever Marcos-basher for such a dastardly crime inflicted on an innocent boy especially as he can easily imagine unforgettable scenes of people being thrown off or threatened to be thrown off helicopters, as in "The Gods Must be Crazy," "Narcos" and even "The Dark Knight Rises."
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But those were movies, and those blood-curling scenes I suspect gave the Yellow propagandists the inspiration for their Mijares tale. Why would "Marcos minions" go through all the trouble, expense and the risk of throwing a 15-year-old boy from a helicopter? That kind of ruthless crime would have been talked about immediately, leaked probably by the pilot and the ground crew, who are required to sign off the flight manifest.
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<h3>
First rumor
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In fact, the first rumor of somebody being thrown off a helicopter involved Boyet's father himself who disappeared in the US after giving a testimony in a congressional committee urging the US government to condemn Marcos' marital law regime, and alleging that the strongman attempted to bribe him for $100,000 not to testify. Apparently that tsismis had too few tear-jerking elements that it didn't get any traction. So another one, more shocking, was concocted.
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Mijares' congressional testimony and book was largely ignored. Marcos was at the height of his popularity in the US, even portrayed as the Filipino equivalent of John and Jackie Kennedy. The American mind was elsewhere in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation. More importantly, except for corruption involving rice imports by Marcos' cronies and the revelation of his extra-marital activities, the book was a dud.
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Its credibility would later be shot because of its two huge lies. First, Mijares claimed that Marcos was responsible for the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing. But it has been established incontrovertibly that it was undertaken by the Communist Party as their leaders put it, "to accelerate the revolutionary flow." Second, Mijares claimed that the landing of over 2,000 rifles at Digoyo Point in Isabela in 1971 was a sham, that it was undertaken by Marcos' troops to exaggerate the communist threat so he could declare martial law. Participants in the arms landing, as well as those who planned it, have declared that the arms were supplied by China, intended for the New People's Army.
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<h3>
Media operator
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Why did Mijares - Marcos' trusted media operator who had disguised himself as a columnist of the Daily Express - turn his back on the strongman and vanished in the US?
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The very religious former senator Francisco Kit Tatad, who was Marcos spokesman and a colleague of Mijares, has given us clues why, in his book published last year, All is Grace: An Autobiography.
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'Tsismis' turned Yellow fake history: The alleged killing of Manuel "Boyet" Mijares