Imelda R. Marcos is the widow of former President Ferdinand Marcos, and is herself an influential political figure in the Philippines. She is sometimes referred to as the Steel Butterfly or the Iron Butterfly.

Imelda was born on July 2, 1929 in San Juan de Dios Hospital in Manila. Her parents were Vicente Orestes Lopez Romuáldez (of Spanish-Chinese-Filipino blood) and Remedios Trinidad (1902–1938), the second wife of the widowed Vicente. She is of Visayan and Tagalog descent. Her paternal ancestors, the wealthy and prominent Lopezes of Leyte, claimed to have founded the town of Tolosa, Leyte. Her own branch of the family was not political. Her father was a scholarly man more interested in music and culture than in public life. Her mother, Remedios Trinidad, a dressmaker who grew up in an orphanage in Manila, said to have been an illegitimate offspring of a friar, was from the town of Baliuag, Bulacan.

Read the rest of this entry »