The 10 Greatest Self-Made Men in Philippine History (Part 1 of 2)

This piece was inspired by The Art of Man­li­ness arti­cle on The Great­est Self Made Men in Amer­i­can His­tory.

I real­ized that this is such a great topic and very dif­fi­cult to pass up. The first part (#s 10–7) I will post today. The rest I will be post­ing tomorrow.

While I have attempted some sem­blance of order in list­ing down the 10 men; I have found the list grow. There are other nota­bles and men wor­thy of men­tion, but in the inter­est of whit­tling down the list to just ten men, I have decided to let go of some other really good can­di­dates and focus on these instead. This is a “live” list and by men­tion­ing these ten, I do not endorse them in any way (the ones alive and still in pol­i­tics any­way). May this be the begin­ning of a dis­cus­sion on who ought to be there and who should not be part of the list. Give me your com­ments below. I’m sure you have your own strong opin­ions about them.

I have also not listed them in order (i.e. #1 is not “bet­ter” or more “self made” than #10), but have tried to list them down to the best of my abil­ity. So bear with the seem­ing ran­dom­ness of the list.

The Fil­ip­ina women also mer­its their own list and I am plan­ning to come up with a post on them later on. But for now, let this be about the men. The Art of Man­li­ness gave the defines “self made” in the quote below.

What is a self-made man?
While we think that this is about rags to riches sto­ries, a self-made man is any­one who attains far greater suc­cess than when he started out. The self-made man often has to over­come great obsta­cles to achieve his goals. Self-made men attain their suc­cess through edu­ca­tion, hard work, and sheer willpower.

The self-made man is he who comes from unpromis­ing cir­cum­stances, who is not born into priv­i­lege and wealth, and yet by his own efforts, man­ages to become a great suc­cess in life.

While an aspect of luck is attrib­uted here, it not the decid­ing fac­tor. Soci­ety loves the story of a man whose suc­cess came to him largely by chance, from an oppor­tu­nity dropped from the sky. Such sto­ries allow unsuc­cess­ful men to excuse their fail­ure as due to unavoid­able bad luck and demerit the suc­cess of oth­ers by chalk­ing their achieve­ments up to chance. How­ever, self-made men through­out his­tory have made their own way in life by reach­ing deep inside them­selves and through willpower and elbow grease, cre­at­ing their own des­tiny. While there are always many fac­tors to suc­cess, all are sub­or­di­nate to work, which is the great key to success.

10) Pres­i­dent Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay (August 31, 1907 — March 17, 1957)

Ramon Magsaysay is prob­a­bly one of the most pop­u­lar per­sons to hold the office of Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines. He held office from Decem­ber 30, 1953 until his death in a plane crash in 1957.

He was born in Iba, Zam­bales on August 31, 1907 to Exe­quiel Magsaysay, a black­smith, and Per­fecta del Fierro, a school­teacher. He entered the Uni­ver­sity of the Philip­pines in 1927. He worked as a chauf­feur to sup­port him­self as he stud­ied engi­neer­ing; later, he trans­ferred to the Insti­tute of Com­merce at Jose Rizal Col­lege (1928−1932), where he received a bac­calau­re­ate in com­merce. He then worked as an auto­mo­bile mechanic and shop super­in­ten­dent. When World War II broke out, he joined the motor pool of the 31^st Infantry Divi­sion of the Philip­pine army.

When Bataan sur­ren­dered in 1942, Magsaysay escaped to the hills, orga­nized the West­ern Luzon Guer­rilla Forces, and was com­mis­sioned cap­tain on April 5, 1942. For three years Capt. Magsaysay oper­ated under Col. Merrill’s famed guer­rilla out­fit and saw action at Sawang, San Marcelino, Zam­bales. Magsaysay was among those instru­men­tal in clear­ing the Zam­bales coast of the Japan­ese prior to the land­ing of Amer­i­can lib­er­a­tion forces together with the Philip­pine Com­mon­wealth troops on Jan. 29, 1945.

In early August 1950 he offered then Pres­i­dent Quirino a plan to fight the Com­mu­nist gueril­las, using his own expe­ri­ences in guer­rilla war­fare dur­ing World War II. After some hes­i­ta­tion, Quirino real­ized that there was no alter­na­tive and appointed Magsaysay Sec­re­tary of National Defence on August 31, 1950. He inten­si­fied the cam­paign against the Huk­bal­a­hap gueril­las, wag­ing one of the most suc­cess­ful anti-guerrilla cam­paigns in mod­ern his­tory. This suc­cess was due in part to the uncon­ven­tional meth­ods he employed and devel­oped along­side an Amer­i­can adviser, Gen­eral Edward Lans­dale. The coun­terin­sur­gency the two deployed uti­lized sol­diers dis­trib­ut­ing relief goods and other forms of aid to out­ly­ing, provin­cial com­mu­ni­ties. Where before Magsaysay the rural folk looked on the Philip­pine Army if not in dis­trust, at least with gen­eral apa­thy, dur­ing his term as Defense Sec­re­tary Fil­ipinos began to respect and admire their soldiers.

In the Elec­tion of 1953, Magsaysay was deci­sively elected pres­i­dent over Quirino. He was sworn into office wear­ing the Barong Taga­log, a first by a Philip­pine president.

Ramon Magsaysay com­manded the admi­ra­tion, respect and affec­tion of peo­ple because he was a sim­ple, hum­ble man; because he cared for all peo­ple as indi­vid­u­als and believed in their dig­nity and impor­tance; and because he had the courage of his con­vic­tions. His objec­tive was to improve the lot of his fel­low Fil­ipinos and he approached the task with self­less devo­tion. He was con­vinced that gov­ern­ment, to last and to be sound, must have integrity and reflect the will of the people.

On March 16, 1957 Magsaysay left Manila for Cebu City where he spoke at three edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions. That same night, at about 1 a.m., he boarded the pres­i­den­tial plane “Mt. Pinatubo”, a C-47, head­ing back to Manila. In the early morn­ing hours of March 17, his plane was reported miss­ing. It was late in the after­noon that day that news­pa­pers reported that the air­plane had crashed on Mt. Manung­gal in Cebu and that 25 of the 26 pas­sen­gers and crew aboard were killed. Only news­pa­per­man Nés­tor Mata sur­vived. Vice Pres­i­dent Car­los P. Gar­cía assumed the pres­i­dency to serve out the last eight months of Magsaysay’s term.

An esti­mated 2 mil­lion peo­ple attended Magsaysay’s bur­ial on March 22, 1957, a tes­ta­ment to how well loved Magsaysay is by the people.

9) Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino (Novem­ber 27, 1932 – August 21, 1983)

Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was a for­mer Philip­pine sen­a­tor, gov­er­nor, vice gov­er­nor and mayor and a leader of the oppo­si­tion to the rule of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. He was assas­si­nated at the Manila Inter­na­tional Air­port (now named the Ninoy Aquino Inter­na­tional Air­port in his honor) upon return­ing home from exile in the United States. His death cat­a­pulted his widow, Cora­zon Aquino, to the lime­light and sub­se­quently to the pres­i­dency, replac­ing the 20-year-old Mar­cos regime.

He was no stranger to Philip­pine pol­i­tics. He came from a fam­ily that had been involved with some of the country’s polit­i­cal heavy­weights. His grand­fa­ther served under Pres­i­dent Aguinaldo while his father held office under Pres­i­dents Manuel L. Que­zon and Jose P. Laurel.

But Ninoy exceeded his pre­de­ces­sors. He became the youngest munic­i­pal mayor in the coun­try at age 22, and the nation’s youngest vice-governor at 27. He became gov­er­nor of Tar­lac province in 1961 at age 29, then secretary-general of the Lib­eral Party in 1966. In 1967 he made his­tory by becom­ing the youngest elected sen­a­tor in the country’s his­tory at age 34. He was the only mem­ber of the Lib­eral Party who made it to the sen­ate despite the pow­er­ful Mar­cos polit­i­cal jug­ger­naut. He was inevitably sin­gled out by Mar­cos and his allies as their great­est threat. In 1968, dur­ing his first year in the Upper House, Aquino warned that Mar­cos was on the road to estab­lish­ing “a gar­ri­son state” by “bal­loon­ing the armed forces bud­get”, sad­dling the defense estab­lish­ment with “over­stay­ing gen­er­als” and “mil­i­ta­riz­ing our civil­ian gov­ern­ment offices”–all these caveats were uttered barely four years before mar­tial law.

In so many ways Aquino chal­lenged the Mar­cos regime, chip­ping away at its mono­lithic facade. His most cel­e­brated speech, inso­lently enti­tled “A Pan­theon for Imelda”, was deliv­ered on Feb­ru­ary 10, 1969, and assailed the first lady’s first extrav­a­gant project, the P50 mil­lion Cul­tural Cen­ter, which he dubbed “a mon­u­ment to shame”. An out­raged Pres­i­dent Mar­cos called Aquino “a con­gen­i­tal liar”. The First Lady’s friends angrily accused Aquino of being “ungal­lant”. These so-called “fis­cal­iza­tion” tac­tics of Aquino quickly became his trade­mark in the sen­ate. Dur­ing his tenure as sen­a­tor, he was selected by the Philip­pine Free Press mag­a­zine as one of the nation’s most out­stand­ing sen­a­tors. His achieve­ments at such a young age earned him the moniker “Won­der Boy” of Philip­pine politics.

Sur­veys dur­ing those times showed that he was the num­ber one choice for Pres­i­dent after Pres­i­dent Mar­cos since Mar­cos by law was pro­hib­ited to serve another term. It was not meant to be how­ever, because Mar­cos declared Mar­tial Law in 1972. Ninoy how­ever con­tin­ued his fil­i­bus­ter­ing and con­tin­ued speak­ing about the truth until he was impris­oned for treason.

Because of a heart ail­ment, he was allowed to go to the United States for a by-pass oper­a­tion and even­tu­ally self exiled.

Decid­ing to return to Manila on August 21, 1983, he was assas­si­nated as he descended from his plane at the for­mer Manila Inter­na­tional Air­port, now named in his mem­ory. About two mil­lion peo­ple attended the funeral of the late sen­a­tor from Sto. Domingo Church to Manila Memo­r­ial Park.

The tide had turned. And free­dom is at hand.

8) Fer­di­nand Mar­cos (Sep­tem­ber 11, 1917 – Sep­tem­ber 28, 1989)

The foil to Ninoy Aquino, Fer­di­nand Mar­cos was Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, mem­ber of the Philip­pine House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (1949−1959) and a mem­ber of the Philip­pine Sen­ate (1959−1965). Dur­ing World War II he claimed to be the leader of Ang Mahar­lika, a guer­rilla force in north­ern Luzon. In 1963 he became Sen­ate Pres­i­dent. As Philip­pine pres­i­dent and strong­man, his great­est achieve­ment was in the fields of infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment and inter­na­tional diplo­macy. How­ever, his admin­is­tra­tion was marred by mas­sive author­i­ta­tive gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, despo­tism, nepo­tism, polit­i­cal repres­sion and human rights vio­la­tions. He has also led a large per­son­al­ity cult in the Philip­pines dur­ing his regime, which was often com­pared to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il-Sung. In 1986 he was removed from power dur­ing the EDSA Peo­ple Power Revolution.

Mar­cos was born on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1917 in Sar­rat, Ilo­cos Norte. Named by his par­ents, Mar­i­ano Mar­cos and Josefa Edralin, after Fer­di­nand VII of Spain, bap­tized into the Philip­pine Inde­pen­dent Church, Mar­cos was a cham­pion debater, boxer, swim­mer and a wrestler while in the Uni­ver­sity of the Philippines.

Mar­cos grad­u­ated cum laude with a law degree from the U.P. Col­lege of Law in 1939 and was elected to the Pi Gamma Mu inter­na­tional honor soci­ety. As a young law stu­dent of the Uni­ver­sity of the Philip­pines, Mar­cos was indicted and con­victed of the mur­der of Julio Nalun­dasan, the man who twice defeated his father for a National Assem­bly seat. While in deten­tion, he stud­ied for and passed the bar exam­i­na­tion with one of the high­est scores in his­tory. He appealed his con­vic­tion and argued his case before the Supreme Court of the Philip­pines. It was known that the jus­tices were so impressed by his defense apart from the fact that Mar­cos was in jail while he was review­ing for the bar exam. Mar­cos report­edly wrote an 800-page defense while in jail.

After the end of the war and the estab­lish­ment of the Repub­lic, Pres­i­dent Manuel Roxas appointed Mar­cos as spe­cial tech­ni­cal assis­tant. Later, Mar­cos ran for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the 2^nd dis­trict of Ilo­cos Norte under the ban­ner of the rul­ing Lib­eral Party. Dur­ing the cam­paign he told his con­stituents “Elect me a Con­gress­man now and I pledge you an Ilo­cano Pres­i­dent in 20 years.” He was elected thrice as Con­gress­man. In 1959 he was elected to the Sen­ate with the high­est num­ber of votes. He imme­di­ately became its Minor­ity Floor Leader. In 1963, after a tumul­tuous rigodon in the Sen­ate, he was elected its Pres­i­dent despite being in the minor­ity party.

Pres­i­dent Dios­dado Maca­pa­gal, who had promised not to run for reelec­tion in 1965 to sup­port Mar­cos’ can­di­dacy for the pres­i­dency, went back on this promise, caus­ing Mar­cos to resign from the Lib­eral Party. With the sup­port of his wife Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, he joined the Nacional­ista Party and became its standard-bearer with Sen­a­tor Fer­nando Lopez as his run­ning mate.

With the promise to “make the Fil­ipino great again,” Mar­cos won the Pres­i­dency over Macapagal.

He was so suc­cess­ful in his first term that he made his­tory by becom­ing the first pres­i­dent of the Third Repub­lic of the Philip­pines to be re-elected. His pop­u­lar­ity went into decline dur­ing his sec­ond term. Stu­dents and activists started protest­ing against Mar­cos and abuses by the mil­i­tary. Com­mu­nists began recruit­ing and estab­lished a guer­rilla army which in turn started a cam­paign of vio­lent activ­i­ties. As a result of mil­i­tary abuses, war erupted in the Mus­lim areas of Mindanao.

Using the excuse of an alleged assas­si­na­tion attempt against Defence Min­is­ter Juan Ponce Enrile, Mar­cos declares mar­tial law on 21 Sep­tem­ber 1972, promis­ing to elim­i­nate poverty and injus­tice and cre­ate a “new soci­ety”. It is later revealed that the assas­si­na­tion attempt had been staged by the military.

Oppo­si­tion fig­ures (includ­ing Ninoy Aquino), jour­nal­ists, stu­dent and labour activists and crim­i­nals are arrested and detained at mil­i­tary com­pounds run by the army and the police. News­pa­pers are closed and the mass media tightly con­trolled. Demon­stra­tions, strikes and boy­cotts are out­lawed. Mar­cos assumes absolute leg­isla­tive power. The con­sti­tu­tion, which per­mits pres­i­dents only two terms in office, is suspended.

In 1981, Mar­cos pro­claims the end of mar­tial law. He wins an over­whelm­ing major­ity in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion held in June, but the vote is rigged and is boy­cotted by the main oppo­si­tion groups. In Novem­ber 1984, Mar­cos announces that an elec­tion for pres­i­dent will be held on 7 Feb­ru­ary of the fol­low­ing year. Cora­zon Aquino, the widow of Ninoy, announces that she will stand as a can­di­date. The elec­tion is held as sched­uled but the results are con­tested, with the oppo­si­tion and Roman Catholic Church claim­ing wide­spread fraud and intim­i­da­tion. Mar­cos is pro­claimed the offi­cial win­ner on 15 Feb­ru­ary, spark­ing a rebel­lion by Defence Min­is­ter Enrile, armed forces vice chief-of-staff Fidel Ramos, and the com­man­der of the Philip­pine police, who also believe that the vote has been rigged. Call­ing on Mar­cos to resign, the rebels receive the back­ing of the church and the sup­port of the people.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 1986, the Mar­coses run, aban­don­ing the pres­i­den­tial palace and fly­ing to Hawaii in the US. Their 20-year regime is at its end. As the Mar­coses flee, Cora­zon Aquino is sworn in as pres­i­dent, rid­ing in on the mas­sive wave of ‘People’s Power’.

7) Manny Vil­lar (born Decem­ber 13, 1949)

Manuel “Manny” Bamba Vil­lar Jr. was born on Decem­ber 13, 1949 in Mori­ones, Tondo Manila. His father, Manuel Mon­tal­ban Vil­lar, Sr., a gov­ern­ment employee, hailed from Cabat­uan, Iloilo and his mother Curita Bamba, a seafood dealer, came from Pam­panga and Bataan. The sec­ond of nine chil­dren, Vil­lar attended Holy Child Catholic School and started sell­ing seafood at the Divi­so­ria Mar­ket at an early age.

While Manny Vil­lar was a work­ing stu­dent, he was also putting in long hours as a fish and shrimp trader: work­ing where the action starts dur­ing the wee hours of the morn­ing when the freshly caught seafood arrives at mar­ket grounds. As a work­ing stu­dent, he was able to put him­self through school by fin­ish­ing his stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of the Philip­pines where he earned his Bach­e­lor of Arts and Mas­ter of Arts degrees in Busi­ness Administration.

After grad­u­a­tion, he tried his hand as an accoun­tant at the country’s biggest account­ing firm, Sycip, Gor­res, Velayo & Co. (SGV & Co.). He resigned shortly though to ven­ture on his own seafood deliv­ery business.

When a restau­rant he was deliv­er­ing stocks to did not pay him, he printed out “meal tick­ets” which he per­suaded the restau­rant own­ers to honor. He then sold these tick­ets at a dis­counted price to office work­ers. It took him one year to liq­ui­date his receivables.

He worked briefly as a finan­cial ana­lyst at the Pri­vate Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of the Philip­pines. His job was to sell World Bank loans, despite the attrac­tive rates of which there were no tak­ers. Con­vinced that he could make it on his own again, he quit his job and promptly availed of one of the loans.

With an ini­tial cap­i­tal of P10,000 in 1975, Vil­lar pur­chased two recon­di­tioned trucks and started his sand-and-gravel busi­ness in Las Piñas.

He started a sand and gravel busi­ness and then went on to estab­lish one of the largest devel­op­ment firms in the South­east Asian region, the Camella & Palmera Homes. Orig­i­nally low end devel­op­ers, the Com­pany has recently started sell­ing more high end homes under the Crown Asia brand name.

He earned cita­tions such as the Ten Out­stand­ing Young Men in 1986, the Agora Award for Mar­ket­ing Man­age­ment in 1989, Most Out­stand­ing CPA by the Insti­tute of Cer­ti­fied Pub­lic Accoun­tants in 1990, and Most Out­stand­ing Alum­nus in 1991.

He ven­tured in the polit­i­cal arena in 1992 and was elected as Con­gress­man rep­re­sent­ing Las Piñas post­ing land­slide vic­to­ries. On his third term, he was cho­sen to be the Speaker of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. On Novem­ber 13, 2000, he became the first House Speaker in Philip­pine his­tory to impeach a Pres­i­dent, paving the way for the ele­va­tion of the arti­cles of impeach­ment to the Senate.

In the national elec­tions held last May 14, 2001, despite being a rel­a­tive new­comer in national pol­i­tics, Manny Vil­lar posted one of the most impres­sive show­ings in the national polls. On his first day in office, he was selected as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore, the posi­tion he held until 2003.

In Feb­ru­ary 2004, he was elected as Pres­i­dent of the Nacional­ista Party — the country’s old­est polit­i­cal party. He was also named the Most Dis­tin­guished UP Alumnus—the high­est recog­ni­tion given by the UP Alumni Association—for his exem­plary pub­lic ser­vice and achievements.

He is rec­og­nized as the rich­est leg­is­la­tor in Philip­pine his­tory where he was con­sis­tently the rich­est con­gress­man from 1992 to 2001 and rich­est sen­a­tor from 2001 until 2008.

On the Forbes Mag­a­zine released Octo­ber 2007, its list of “The Philip­pines’ 40 Rich­est,” he is ranked 5^th and the year’s biggest gainer. From $110 mil­lion last year, his net worth shot up 755% to $940 mil­lion after the pub­lic offer­ing of his com­pany Vista Land & Lifescapes.

Not bad for a for­mer work­ing stu­dent who sold fish!

PROCEED TO PART 2 of THE GREATEST SELF-MADE MEN IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY