After the Fairy Tale : Imelda Marcos Says She’s Enjoying Life ‘in the Real World’

Shorn of her bodyguards and far from the tumult of loyalists and enemies, Imelda Marcos sat in her Beverly Hills hotel room nibbling at a pepperoni pizza and noted that on her last visit here she was the First Lady of the Philippines who dined with industrialist Armand Hammer.

Away from the crowds, she was reflecting Friday on her slide from being one of the most visible foreign dignitaries in the world to the survivor of a celebrated criminal trial that may have found her innocent but, to many, had not cleared her name.

“Before it was Imelda in the Cinderella fairy tale. Now it is Imelda in the real world,” said the woman who once exchanged toasts with Fidel Castro, glided on the dance floor with George Hamilton and swapped dinner conversation with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

“She had an enviable position then, and now she’s down here,” Marcos said of herself. “But she’s down with the real world and the real people, and I’m enjoying it.”

The fact that Imelda Romualdez Marcos is enjoying herself once again is both liberating to her supporters and galling to her detractors.

Marcos remains a lightning rod of controversy not only in her native country but in the Filipino-American community and among other Americans who watched her plight as the first wife of a foreign head of state to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.

Marcos was charged with fraud and racketeering in New York for allegedly joining her late husband, former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, in looting their country’s treasury of more than $200 million and using some of the funds to purchase skyscrapers and other real estate in the city.

During a three-month trial that saw her lifestyle dissected, her face on the cover of a tabloid newspaper with the headline “OINK,” and her own lawyer endorsing her reputation as a “world-class shopper,” Imelda Marcos became the punch line for comedians in two nations.

But last July 2--on her 61st birthday--a federal jury acquitted Marcos of all charges. She walked on her knees down the aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in thanks.

Sitting in her Beverly Hills hotel room three months later, Marcos said she still felt overwhelmed by her ordeal.

“For someone who is widowed and orphaned from a country and then alien in a foreign land, what I went through was something awesome,” she said. “Even the Bible says there is a special place for those who oppress widows and orphans, and I was both.”

Marcos, dressed in a black, sequined gown with her hair pulled back, was still basking in the boisterous reception she had received only hours before at the Carson Community Center.

More than 600 supporters, including some who had traveled from San Diego and San Francisco, had packed the hall Thursday night to welcome the woman they affectionately called “Mom”--short for both Madame and Mother or “Nanay” in their native Tagalog.

As she entered the hall, Marcos was overwhelmed by the crush of supporters who had spelled out her name in balloons, stood whistling on chairs and pushed for autographs and pictures.

What Marcos’ supporters got, in return, was vintage Imelda--an hourlong speech that defended her family, spoke tearfully of her late husband, quoted both the Bible and Madonna, and poked fun at her rumored romance with George Hamilton.

Imelda regaled them with stories. She sang. She wept. She laughed. And she told the crowd that since her acquittal, she is ready to pay some of the reputed millions of dollars of her family wealth to settle a massive civil lawsuit filed against her by the Philippine government. In return, she said, she hopes to be able to return home and bury her husband, who died two years ago before he could be tried.

“Now that the verdict is in, that’s good money,” she said of her financial offer. “That’s clean money.”

Others, however, disagree. Outside the center, some anti-Marcos protesters displayed paper banners denouncing her appearance and called her acquittal a sham.

“I’m appalled that she would be invited by Filipino people after all the looting and plundering her family did in the Philippines,” said Teresita Salazar of Culver City.

Beside her stood her 6-year-old daughter, who carried a sign reading: “Imelda, You Destroyed the Future of the Filipino Children.” And her husband, Ludy, held another sign aloft: “Imelda, the Whole World Knows You Are Guilty.”

But the target of their scorn never saw the signs. Whisked to and from the reception in a stretch limousine that avoided the protesters, Marcos was constantly surrounded by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and bodyguards.

Marcos, however, defended some of her expenditures and said they were part of her role as the wife of a head of state.

“I was playing a part. I was the First Lady,” she said in an interview.

As she spoke, Marcos fingered a gold compact case with her name inscribed in jewels on the top, and she sought to explain a role that she said many Americans do not understand.

Calling herself her country’s “mother and First Lady,” Marcos likened herself to the queen of England. “I’m not trying to be royalty, but you know, what are they there for? They are symbols and people live by symbols,” she said.

Marcos, who is in Los Angeles to attend a judicial conference this weekend, said she is negotiating with the government of Corazon Aquino in hopes of returning home in the next few months. Marcos said she does not know the size of her family’s wealth, but her attorney, James P. Linn, said a partial agreement has been reached that could mean some of her fortune will be returned to the Philippine government.

“If what I hear is right, she is having problems,” a smiling Marcos said of the president who replaced her husband. “Here I am. I’m jobless. Maybe I can be of help.”