Jes Aznar for The International Herald Tribune
Carlos Celdran holds a portrait of a younger Imelda Marcos during his walking tour in Manila called "Livin' La Vida Imelda!"
MANILA — Holding up a photograph of Imelda Marcos in her youthful heyday as an international bon vivant and first lady of the Philippines, Carlos Celdran became contemplative.
"Imelda Marcos embedded herself into the cultural identity of the Philippines, and today Imelda is an international joke," said Mr. Celdran, 50. "Should we allow our culture to also become a joke?"
As a dozen or so people standing nearby pondered his question, the tour guide abruptly turned on his heel and strode out of the room, shouting: "Walk this way! Walk this way!"
Mr. Celdran, who describes himself as a performance artist, political activist and guide, conducts "Livin' La Vida Imelda!" — a delicious mix of history, gossip and social commentary. The three-hour walking tour covers a part of the Philippine capital known locally as the CCP Complex or, as he calls it, "the world that Imelda built."
Mrs. Marcos was the powerful first lady of President Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986, when the couple were ousted in a popular revolution and exiled to the United States. After Mr. Marcos died there in 1989, Mrs. Marcos returned to the Philippines. She was charged with corruption related to her husband's time in office, but was never convicted and, in 2010, was elected to the House of Representatives.
At 83, she is a woman who still has a larger-than-life reputation in the Philippines. While she is beloved in her home province and that of her late husband, most Filipinos regard her with a mix of humor and disdain.
The tour winds through the complex, built in the 1970s and '80s on about 880,000 square meters, or 217 acres, of land reclaimed from Manila Bay. The area includes newly built condominiums and shops.
But it is the half-dozen historic buildings from the Marcos era, with their distinctive, monolithic designs, that Mr. Celdran uses as the backdrop for the story of a young, impoverished girl whose mother died when she was 9 and who first entered the limelight at 18 by winning a local beauty pageant.
The area's centerpiece, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, was designed by Leandro Locsin and built by order of the Marcoses in 1969. Meant to be a world-class center for the arts, the structure now is showing its age. Some parts of the building are warm and clammy while others are ice cold, and carpets are tattered.
Mr. Celdran's discourse is laced with anecdotes that may or may not be true — like the story that Mrs. Marcos, known for trying to develop an air of royalty around herself and her husband, attempted to arrange a marriage between her daughter and Prince Charles. Not only was the notion soundly rejected by Buckingham Palace, Mr. Celdran says, but during a visit she reportedly attempted to wear a tiara and was told to remove it.
A short walk from the cultural center is the Folk Arts Theater, which Mrs. Marcos ordered built in 77 days for the 1974 Miss Universe pageant, saying it would put the country on the world stage. A typhoon struck at the last minute and, as Mr. Celdran tells it, the first lady ordered the grass to be painted green and pieces of white tissue paper put into the trees to give the appearance of blossoming flowers.
"How many of these stories are myth and how many are true?" Mr. Celdran asks rhetorically, prompting his tour participants to the next destination with a brisk exit and his trademark bellow of "Walk this way!"
With the cultural center and the theater representing the height of the Marcos era, the nearby Coconut Palace evokes its decline in the 1970s and the political unrest that overwhelmed the couple's grand cultural vision.
Tourgoers are treated to a blast of Filipino protest music popular at the time. It is impossible to describe the feeling of walking along a Manila street — a city not known for its walking tours — to the sound of militant Filipino folk music as the ebullient Mr. Celdran stops traffic for the group to pass.
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