ONE of the persistent Marcos myths is that they were responsible for bringing Ilocanos to the so-called frontier areas. These were the areas with lush natural resources and sparsely populated, just like Mindanao, Apayao, Kalinga, and Palawan. 

After writing a glowing and inaccurate story on the life of Mariano Marcos, the father of Ferdinand whose name was given to the satellite of state colleges in the North, a certain E. Marcos wrote on Facebook last May 2014, si Don Mariano po ang nagturo magfarming ang mga taga Mindanao at nagbigay po sya ng Libreng Lupa sa mga taga Mindanao. 

Mariano became a supervising teacher in Laoag in Ilocos Norte and did not teach in Mindanao.

When we went to Narra in Palawan to cover the administration of contraceptive implants among the women there, a barangay official told us that it was Ferdinand Marcos who brought the Ilocanos to that town. 

Narra was not named after the indigenous hardwood but came from National Resettlement Rehabilitation Administration, a program started in 1954 to resettle landless Luzonians in Palawan. The municipality of Narra was indeed created in 1969 by then President Marcos but the Ilocanos had already long settled in Palawan. 

Ilocanos have, in fact, migrated to other parts of the country centuries ago.