People Power Revolution ousts Marcos
On this day · 25 February 1986
Four days of unarmed crowds on a Manila highway toppled a two-decade dictatorship without a battle.
In February 1986, a disputed snap election lit the fuse. President Ferdinand Marcos claimed victory over challenger Corazon “Cory” Aquino, but tabulators walked out over fraud and defecting officers barricaded themselves in two Manila military camps. When the Catholic Church called citizens into the streets, hundreds of thousands answered, massing along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) to shield the rebels with their bodies.
From February 22 to 25, 1986, the crowds held. Nuns knelt before tanks, soldiers refused to fire, and the standoff became a festival of resistance now remembered as the People Power Revolution.
An unarmed crowd, not an army, decided who would govern.
On the evening of February 25, 1986, with his American allies signaling it was time to “cut, and cut cleanly,” Marcos and his family were flown out by U.S. helicopters into exile in Hawaii. Earlier that day Cory Aquino had been sworn in as president, ending roughly twenty years of Marcos rule and inspiring nonviolent uprisings worldwide.
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