While Ms. Narciso’s and Mr. Pimentel’s stories may not easily lend themselves to a disco beat, they represent 7,526 plaintiffs in a suit against the Marcos estate, one of the world’s first certified class actions for human rights abuses. It was first filed in 1986. Nine years later, an American judge ordered payment of a total of nearly $2 billion to the victims. Yet Filipino officials have balked at distributing any of the money collected from the Marcoses and their cronies, despite a scolding by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a bill pending in the Philippine Senate, where many lawmakers are themselves victims of Marcos-era abuses.
