Cardboard and Cadavers: The Undying Myths of El Cid and Duterte
By Gilbert Pilayre C. Pilayre
Both were baptized “Rodrigo.” The older one was born in 1043, in medieval Spain. The younger one, in Southern Leyte, Philippines, in 1945—a gap of almost a thousand years. Both were adored by their people for their so-called “bravery.”
El Cid was a complex figure who fought for both Christian and Muslim rulers—a reflection, in a way, of the man who was elected President and then ravaged his country in a campaign to eliminate the drug menace once and for all, killing tens of thousands in the process. Both were divisive characters, seen either as heroes, villains, or both at once.
El Cid, to preserve morale and strike terror into the enemy, was dressed in armor and mounted on his warhorse, upright and secured with a wooden frame. His cadaver was then paraded through the battlefield or along the city walls, giving the illusion that he was still alive and commanding—all in an effort to terrify the enemy.
Duterte, while detained at The Hague awaiting formal trial for crimes against humanity, had his photo mounted on cardboard and displayed among his followers—raising hopes among his adherents that he would soon be released.
Both Rodrigos, in death or in absence, retained symbolic power that transcended their flesh. El Cid’s lifeless form, armored and astride his steed, became a spectral weapon—fear made incarnate. Duterte’s visage, flattened into cardboard and carried like a relic by the faithful, became a placeholder of power deferred—a promise of return. In both cases, it was not the man but the myth that marched forward.
Their followers clung not to the truth of their actions, but to the image they projected: the unwavering defender, the unrepentant warrior, the last man standing against chaos. Yet behind that image lay contradiction—El Cid, a mercenary who switched sides between Muslim and Christian lords; Duterte, a populist who defied democratic norms while claiming to protect them. Each ruled through fear as much as through faith.
Even in legal restraint, Duterte’s myth persists. Some whisper that he is a political prisoner, a martyr of sovereignty against international meddling. Others point to the mass graves, the orphaned children, the silenced mothers—and wonder if this is not the tragic epilogue of a nation seduced by its own illusions. Meanwhile, the cardboard cutout of Duterte grins faintly, a paper icon in the new hagiography of power.
Both Rodrigos inhabit a space beyond simple judgment. They are figures around whom nations narrate themselves—whether in epics or in online propaganda. One was embalmed in bronze and ballad; the other survives in hashtags and chants at rallies. But the effect is the same: a body politic in search of a savior, finding in the shadows of their dead or detained leader not a man, but a mirror.
And so, history loops back on itself. From the medieval plains of Spain to the streets of Manila, the name Rodrigo has summoned not merely men, but myth. El Cid rode into legend as a corpse propped by armor; Duterte drifts into it as cardboard held by the desperate. Both are dead—or detained—but their specters remain animated by the same old longing: for order without justice, for strength without question, for salvation without truth. It is not coincidence, but design, that these two figures—born centuries and continents apart—are kept upright by those who need them to be. In the end, the myth outlives the man because the fear outlives the moment. We return, full circle, to the same illusion: that power, even in death, can still protect us from ourselves.
And so, history repeats—not as farce, but as ritual. The armored corpse and the cardboard effigy remind us that some men refuse to die, not because they are immortal, but because the fears that summoned them have not yet been laid to rest.
