Acestral Root of Dr. Jose Rizal

José Rizal's parents, Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos,José Rizal's parents, Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos,

Rizal was the seventh child of their eleven children namely: Saturnina (1850-1913), Paciano (1851-1930), Narcisa (1852-1939), Olympia (1855-1887), Lucia (1857-1919), Maria (1859-1945), Jose Rizal (1861-1896), Concepcion (1862-1865), Josefa (1865-1945), Trinidad (1868-1951) and Soledad (1870-1929).


Rizal was a 6th-generation patrilineal descendant of

Domingo Lam-co (Chinese: 柯仪南; pinyin: Ke Yinan), a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who sailed to the Philippines from Jinjiang, Quanzhou in the mid-17th century.

 Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley native of Luzon. To free his descendants from the anti-Chinese animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the family surname to the Spanish surname "Mercado" (market) to indicate their Chinese merchant roots. Their original application was for the name "Ricial", apropos their main occupation of farming, which was arbitrarily denied.


The name "Rizal" (originally Ricial, the green of young growth or green fields), was adopted by Jose to enable him to travel freely as the Mercados had gained notoriety by Paciano's earlier links with Filipino priests who were sentenced to death as subversives. From early childhood, Jose and Paciano were already advancing unheard-of political ideas of freedom and individual rights which infuriated the authorities.

Rizal, 11 years old, a student at the Ateneo Municipal.Aside from indigenous Filipino and Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that José had traces of Spanish, and Japanese ancestry. His maternal great-great-grandfather (Teodora's great-grandfather) was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, who married a Filipina named Benigna (surname unknown). These two gave birth to Regina Ursua who married a Sangley mestizo from Pangasinán named Atty. Manuel de Quintos, Teodora's grandfather. Their daughter Brígida de Quintos married a Spanish mestizo named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo, the father of Teodora. Austin Craig mentions Lacandula, Rajah of Tondo at the time of the Spanish incursion, also as an ancestor.


His maternal great-grandmother, Regina Ochoa, is described as a Spanish-Chinese mestiza. His father's side of the family tree is dotted with many people described as either "Chinese" or "mestizo Chinese." His most illustrious Chinese ancestor, Doming Lam-co, was born in China in 1662 and whose original Chinese name was Cue Yi-lam. This lolo of Rizal had an even more distinguished ancestry in China.


CUA CLAN


Domingo Lam-co belonged to the Cua clan of south China. The surname Cua is considered today as the 44th most common name in China. It is a variant of the family name CAI, which also has variant transliterations that include Tsai, Choi, Choy, Chua, Cue, and Chye. The Cuas are considered today as one of the most prosperous families in South China and in other parts of Asia. The Cuas are a very ancient line, which can be traced to how many generations ago back to times when unified China was still non-existent.


They are the descendants of Shu Du, the 5th son of Zhou Wu Wang, the political genius who started the Chou dynasty. Shu Du was later made the duke of Cai (Shangcai of Henan), and was known as Cai Shu. He was an active member of the royal court and was one of the "Three Guards" during the first years of the Chou dynasty. It was 600 years later when his descendants finally formalized the usage of the surname Cai.


As already stated, the Cuas today continue to enjoy the same status that they did hundreds of years ago. Taiwanese billionaire Tsai Wan-Lin of the Cathay Life Group and Chua To-Hing of Gudang Garam Group of Indonesia are two of the richest Cua descendants today, according to Forbes magazine.

Domingo Lam-co, Rizal's great-great-grandfather, was the 19th generation descendant of the Cai Shu Du. At the age of 35, Lam-co was baptized in June 1697, in the Parian Church of San Gabriel. He took the name Domingo since he was baptized on Sunday. Lam-co then became Domingo Lam-co.


SETTLED IN LAGUNA


In his baptismal record, his parents were simply listed as Siong-co and Jun-nio. He settled in Bi an, Laguna on the Dominican estate called San Isidro Labrador. Domingo married Inez de la Rosa, a girl very much younger than he was. She was the daughter of his friend, Agustin Chinco, a rich Chinese merchant, and Jacinta Rafaela, a Chinese mestiza of Parian.

Domingo's son was Francisco, the first in the line to use Mercado as a surname. The name Mercado, a Spanish word for market, aptly described the livelihood of Domingo's family as they were entrepreneurs. Later, Francisco's grandson and namesake, Rizal's father, changed the family name to Rizal to suit his farming business, since Rizal is derived from the Spanish ricial, which means green fields.

Despite the persecution that the Chinese and the Chinese mestizos suffered from the Spaniards, the ancestors of Rizal were fearless people who ensured the survival of their family and their livelihood. From this strength of character, no doubt, Rizal got his ability to remain calm and composed even in the face of adversaries.


I decided today that, unlike most people, I would not extol on the virtues and the values of Jose P. Rizal and instead pay tribute to the men and women who came before our national hero. Most of us are already quite familiar with Rizal's greatness anyway.

Besides, like Ambeth Ocampo, I believe that heroes must be presented as human beings and not like gods. When we see that our heroes are just like us, we tend to get more encouraged to emulate them. After all, a hero is just an ordinary person doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times.

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