I did nothing yesterday but watch Finding Your Roots (PBS) on YouTube that’s why I was late to the 5 pm church service. Yes, it was that late.
It was so fascinating how thorough they are with their research, especially with the documentation of black slaves. It was an emotional roller coaster ride for most guests.
I wish I have access to PBS so I could watch full episodes. 🥺 I love history.
I was wondering how far back can we go when it comes to my family. Maybe, someone might have been a writer, a thespian, or a musician back then. However, I doubt if we can go earlier than my great grandfather on my mom’s side. First of all, it was just in 1849 when the Spaniards forced the Spanish last names on the indios so tax collection would be easier. Prior to that, the records on my maternal side maybe would just indicate “Alfonso, son of David the Tall” which was the normal practice for the lower class or the indios. They didn’t have last names and they just identified as “son of” then the description of that person, hence we have Rajah Matanda (Rajah the Old) in our history books. It was the rich who had proper documentation then, just like in my paternal grandma’s side. We had/have a family tree, made in 1960s, hanging in one of my grand uncle’s houses. That house always figured in my nightmares as a child because it was dark and very old. It looked like it hasn’t been touched since the 1960s.
Anyway, in that family tree, I could trace the Spanish side of the family—a Spandiard married into the family and he was an industrious man who fenced all the land that he could fence. That’s why that family ended up with so much land and became rich/richer. He must have been a rarity in those times because when you’re an Español, you were automatically an upperclass human and can just be indolent, if you’re crafty enough. It doesn’t matter if you were just a petty thief in the old country. You can fashion yourself as someone in the new world—in the far-flung backwater Islas de Filipinas—as long as you are a pureblood Spaniard from the Iberian peninsula (peninsulares). This was best illustrated by Jose Rizal in Noli Me Tangere in the form of Don Tiburcio, the fake Spanish doctor whom social climber Doña Victorina de Espadaña married. The Philippines was not populated by the peninsulares because we are so far from continental Europe. There was little incentive for the Spaniards to come here, except if you’re a criminal on the run or have zero prospects back in Spain. Or a Spanish friar. We were just governed by the Spanish empire by proxy through Mexico. This explains why we Filipinos have fewer white or Eurasian features compared to the Mexicans. Mexico is just halfway across the world from Spain whereas the Islas required a full circumnavigation.
On my maternal side, family lore is handed down orally. Nothing has been written down. We don’t even have the Chinese name of our forefathers on my grandpa’s side and on grandma’s side. A cousin several times removed whom my uncle met in the US was the one who told him the original Chinese name. Now I have to pester my uncle for that info while he is still alive and has his mental faculties intact.
I don’t have info as to what was my maternal great grandfather’s trade. I just know he was a Katipunero during the revolt against Spain. My great grandma lived until my mom was in her elementary school years and she and an uncle slept on either side of her when they were growing up.
My maternal grandpa was very industrious. He was able to reach high school—a rarity in those days during the American colonial period—and the only way he could go to school then was by taking lodgings with a household near the school as his family lived in the mountains. That’s where he met my grandma (who only finished 2nd Grade but could do sums); she was the daughter of the landlord. (In contrast, my paternal grandma went to finishing school and her siblings went to law school or finished college in Manila. That’s why she could speak and read Spanish and English). My maternal grandpa said he brought with him a potful of uncooked rice from home every week and that would be consumed all throughout the week.
He boarded a ship (as a stowaway) bound for California, USA. He became a muchacho (errand boy), a cook, a grocer, etc. This is why he could hold conversations in English. He told me his favorite fruit was peach that’s why his children from the US always sent him canned peaches (before imports came flooding our market with it). He could have stayed in the US and just live there but he went back home to marry my grandma. My grandpa bought land (several hectares of it in two provinces). He built an elementary school in his village so children didn’t have to board with strangers just to be able to go to school like he did. Everyone in my maternal side has a fond memory of him and his cooking. I loved his Southern-style fried chicken while my older cousins still hanker for his pork cracklings. He didn’t like cooking on the gas stove; that was for my grandma. He preferred cooking on his wood and ash stove. I had watched him cook his magic there, in his tattered cookhouse. He still had the beat-up dining table that my mom and his siblings used to eat on and utilized it as his worktop. I wonder where all those went 🤔.
My paternal grandpa was a witch doctor and a farmer. I doubt if our last name is our real last name because he was a child born out of wedlock. He was an only child—uncommon in those times when families have more than 6 children. My great grandma could have invented a last name for my grandpa because it was not normal to have an illegitimate child acknowledged by the father in those days, even if half the town knew who he was…
He and my rich grandma eloped, lived for a while in a hacienda in San Pablo. He worked there as a majordomo (butler) for that rich don, who was a friend of President Manuel Quezon. The president visited the hacienda while my grandpa was working there.
However, my grandma insisted on going back home and inserted her family in the middle of the clan even though she and her family were ostracized. The problem with her is that she wanted it all—romantic love and comfort—at the expense of her children and husband’s happiness. All throughout their lives, my grandma and grandpa lived separately. My grandma lived in her house surrounded by homes of her siblings, while grandpa went home to his farm, several kilometers away from town. They just visited each other. Because how can you tolerate living smack in the middle of a community that looks down on you?
My father and the rest of his siblings were always taught by my grandma not to go against their rich cousins, always have their heads down and not fight back. She taught them to be subservient and to be inferior at all times. Oh God, forgive me, but I blame her for all the trauma that my father carried, which we his children bore as well. Being a child of a raging alcoholic narcissist is not fun. I’m still trying to heal from that generational trauma. In my angriest moments, I called my grandma in my head a spoiled little princess who wanted the world and didn’t care whom she would hurt.
But maybe that was unfair of me because she was nice to me. She loved us as offsprings of his favorite child. Yes, my father was a mama’s boy, which compounded to a lot of problems (hence, his narcissism). I don’t know how to deal with my past—I’m very conflicted. My ex-spouse is the same as my father, a spoiled favored child, a narcissist who could never owe up to his actions. Everyone and everything is at fault but never him. My therapist said we get attracted to the same kind of people we grew up with. I learned this from my mom, my therapist said…
I am writing this down so it will not just be oral history for my children. They need a record of their past. I wish I could dig through records in my parents’ hometown to get more data from both sides of my family before they all get lost.
