When I was a child in Barotac Viejo, my father would say it almost casually,
as if remarking on the weather: “They are our relatives.” He meant the rich
and influential families of Jaro, the Lopezes, the Javellanas, the Ledesmas,
the Jalandonis, the Hofilenas, names that floated through Ilonggo
conversation like old coins, polished by time and story.
I didn’t understand then. To a boy, “rich” and “relative” belonged to different
worlds. One lived in big houses near the plaza; the other, in the quiet routines
of our own home. But my father was telling the truth. He was handing me a
map I would only learn to read decades later.
Now, tracing our ancestral roots back to Don Manuel Javellana and Doña
Gertrudis Lopez-my great‑great‑grandparents, I see how tightly the threads
were woven. The Javellana and Lopez clan of Jaro did not just live in the
same town; they married into one another, again and again, to keep land,
influence, and faith within a small circle of families.
The Families of Old Jaro
Jaro, even under Spanish rule, was a place of consequence. By the late
1800s it had become a city, a center of faith, commerce, and power in the
Western Visayas. Its elite was not a crowd but a handful of clans whose
names still echo in heritage houses, church lapidas, and local histories.
Among them:
Javellana – The family name itself is a story. Originally “Kim Byong,” of
Chinese descent, the clan adopted “Javellana” during Governor General
Clavería’s 1849 decree that required Filipinos and Chinese residents to
take Spanish surnames. They chose a name derived from Avellana
(the hazel), then added a “J” for Jaro.
Lopez – A patronymic meaning “son of Lope” (from lupus, “wolf”), this
surname became one of the most prominent in the Philippines. In Iloilo,
the Lopez rise begins with Basilio Lopez, a Chinese‑mestizo trader who
became Jaro’s district mayor in 1849, and his wife, Sabina Jalandoni.
Jalandoni, Ledesma, Hofilena, Gamboa, Jayme, Grecia – These names
appear again and again in marriage records, business partnerships, and
political offices. They were the first aristocrats of Old Jaro, known as
intellectuals, landowners, and benefactors of the church.
These families built sugar haciendas in Panay and Negros, owned brick factories
and shipping lines, funded schools, served as gobernadorcillos and municipal
presidents, and helped build the Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Metropolitan
Cathedral in Jaro, where some of them are interred in honored columns
along the aisle.
A Lineage Knotted by Love, Strategy, and Survival
When I look at the family trees, the word that comes to mind is knotted.
Not just connected-knotted. Cousins married cousins. Brothers married sisters
from another clan, then their own sisters married those brothers’ in‑laws.
Wealth was preserved not only by frugality and business acumen but by
the careful choreography of marriage.
Take the Lopezes: Basilio and Sabina had sixteen children; their son Eugenio
had sixteen more. Their descendants spread across Iloilo and Negros,
becoming planters, politicians, newspaper publishers, and philanthropists.
Fernando Lopez—three‑time Vice President of the Philippines, chairman
of ABS‑CBN, co‑founder of the University of Iloilo, married Mariquit Javellana,
tightening the Javellana‑Lopez tie once more.
On my own branch, Don Manuel Javellana and Doña Gertrudis Lopez had ten
children, among them Cristino Javellana, “Capitan Tinong”-a devout Catholic,
brick‑factory owner, and former gobernadorcillo of Jaro. His remains, and those
of his son Cirilo, rest inside the Jaro Cathedral, honored for their philanthropy
My great‑grandmother Marcelina Javellana, the youngest of those ten, married
Victoriano Catague. From her line came my grandfather Roberto Catague,
and through him, my father, David Jamili K(C)atague, who later changed the
family name’s spelling so he wouldn’t be called first in class. A small, almost
humorous detail in a saga of great houses and vast haciendas.
Why These Roots Matter to Me Now
I did not grow up in Casa Mariquit or Nelly Garden. I did not inherit sugar fields
or newspaper presses. Yet I carry this history in my blood and in the stories
my father told.
When he said, “They are our relatives,” he was doing more than naming
famous people. He was saying:
You belong to a larger story.
Your identity is not just personal; it is communal, historical, even archival.
The privileges and burdens of the past are part of your inheritance too.
Now, as a senior blogger and cultural essayist, I feel the pull of that inheritance
more strongly. In an age of AI, global news cycles, and rapid change, I find
grounding in asking: Where did I come from? Whose prayers, labors, and
decisions made my life possible?
These questions are not about pride. They are about responsibility. If my
ancestors helped build a cathedral, a town, a region’s economy, then what
am I building with the time I have left? If they preserved wealth through
tight kinship, how do I preserve meaning through connection, memory,
and story?
For My Worldwide Readers
To my readers around the world-Filipino and non‑Filipino alike, this is not just
a family chronicle. It is a window into how colonial rule, local elite formation,
and family strategy shaped a society.
The Jaro elite during the Spanish colonial period and into the early American
occupation were led by only a handful of families. Their power rested on land
faith, education, and intermarriage. That system produced remarkable
achievements and deep inequalities. My own lineage sits precisely at that
intersection: privilege and piety, opportunity and obligation, beauty and
complication.
I write about this not to claim status, but to claim truth. My father’s casual
remark, “They are our relatives” was a seed. Decades later, it has grown into
a desire to understand, to honor, and to tell the story honestly, with all its
tangled branches.
A Quiet Promise
I do not know if I will ever walk every aisle of the Jaro Cathedral or trace every
name on the lapidas. But I can do this: keep writing, keep remembering, keep
weaving these threads into essays and poems that speak to senior life,
cultural roots, and the quiet courage of ordinary people born from extraordinary
histories. And perhaps, somewhere in Jaro, another descendant is reading
these same names, hearing an elder say, “They are our relatives,” and feeling,
as I do, both the weight and the gift of that truth.
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