History

© 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

Lucia Rizal (1857–1919) is the fifth child in the Rizal family. She married Mariano Herbosa of Calamba, Laguna. Charged of inciting the Calamba townsfolk not to pay land rent and causing unrest, the couple was once ordered to be deported along with some Rizal family members.

© 2013-present by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

Olympia Rizal (1855-1887) is the fourth child in the Rizal family. Jose loved to tease her, sometimes good-humoredly describing her as his stout sister.

 

Jose’s first love, Segunda Katigbak, was Olimpia’s schoolmate at the La Concordia College. Rizal confided to Olympia about Segunda and the sister willingly served as the mediator between the two teenage lovers.  It was thus unclear whether it was Olympia or Segunda whom Jose was frequently visiting at La Concordia at the time.

 © 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

Narcisa Rizal (1852-1939) or simply ‘Sisa’ was the third child in the family. Like Saturnina, Narcisa helped in financing Rizal’s studies in Europe, even pawning her jewelry and peddling her clothes if needed. It is said she could recite from memory almost all of the poems of the national hero.

 © 2013-present by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

 

TEODORA ALONZO © 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

IF INTERNET’S SOCIAL MEDIA were already existing during the Philippine-American War, and somebody had posted the famous picture of the aged Doña Teodora Alonso next to the excavated skull of the national hero, there might have been an online pandemonium which could have surpassed the Gangnam Style’s record. Some consider the picture morbid, but others regard it as an indubitable manifestation of the mother’s intense love for her son.

Francisco Mercado Rizal  © 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog

 

WITH MORE THAN 600 resorts in the place today, its tourism’s promoters claim that it has earned the nickname “Resort Capital of the Philippines”.

          In 1848, Jose Rizal’s parents decided to build a home in this town in Laguna, southern Luzon called Calamba. Its name was derived from "kalan-banga", which means "clay stove" (kalan) and "water jar" (banga).

          Rizal’s adoration of it’s scenic beauty—punctuated by the sights of the Laguna de Bay, Mount Makiling, palm-covered mountains, curvy hills, and green fields—was recorded in the poem he wrote in Ateneo de Manila in 1876, ‘Un Recuerdo A Mi Pueblo’ (In Memory of my Town).

          But if Rizal‘s poem were written today, he might have mentioned the three-floor SM mall, shopping centers, and the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) terminus in the place. A city since 2001, Calamba’s most recent claim to international fame is perhaps its being the origin of Herbert Chavez, the ‘Superman’ look-alike via plastic surgery recognized by the Guinness World Records as having the largest collection of superman memorabilia.