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.

 

More than one and a half century ago, a far greater ‘superman’, Jose Rizal, was born in the place. His father, Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado, was an independent-minded, taciturn but dynamic gentleman from whom Jose inherited his ‘free soul.’ Don Francisco became ‘tiniente gobernadorcillo’ (lieutenant governor) in Calamba and was thus nicknamed ‘Tiniente Kiko’. Students’ comical conjecture that the fictional character ‘Kikong Matsing’ of‘Batibot’ was named after Don Francisco is, of course, unfounded.

          Francisco’s great grandfather isDomingo Lam-co, a learned pro-poor or ‘maka-masa’ Chinese immigrant businessman who married a sophisticated Chinese mestiza of Manila named Ines de la Rosa. One of their two children, Francisco (also),resided in Binanand married Bernarda Monicha. Francisco and Bernarda’s son, Juan Mercado, became a ‘gobernadorcillo’ (town mayor) of Biñan, Laguna. He married Cirila Alejandra and they had 12 children, the youngest being Jose Rizal’s father, Francisco.

          Jose’s father was born on May 11, 1818 in Biñan, Laguna. When he was eight years old, he lost his father. He was nonetheless educated as he took Latin and Philosophy at the College of San Jose in Manila, where he met and fell in love with Teodora Alonso, a student in the College of Santa Rosa. Married on June 28, 1848, they settled down in Calamba where they were granted lease of a rice farm in theDominican-owned haciendas... Continue reading (R.  (© 2014 by Jensen DG. Mañebog)

 

       

Jensen DG. Mañebog, the contributor, is a book author and professorial lecturer in the graduate school of a state university in Metro Manila. His unique affordable e-books on Rizal (available online) comprehensively tackle, among others, the respective life of Rizal’s parents, siblings, co-heroes, and girlfriends. (e-mail: jensenismo@gmail.com)

 

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