HISTORY: How the Mercados and the Alonzos became Calambeños

Before 1759, a property, which later would become the modern day Calamba, comprising 16, 424 hectares, then called hacienda de Calamba was owned by Don Manuel Jauregui. It is said to be one of the villages of a town called Tabuco, which is the present day Cabuyao City. On January 29, 1759, Don Manuel Jauregui conveyed the property to the Society of Jesus in the condition that he shall be permitted to live at the Jesuit monastery for life with a pension of 25 pesos per month until his death. From then on the place was called Hacienda San Juan Bautista. The agreement though, was not consummated within Don Manuel’s lifetime. Only after eight years, on January 27, 1727, King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from the entire Spanish Empire including the Philippines for being the alleged instigator of violent riots in Madrid. The expulsion of the Jesuits caused Jauregui to take asylum at the Monastery of the Hospitallier Order of St. John of God. As an act of gratitude he worked for the transfer of the hacienda to his new benefactor, however the petition was disapproved.

At the turn of the century, the King confiscated the property and sold it to a Spanish layman named Don Clemente de Azansa. A partial payment of 20,000 pesos was paid by Azansa and he promised to pay the remaining balance annually with an interest of five percent. By November 19, 1802, Azansa had paid a total of 44,007 pesos and by January 28, 1803 the land title was awarded to him. When Don Clemente Azansa died, his wife Doña Isabel Vasques failed to pay the remaining balance and the property was retaken by the government. It was publicly auctioned on November 19, 1832 where the Corporacion de Padres Dominicos de Filipinas acquired the hacienda for 51, 263.00 pesos.

Even before the Corporacion de Padres Dominicos acquired the Hacienda de San Juan Bautista, families and individuals from surrounding haciendas were drawn to it because of its renowned progressiveness. It had a great dam and extensive irrigation system which made the hacienda as productive as Biñan. Settlers started arriving for the economic opportunities it offered, including tenancy. Petrona Mercado, for instance came to Calamba as a clothes merchant. She was one of the daughters of the three-time Biñan mayor, Juan Mercado of the neighboring Hacienda de San Isidro Labrador. Soon her siblings Potenciana and Francisco Mercado joined her and made Calamba their home. When the opportunity for tenancy was offered, Francisco, like some other members of his family from Biñan, became an inquilino (tenant) of the hacienda.

Some Manila residents were also drawn to Calamba. Brigida de Quintos, daughter of Manila-based lawyer Manuel de Quintos, moved to Calamba where some properties of her husband, Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo, were located. Alonzo, once a mayor of Biñan, bequeathed to her some properties located in Calamba. Brigida de Quintos brought with her all her five children: Narcisa, Teodora, Gregorio, Manuel and Jose. All of whom were born in Manila, but from then on grew up and settled in Calamba.

From these migrant families hailed Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonzo. They were married on June 28, 1848. The marriage of Francisco and Teodora brought them children. One of them was the Philippine National Hero, Jose Rizal, whose attacks on religious fanaticism gained for him the ire of the friars. The Mercados became one of the principal inquilinos of the hacienda. The family they raised was one basked in education and enlightenment. Coming from families of Biñan town mayors and businessmen, it cannot be gainsaid that the Jose Rizal’s parents of either side were “poor folks on the brink of destitution.” Through skill, thrift and hard work, the Rizal family became prosperous inquilinos, contrary to a Dominican intramural account that the ancestors of this Filipino ingrate (Jose Rizal) came to Calamba as simple tenants, poor folks on the brink of destitution who rented lands, and little by little created their fortune on the hacienda of the Dominicans.