When My Father Said, “They Are Our Relatives”-Part 1 of 2

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

 and dedication to the Church.

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.