BOOK REVIEW: In the Blood: Tracing the Kapampangan Lineage of Andres Bonifacio

The book cover

In the Blood: Tracing the Kapampangan Lineage of Andres Bonifacio by Joel S. Regala is perhaps the first book that has attempted to trace the genealogy of Katipunan founder Andres Bonifacio. While Bonifacio is considered as one of the greatest Filipino heroes and many biographies have been written about him, his genealogy remains very much unexplored.

To be fair, it would seem that Bonifacio's genealogy has been designed by fate to be extremely hard to establish. Tondo, Bonifacio's birthplace, was heavily bombarded by the Americans during WWII, thus destroying many of the older edifices including the archives of the  Santo Niño de Tondo Church. Even the supposed root of the Bonifacio's of Tondo - Masantol, Pampanga and then much earlier to Macabebe, Pampanga - as hypothesized by Regala, also do not have church records earlier than the 1890s. Regala's 100-page book on the "lineage" of Andres Bonifacio is founded on his theory that because there wan an abnormally high number of residents in Masantol with the last name Bonifacio and there was one Bonifacio family in Masantol that has a long-time oral tradition of claiming relationship to Andres Bonifacio, Andres Bonifacio was most likely from Masantol or thereabouts. 

Mr. Regala is to be commended for his dogged pursuit of his theory of the possibility that the Bonifacios of Tondo were most likely not from Tondo but were from Pampanga. Again, the strongest "proofs" for this assumption are a) Masantol (in December 2008) had around 1,009 registered voters under the last name of Bonifacio as compared to the measly 102 Bonifacios found in Tondo, and b) the Narciso Bonifacio family of Masantol has long held the belief that they were related to the Supremo. Because the Narciso Bonifacio descendants , through several generations, were consistent in their claims of relatedness with Andres Bonifacio, Regala surmises that Andres or at least his father, Santiago, was from Masantol. 

The basic conclusion with which he arrives at is that due to the destruction of the records of Andres Bonifacio's birth place, Tondo, or possible birth place, Masantol, we cannot go beyond the names of Bonifacio's parents, who were Santiago Bonifacio and Catalina de Castro. But perhaps, the consistency of the claims of a Bonifacio family in Masantol is the key to unlocking the lineage of Andres Bonifacio.

The Available Facts on Andres Bonifacio's Lineage

In the Blood came out in 2014. The author's research on Bonifacio took four years but it is puzzling that he only had the names of Andres Bonifacio's parents. This is indeed unusual because the names of Andres Bonifacio's grandparents on both paternal and maternal sides have been known to historians for decades now.

The eminent American historian Austin Craig, who wrote a definitive biography of Rizal and did a very extensive study of Rizal's genealogy, was the first to write about the names of Santiago's and Catalina's parents in the Sunday Tribune Magazine on November 23, 1929. Citing the marriage records of Tondo, Craig cited the record as such:

That Santiago Bonifacio, the son of Vicente Bonifacio and Alejandra Rosales, married on the 24th of January 1863 Catalina de Castro, the daughter of Martin de Castro and Antonia Gregorio...in the presence of Don Severino Ampil and Doña Patricia Trinidad as witnesses and sponsors...

Of course, naturally, this record no longer existed after the Second World War. The same is true for Bonifacio's baptismal record, which was firth cited in Manuel Artigas y Cuerva's Andres Bonifacio y El ‘Katipunan’ in 1911, which states:

“On December 2, 1863, on my authority as Parish Priest, Padre Don Saturnino Buntan, presbyter cleric, baptized according to the rites of our Holy Mother Church, and applied the Holy Oils to, Andres Bonifacio, indio three days born, legitimate son of Santiago Bonifacio and Catalina de Castro, of the barangay of Don Patricio Infante, with Vicente Molina as sponsor at the font....Fr. Gregorio Prieto.”

Andres Bonifacio family tree shown in the book

The marriage record is also mentioned in Ambeth R. Ocampo's Bones of Contention: The Bonifacio Lectures in 2001. Both citations were also made in the 3-part article Andres Bonifacio: Biographical Notes by Jim Richardson, an independent scholar whose research focuses on Philippine nationalism and radicalism in the 19th and 20th centuries and whose publications include Roots of Dependency: Political and Economic Revolution in 19th Century Philippines (co-authored with Jonathan Fast); The Philippines (World Bibliographical Series); Komunista: The Genesis of the Philippine Communist Party, 1902-1935; and The Light of Liberty: Documents and Studies on the Katipunan, 1892-1897. 

So it is a little strange that Mr. Regala missed out on something that I was able to google in just within an hour. Aside from this missed information on the parents of Santiago Bonifacio, Regala's assumption of Andres Bonifacio's Masantol roots is further weakened by both these records. 

Narciso Bonifacio family tree shown in the book

It is a little strange that nothing is mentioned of the town origins of the Bonifacios in both the wedding of Vicente and Alejandra and the baptism of Andres. Only Catalina's town of origin - Zambales - is mentioned. In most cases, a person during the Spanish period was either from that particular town, original de este pueblo, or from another town, original de pueblo de (so and so). It is most probably safe to assume that since nothing is mentioned of the town of origin of the Bonifacios, it is possible that a) they are old timers of Tondo, or b) they came from somewhere else but a few generations ago.

What is clear about the book of Regala is the strong dependence he has on the descendants of Narciso Bonifacio as his source for most of the book. I do not discount the inter-generational insistence of the Narciso Bonifacio family that they are related to Andres. What I do wish to be made clear is that we cannot say for certain the validity of their claims. Pending DNA tests between the descendants of Narciso Bonifacio and those of the siblings of Andres Bonifacio (and this was mentioned in the book), we simply cannot say for sure how true this supposed connection is.

Of course, the fact that very few Bonifacios could be found in Tondo at the time of Andres Bonifacio's birth could bolster the claim of Mr. Regala that his roots were from Masantol. Obviously, more research is needed for a definitive conclusion to the roots of Andres Bonifacio.

In the end, this was an easy, short read. The techniques he used were exact and laudable but ultimately, it was was really more about the Narciso Bonifacio family and not so much of Andres Bonifacio. It was more of an attempt at tracing rather than actual tracing the lineage of Andres Bonifacio.

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In the Blood: Tracing the Kapampangan Lineage of Andres Bonifacio can be purchased through the Center for Kapampangan Studies - Holy Angel University at Angeles, Pampanga.

Genealogy and the Internet: Looking for Heroes' Descendants

The Letter from Unlimited Productions

Towards the end of October I received an official communication from Unlimited Productions, Inc., a company founded by veteran television personality Ms. Cheche Lazaro, requesting for my assistance in tracing and identifying key descendants of several Filipino heroes who were active in the revolution against Spain and who worked closely with Katipunan founder Andres Bonifacio to be used in a two-hour special on the sesquicentennial of Andres Bonifacio.

In my experience, a top-to-bottom tracing of the family tree is slightly more difficult than the usual and common bottom-to-top approach. Simply put, it is easier to connect one generation to the next if we are following the documents from the most recent going back to the past. The records are already there; all you need to do is go back a generation at a time and the connections will materialize before your very eyes. However, tracing the whereabouts and the development of a family from the mists of time down to modern times is very challenging. 

If you were looking at a record of your great-grandfather's baptism (for Catholic church records, at least), you would see the names of his parents and grandparents, along with a slew of other relevant information like occupation, residence, and place of origin. This last information is very vital to your search. If your great-grandfather's record tells you that one of his grandfathers came from another town, you know that you would need other records from other towns and not be stuck looking for this particular ancestor among that particular town's records. 

But finding out what happened to the children, grandchildren, and other progeny of a person will prove to be a challenge. Records will not tell you, for instance, if a particular person reached adulthood, got married, had children, or died young until you check specific records. And unless your town or the place where you are looking at has some sort of indexing system or a computerized database of names, you will truly have to do double or even triple the effort.

Thankfully, things are slightly easier today. With the help of the Internet, looking for descendants of some people, especially famous ones, becomes less daunting. For the task asked of me, I was to look for living descendants of the following heroes (or villains, depending on how one looks at our history): Mariano Noriel, Pio del Pilar, Lazaro Makapagal, Daniel Tirona, Macario Sakay, Mariano Alvarez, Agapito Bonzon, Guillermo Masangkay, and Apolinario Mabini. Because I was swamped with work at that time I could only give the project a day or two of my attention. Basically, I was confined to the internet in searching for these names.

From these names, Apolinario Mabini is obviously the most popular, followed closely by Daniel Tirona, Makario Sakay, Mariano Alvarez, Pio del Pilar, and Guillermo Masangkay. For most Filipinos today, the names Lazaro Makapagal, Mariano Noriel, and Agapito Bonzon would not ring a bell anymore. I even had to do a quick Wikipedia search for Mariano Noriel and Agapito Bonzon to refresh my memory who these men were.

One might think that the keywords "descendants (name of person)" or "(name of person) descendants" would yield the best results; in fact, these keywords are almost useless as they are prone to give us hundreds of thousands of results if you do a Google search. While not all the surnames mentioned above are very common they are all also not as unique as, say, Zobel de Ayala. 

It took me about 3 hours and hundreds of search parameters to come up with the desired results. In order to come up with the correct information I had to pair very specific search terms. The key to better search results is very specific parameters; instead of saying "children (name of person)" to get the names of a person's children, first search for "son (name of person)" or "daughter (name of person)", or "granddaughter/son (name of person)".

For example, I used "guillermo masangkay grandfather" to arrive at a Yahoo Groups thread where one member was Cita Masangkay-Borromeo Garcia, who happened to be Masangkay's granddaughter. On the other hand, using the search words "macario sakay grandson" led me to a Philippine Daily Inquirer article that mentioned a grandson of the general.

Sometimes, names like "Mariano Alvarez" would give you pages not just from the Philippines but also from Spain and South America as these two names are fairly common Hispanic names. In order to limit the search I had to use the name with his birth place or with the words "Filipino General" or "Filipino Revolutionary".

Basically, I found out search results for 5 of the 9 names given to me. These were:

GUILLERMO MASANGKAY whose best contact persons are his granddaughters, Soledad Masangkay-Borromeo Buhler, who wrote a book called “The Cry of Balintawak” and her sister, Cita Masangkay-Borromeo Garcia, who I mentioned above. I was unsuccessful in finding his other relatives though I found anObituary in the United States which mentioned that the deceased's brother was Guillermo Masangkay. I was not sure if this was the same Guillermo, but the names of the deceased's family members were very similar to Masangkay's family's, and as a rule of thumb in genealogy, repeating first names in a family can be an indicator, though not all the time, of filial ties. 

For MARIANO ALVAREZ, I discovered his politically entrenched Rono descendants of Samar. They are Mariano’s descendants through his granddaughter Pacita. And, since Gregoria de Jesus was a niece of Mariano her Nakpil descendants were also a good source of information.

I did not have a hard time looking for possible collateral (or indirect) descendants of APOLINARIO MABINI. Again, keywords I used in searching were "apolinario mabini grandniece" or "mabini clan batangas" which ultimately led me to several newspaper articles, the best resource person of which is his grandniece Pilahia (Pelagia) Mabini, who is one of the National Historical Commission’s staff for the Mabini Shrine inBatangas. Names of other descendants were mentioned in another article.

As mentioned above already, for MACARIO SAKAY the only lead I got was through an article celebrating his death anniversary where there was a brief mention of a grandson, Daniel Sakay. I also saw an address for a Daniel Sakay who was or is a barangay captain in Quezon City; whether this is the same Daniel Sakay I was not sure. In this case it was also a good step to use the search words "(name of person) death anniversary Commemoration" or "(name of person) death anniversary celebration" as this was how I narrowed down the search for his grandson.

After Mabini, DANIEL TIRONA also had several available websites concerning his family and one important article I found was about the Tirona Clan reunion where a contact person was mentioned. I also found a Descendancy Chart in Familytreemaker.genealogy.com where anyone from the 6th generation up would still have been alive today.

I also found a possible great-granddaughter of Lazaro Makapagal, but this was in a forum thread and no further information could be discovered. This was understandable as Makapagal was one of the soldiers who shot Andres Bonifacio and his brother, so it stands to reason that descendants of this man would not be comfortable announcing themselves in cyberspace.

This was another fun exercise for me in doing a genealogical task, albeit I only spent a few hours as I was busy with my regular job at that time. Despite my very small contribution to the research I was surprised to hear from a staff of Ms. Lazaro when she told me I would receive a CD of the documentary. And when I watched it I saw that I was given due acknowledgement at the end and this was truly more than any amount of money they could have paid me. 

Weddings and Widows

(The connection between Rizal and Bonifacio. Click to enlarge)

It is interesting to note that because of the intermarriages of the old Katipunan families of Luzon the two foremost Filipino heroes, Dr. Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, became cousins by marriage. More interesting here is the little historical twist: a widow from the Rizal family married into a family that became connected to Bonifacio because of another widow's remarriage.

Andres Bonifacio's widow was Gregoria de Jesus. After Bonifacio's death, Julio Nakpil married her. Nakpil, upon the request of Bonifacio, composed and wrote the lyrics of a national anthem called Marangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan. It is one of the what-ifs of history that if Bonifacio had his way and was not assassinated then Nakpil's song, and not Julian Felipe's "Lupang Hinirang", would have been our national anthem today.

A younger brother of Julio Nakpil was Ramon Melecio Nakpil who married Enriqueta Sancho. Their son, Angel Nakpil, was a famous architect. After the death of his first wife Angel Nakpil remarried Carmen Guerrero, who herself was a widow. Carmen's first husband, Ismael Cruz, was the grandson of Maria Rizal de Cruz, a sister of Dr. Jose Rizal.

So when the widow Carmen Guerrero married Angel Nakpil, himself the nephew of someone who remarried a widow, in 1952, the Philippine's two greatest heroes became cousins.