remembrance of things awry

Rather than moralize on these oh-so-common occurrences in our daily lives, let me ramble on with my memories and observations and see where it takes us…

“Mata Pobre,” The Filipino Art of Discrimination, is as Old as Time itself…

When my paternal great great grandmother Senorita Matea Rodriguez y Tuason [ o 1834 - + 1918 ] of Bacolor accepted the marriage proposal of the 73 year old Don Josef Sioco of Sulipan, Apalit, Pampanga in the 1850s, eyebrows rose in Bacolor and Apalit because it was evident that the old, practically blind husband held no attraction for his young and alluring wife except for his great wealth.  Despite the fact that She was from rich, landed families on both sides, They thought that She was just after his properties and money, for it was known that he had a lot of gold.  After Don Josef’s death a few years later in 1864, she became a rich young widow and raised even more eyebrows when she married the wealthy bachelor Don Juan Arnedo Cruz of the same place.  They did not have children.  He conveniently died a few years later leaving her with a second large estate.  The Arnedos of Sulipan as a clan were then at the peak of their collective wealth in the late 1800s.  His Arnedo siblings wanted some of the ancestral family properties returned to them, but Dona Matea refused, and rightly so.  The Arnedos never forgave her and thereafter referred to her in terms of non-endearment:  “Lavandera!” [ laundrywoman ],  “Cocinera!” [ cook ], “Muchacha!” [ maid ],  “Criada!” [ maid ], and all sorts of derogatory descriptions.  In current parlance She would be referred to, pardon the terms, as ”A Scheming, Cunning, Gold-digging Bitch”!

In a similar vein, Dona Matea Rodriguez viuda de Sioco, viuda de Arnedo-Cruz did not want her daughter Florencia Sioco y Rodriguez [ o 1860 - + 1925 ] to marry the Europe-educated Spanish mestizo Don Dr. Joaquin Gonzalez [ o 1856 - + 1900 ] in 1883.  True, his Gonzalez family in Baliuag, Bulacan was rich… BUT not as rich as the Siocos of Sulipan, Apalit, Pampanga were [ at the time of the patriarch Don Josef Sioco's death on 26 December 1864, he was the richest man in All of Pampanga, according to the memoirs of his grandson, Dr. Bienvenido Ma. Gonzalez, 6th President of the University of the Philippines ].  Why… his inheritance amounted to only a few hundred hectares!!!  And that was before She even found out that he was actually the son of an Augustinian priest, Fray Fausto Lopez O.S.A. of Valladolid, Spain.  “Que horror!!!”  Furthermore, Dr. Joaquin’s Spanish mestizo and “ilustrado” penchant for The Good Life — good food and wines, European clothes, foreign books, fine furniture, horses, an elegant lifestyle — irritated the frugal and businesslike Dona Matea to no end.  She absolutely preferred her other son-in-law and nephew [ the son of her eldest sister Prisca Ines Rodriguez de Escaler ], Manuel Escaler, who had married her eldest daughter Sabina.  He was a simple man who worked hard and saved every peso he had earned to be able to buy more agricultural property.  He ate simple food, dressed in simple clothes, and lived in a simple house.  That was the kind of man Dona Matea liked, NOT the handsome, sophisticated intellectual Spanish mestizo doctor her second daughter Florencia had married.

Around 1915, Pampanga’s richest woman, a hacendera who owned thousands of hectares of rice and sugar lands in Central Luzon, eagerly awaited the marriage of her academically accomplished only son to his affluent and exceedingly intelligent ”novia” girlfriend, a lady of a prominent Binan, Laguna family who resided in an elegant house along Taft Avenue.  But she didn’t know that her son was simultaneously seeing another lady, this time from an old family of San Fernando, Pampanga.  Somehow, the second lady became pregnant [ "pikot" she supposedly seduced him by all accounts, but "it takes two to tango" ] and he had to marry her hastily to “preserve her honor” and avoid a social scandal;  Meanwhile, he had to break up with his real “novia” girlfriend  [ After their breakup, The Real Girlfriend proceeded to finish her studies at the UP University of the Philippines and graduated with a degree in History in 1917 and a master's degree in 1918;  She pursued further studies in the United States and obtained a master's degree in History from Radcliffe College in 1920 and a Ph.D. doctoral degree from Columbia University in 1923;  She was the first Filipina to have obtained a Ph.D.;  She never married. ].  Richest Hacendera was frankly horrified, not because her son had impregnated a woman other than his “novia,” but that he would have to marry a woman whom She considered penurious, descended from several Old and Venerable Pampanga Families alright, but already impoverished, lacking the Immense Wealth to be considered their Social Equals.  “Que horror!”  She disapproved of the match and refused the forthcoming marriage.  The Only Son defied his mother’s wishes and married his pregnant lady immediately.  It was a happy and fruitful but short marriage as he died young twelve years later.  Relations between Richest Hacendera and her widowed daughter-in-law were never warm, but Richest Hacendera greatly favored her eldest grandson by her, so that widowed daughter-in-law never wanted for anything the rest of her long life.                    

In the late 1920s, a scion of a prominent Spanish [ and Chinese ] mestizo family of aristocratic Calle R. Hidalgo in Quiapo fell in love with a young Visayan lady of an established and increasingly influential sugar fortune.  By all appearances, it was a match of financial and social equals.  But that was not the opinion of the young man’s family.  To them, She was an Outsider:  Yes, an Heiress, but of a distant provincial fortune;  worse, while She herself became a practicing Catholic because of her Assumption Convent education, her hacendero Clan had notoriously deserted the Catholic Church during the 1896 Revolution and had not returned to its fold.  She simply would not do for them;  her considerable wealth was not a factor because they were also very rich .  His father declared:  “Better he lose a million pesos than to marry that woman.”  But for Her, The Family was full of misplaced Spanish mestizo airs and pretenses which their considerable wealth didn’t necessarily justify [ the percentage of actual Spanish blood in their "aristocratic" veins was less than 25 % ];  She was very confident of herself and her Iloilo family:  They came from Money, knew how to make Big Money, and constantly knew how to make Bigger Money from their Big Money.  Hence, She also “looked down” on The Family.   The maverick Son defied his parents and social conventions and married his lady in a hastily arranged ceremony in a side chapel of the Manila Cathedral.  Months later, when they first visited the R. Hidalgo paternal home as a couple, She knew she would face a hostile reception from his family and hesitated to proceed upstairs;  she clung stubbornly to the newel post and the banister of the “escalera principal” grand staircase.  Only her husband’s gentle entreaties convinced her to let go.  Once upstairs, She was met with the condescending looks of his “aristocratic” family.  In an act of Ultimate Rudeness, one of the Husband’s adolescent sisters came forward, licked her finger and rubbed it on the Bride’s arm “to see if She is really that dark as they say She is…”  That was the Height.  But to show how much of a financial equal The Bride was, She had carried Php 20,000.00/xx cash to her Baguio honeymoon while The Bridegroom had less than Php 100.00/xx  [ in 1927 Php pesos ];  in fact, He had to call his eldest brother in Manila to send him additional funds.  Nowadays, it really is telling that the branch descended from The Couple is the Richest of the several branches of that R. Hidalgo Clan today.        

“Debt Payment” / “Bride For Sale” was how my grandmother Rosario Espiritu Arnedo was derisively described by my grandfather Augusto Sioco Gonzalez’s richer Escaler and rich Gonzalez relations upon their marriage on 22 February 1930.    It referred to the fact that she was forced to marry him because her father, former Pampanga Governor Don Macario Arnedo y Sioco, owed his industrialist half first cousin Augusto Sioco Gonzalez a big amount of money Php 50,000.00/xx, indeed already a fortune in those days.  My grandfather had been married to his maternal first cousin, Marina Sioco Escaler, whom he lost to severe asthma and diabetes in 1928.  The negative impression never left Dona Sabina Sioco de Escaler, Augusto’s aunt [ also Rosario's, in a more distant way ], who always thought that her nephew had left his second wife too many properties and too much money;  the impression also never left Augusto’s children with his first cousin Marina.

A pretty and intelligent Gonzalez first cousin of my father married into Pampanga’s Richest Family in 1947.  She and her husband had been very much in love for many years.  But his infinitely rich and aristocratic parents tried to prevent the marriage in every way.  It did not help that her rich paternal uncle Don Augusto Gonzalez y Sioco and immensely rich grandaunt Dona Sabina Sioco de Escaler had been key factors in the accumulation of their immense sugar milling fortune:  She was not a direct descendant of either one.  Because her maternal Liongson side was possessed of considerable eccentricity, her fiance’s parents used it as a convenient, polite excuse to block the marriage, when in fact the real reason was that she was not propertied and not moneyed, and frankly, Poor as far as they were concerned [ they were the richest in the province, after all ].  It was hypocritical of them to think that way, when in fact their son was an epileptic.  When the excuse of eccentricity failed, the fiance’s parents claimed that weddings in their family were done “American Style”:  The Bride’s Family pays for Everything, knowing full well that the fiancee’s widowed mother, despite the ownership of a few properties, simply did not have the money to spend for such an occasion.  The widowed mother turned to her sister-in-law [ who happened to be her namesake ] who was the widow of her richest, industrialist brother-in-law.  The charitable sister-in-law paid for Everything, The Bride came down from her Quezon City house [ not from her own ], sister-in-law’s bratty youngest son became the ring bearer, and sister-in-law became a “madrina” of the couple, something which pleased the Rich Parents.  In fact, they said that they would have been very pleased to have one of Rosario Arnedo de Gonzalez’s children [ second set of Don Augusto Gonzalez ], or one of the richer Gonzalez-Escaler children [ first set of Don Augusto ] , as their in-law, instead of the one their son had picked.               

My mother, Pilar Quiason Reyes, penurious but of Old Capampangan bloodlines [ Dizon, Pangan, Dayrit, Paras, Quiason, Henson, Aguilar, Valdes;  actually of better Capampangan lineage than my father, whose ancestors were mostly from Bulacan:  the Spaniard "cura parroco" of Baliuag Fray Fausto Lopez O.S.A. of Valladolid, Spain, Gonzalez, de los Angeles, Sioco, Arnedo, Tanjutco, Carlos ], was derided by my father’s rich Gonzalez and richer Escaler relations upon her engagement in 1956.  “What is he doing?  He is marrying the electrician’s niece…”  they snickered among themselves [ in reference to her paternal Reyes uncle, who did dabble in the trade ].  The snide smiles continued as they watched her awkwardly adapt to a life of affluence under their Tia Charing Arnedo de Gonzalez.  But gradually through the decades, disregard turned to respect as they witnessed her singlehandedly build several substantial businesses that became the new income sources of the family Post 1972 Agrarian Reform.

My father’s younger brother married a pretty and stylish lady.  It did not help that she came from one of Tayabas’ / Quezon province’s richest, most prominent families.  Her widowed mother was roundly criticized by hypocritical Old Manila Society for the audacity to build a French Mediterranean palace in the Dewey Boulevard area and for having the corresponding lavish social life [ a vicious circle:  the mother, although descended from the oldest Laguna and Tayabas families, was derided as socially inferior by her rich mother-in-law and other relations { actually, the wealth of the husband's family was of recent vintage compared to the wife's venerable lineage };  she was snubbed by her husband's relatives in her adoptive Tayabas town;  she made the Ultimate Snub when she built the biggest mansion in the family, actually a palace, in the place that mattered most, by the sea in Manila. ].  The 1958 Wedding and its preparations provoked a chorus of criticisms from the conservative Gonzalez family members for its enormous costs.  Disagreements and resentments occurred between the groom’s and the bride’s siblings.  My frugal father, tasked to settle the wedding bills by my grandmother [ who was on a European tour with my mother ], was stunned when he paid the bill of Php 10,000.00/xx cash for the wedding dress, three bridesmaids’ dresses, and the flower girl’s, all in a native “bayong” [ bag of woven grass ], at the atelier of the top couturier Ramon Valera;  that, when a standard Valera wedding gown in 1958 only cost Php 1,500.00/xx.  According to Betty Favis-Gonzalez [ in 1988 ], “Ramoning” had shown the wedding gown to his closest lady friends Chito Madrigal, Meldy Ongsiako, Luz Puyat, Elvira Ledesma, including Betty herself and blithely described it as “estilo mariposa,” and he jokingly wondered how the bride would be able to walk down the long aisle of Malate Church.  The entire “Wedding of the Year” cost Php 130,000.00/xx in 1958 pesos, which was a very big amount in those days.  Quite a contrast to my father’s and mother’s 23 June 1956 wedding which cost all of Php 5,000.00/xx.   *LOLSZ!!!*

So funny:  The Ones Discriminating sooner or later become the Ones Discriminated Upon.  And the Ones Discriminated Upon sooner or later become the Ones Discriminating as well.

Moral of the Story:  No matter how Rich and Powerful You are… There will always be Someone Richer and More Powerful than You.