Life and

Works of
Rizal
Members:
Pineda, Ma. Angelita C.
Malicsi, Jemimah Keziah
Batangan, Neliza Mae
Jandayan, Jayson
The Chinese Connection
The Chinese Mestizo in the Philippines
• The Chinese Mestizo developed during the
Spanish colonial regime when Chinese
immigrants married native peoples. 
• Classification of Chinese People:
(Sangley mestizo, mestisong Sangley,
mestizo de Sangley or Chinese mestizo;
plural: Sangleys or Sangleyes) is a term used
in the Philippines beginning in the Spanish
colonial period to describe and classify a
person of mixed Chinese and Filipino
ancestry (the latter were referred to as Indio.
Chinese Mestizo Origin:
Male – Chinese Mestizo (whoever he marries whether it be
a mestiza or India) remains Chinese Mestizo/ Mestiza

Female - Chinese Mestiza (if married an Indio) - India/

Indio (if married a mestizo) -
mestizo/ mestiza
The Chinese mestizo evolution:

The emergence of Chinese mestizo as a legally distinct

class began only with Spanish colonial regime. In 1571, the
Spaniards founded the city of Manila, a large of Chinese
colony evolved. Chinese population in the Philippines during
Spanish regime is well-known as traders, artisans and
domestic servants. As Chinese became indispensable to the
needs of capital and with growing numbers of their
population, Spanish could only think this as a potential
threat to their own rule in the Philippines.
• Thus, this was resolved through the
policy of converting the Chinese and
encouraging marriages between
Catholic Chinese and Catholic Indio's
which has led to the creation of special
communities of Chinese, the most
important of which was the Binondo
community founded in 1594.
• The continued intermarriage of many
Chinese with Indio women resulted in
an increasing class of Chinese mestizos
which also questioned their legal status
in the Philippines during Spanish regime.
• From the beginning of Spanish occupation
to about 1740, the inhabitants of the
Philippines were classified into 3 classes:
Spaniards, Indio's and Chinese. The legal
status of the Chinese mestizo were
ultimately resolved in 1741 when the
whole population was reclassified for the
purpose of tax payment into 4 classes:
Spaniards and Spanish exempted while
Indio's, Chinese mestizo and Chinese were
assessed in different amounts. In 19th
century, head tax paid by Indio was P 1.50
: Chinese mestizo was P 3.00 and that of
Chinese was P 6.00.
 Rizal born as the 5th
Generation
• The national hero traced his roots to the
village of Sionque in the district of Chin-
Chew, Fujian.
• Lam Co is a son of Siang Co and Zunio
from the village of Sinque in the district of
Chin Chew in Fujian, China. A descended
from an industrious and intelligent Chinese
merchant. 
• Lam Co migrated to the Philippines in
1690. At 35, Co was baptized into the
Catholic faith in Binondo, acquiring his
Christian name - Domingo Co - and
married a Chinese mestiza, Ines de la
• Francisco Marquez and Juan Caballero a Dominican
friar who becomes friend of Lam Co convinced him
to settle at Dominican estate Binan, Laguna.  There
he helped construct the irrigation canals in the
hacienda.

• The union of Co and Dela Rosa produced a son in

1731. Their offspring acquired the Christian name,
Francisco Mercado. Francisco was derived from one
of Co's friar friends while Mercado meant "market"
in Spanish, signifying his future job as trader.

• The young Francisco married Bernarda Monica, a

native of the nearby hacienda in San Pedro, Laguna
and bore children Clemente and Juan, who would be
Rizal's grandfather.
• Juan Mercado married Cirila Alejandro, a
Chinese mestiza, and had 13 children,
one of them was Rizal's father, Francisco
Engracio Mercado.

Francisco Engracio Mercado married with

Teodora Alonso  Realonda. Francisco
Engracio and Teodora had 11 children one
of them was Rizal. Rizal's parents raised
their family by renting estate from the
Dominican Order and produced rice, corn
and sugarcane.

Mercado which means “market", a

spanish surname adopted by Rizal's
ancestors to free the young generation
from the prejudices that followed those
with a Chinese name.
 Continuation of emergence by Chinese Mestizo in the Philippines 

• As Philippines moved gradually to an export economy, on

1840's Spanish desired to further develop the Philippines'
economy, continued to encourage more Chinese immigrants
in the Philippines as they seen as key element in developing
Philippines' economy which in turn their population increased
to 100,000 on 1880's. 
 
Overtime, Chinese mestizos elite class began to flourished as
became successful in the field of wholesaling and retail
trade, production of export crops and etc.
 
By late 1860, mostly wealthy natives and Chinese mestizos
had the opportunity to study in Letran and in various schools
found in Manila.
1870, some natives and Chinese mestizos were able to send
their children to study abroad and in time, Chinese mestizo
began to strongly influenced native Indio's and gain public
opinion.
 Some abusive actions during
Spanish regime:

• Unjust taxes
• Racial Discrimination
• Forced labor Deportation to Guam
• Punishment suffered by three(3) Gomburza
priests
• The Massacre of Chinese rebels in the
Philippines resulting to more than 20,000
Chinese were killed dated back on 1603.
 Some influences of Chinese
Mestizos on agitation for
reformation:
• Gregorio Sancianco
- Who wrote El Progreso de Filipinas
(Progress of the Philippines) 
- El Progresso dealt with the
suggestion that all inhabitants of the
Spain should be given the same rights
and privileges as Spaniards and be
subject to a uniform tax system.
Jose Rizal
- One of the most influential members of the
Propaganda Movement.
- Propaganda movement 
- The main goals of Propaganda movement were to
create reforms in the Philippines.
Ex. Equal status for both Filipinos and Spaniards
- His popular novels, Noli Me Tangere & El
Filibusterismo, exposed the oppression and suffering
of his countrymen.
- His two novels became an inspiration by members
of the Katipunans who later once united to fight
Spaniards for a common cause, freedom.
 Agrarian Relations & the Friar
Lands
• Rizal was already well aware about the worsening land conflict in the town of
Calamba, Laguna between the hacienda management and the group of tenants
before he returned home, after many years of his stay in Europe in 1887.
• The conflict rose from the continued unreasonable increased of rentals, land
confiscation and other exploitative practices of the hacienda management.
• These caused financial hardships to the tenants, and worsened by other factors
such as poor harvests, crops destroyed by unfavorable weather and pestilence.
• In 1890 while in Brussels (Belgium), Rizal learned that his family, relatives and
some tenants who were in conflict with the hacienda management in Calamba
were dispossessed of their lands after the court in Madrid issued its conclusion
in favor of the Dominican Order.
• The suit filed by the landowning friars against the tenants was a
response to the refusal of Don Francisco Mercado, father of Dr.
Rizal, to pay the land rents because the hacienda management
continually raised the cost of the rental
• Some family members of Rizal and other tenants faced
persecution from the authorities in relation to the agrarian
conflict in Calamba. Paciano (Rizal’s older brother) and his
brothers-in-law Antonio Lopez and Silvestre Ubaldo were
deported to Mindoro, while Manuel T. Hidalgo, another brother-
in-law, was banished, for the second time, to the island of Bohol.
• The agrarian problem in Calamba that worsened in 1887 until it
caused the dispossession of the tenants of their land in 1890
had encouraged Rizal to establish a Filipino settlement in the
island of Borneo, which was at the time under the British
protectorate.
• Rizal wanted to move landless Filipinos including his families and friends
to North Borneo (Sabah) to occupy assigned lands for them offered by the
British North Borneo Company, engaged in lucrative agriculture and
rebuild their lives.
• Rizal successfully obtained an agreement with the British authorities of
Borneo that allowed the potential Filipino colonists to occupy around
100,000 acres, a beautiful harbor, and would provide them a good
government for 999 years, free of all charges.
• This is known as the Borneo Colonization Project which was
enthusiastically endorsed or supported by many friends of Rizal including
prominent figures in our history like the Luna brothers (Juan and Antonio),
Graciano Lopez-Jaena, and his Austrian friend, Ferdinand Blumentritt.
• Unfortunately, Governor-General Eulogio Despujol rejected the project
because he argued that the Filipino immigration to Borneo was contrary to
the interest of Spanish colonial rule.
 Interclergy Conflicts and the Cavite
Mutiny:

• The real reason for the Cavite Mutiny

• The primary cause of the mutiny is believed to "be an order from
Governor-General Carlos to subject the soldiers of the
Engineering and Artillery Corps to personal taxes, from which
they were previously exempt.
• Cavite mutiny of 1872 was an uprising of Filipino military
personnel of Fort San Felipe, the Spanish arsenal in Cavite,
Philippine Islands on 20th day of January year 1872. Around 200
locally recruited colonial troops and laborers rose up in the
belief that it would elevate to a national uprising. The mutiny
was unsuccessful, and government soldiers executed many of
the participants and began to crack down on a burgeoning
Philippines nationalist movement. Many scholars believed that
the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 was the beginning of Filipino
nationalism that would eventually lead to the Philippine
Revolution of 1896.
• Father Gomez, Father Burgos and Father Zamora were
summarily tried and sentenced to death by the garrote
for the Cavite arsenal revolt of January 20, 1872. The
priests, who were active in the fight for the
secularization (or, in effect, nationalization) of the
clergy were creating trouble for the despotic Governor
Rafael Izquierdo and the powerful regular religious
orders in the country. By linking them with the uprising
in the Cavite arsenal, whether they indeed had
anything to do with it or not, the administration found a
convenient way of doing away with the troublesome
trio.
• During the Spanish colonization, tax reforms were
implemented that required the soldiers to serve the
army and pay taxes. Many things happened after to
combat the unfair treatment. This was also the time
when the three priests were executed (Gomburza) by
the Spaniards. The 1872 said event gave inspiration to
fight for Philippine independence.
• Gomburza incurred the hatred of Spanish
authorities for fighting for equal rights among
priests and leading the campaign against the
Spanish friars. They fought on the issues of
secularization in the Philippines that led to the
conflict of religious and church seculars. Their
execution had a profound effect on many late
19th-century Filipinos; José Rizal, later to
become the country's national hero, would
dedicate his novel El Filibusterismo to their
memory. Mutiny by workers in the Cavite
Naval Yard was the pretext needed by the
authorities to redress a perceived humiliation
from the principal objective, José Burgos, who
threatened the established order.
• The execution did not affect Rizal directly. It was Paciano,
Rizal’s older brother, who was totally affected by their
executions. It was even Paciano’s relationship to Father
Burgos that eventually made Jose change his surname
from Mercado to Rizal. However, it was Paciano’s ranting
about the mutiny and the execution, whom the young
Jose might have been hearing all the time, which made
an impact in the consciousness of Jose.
• Later in his life when the abuses by the government,
basically influenced by the nagging of the friars, became
more vicious, Rizal has made his childhood experience an
inspiration to his El Filibusterismo – Noli’s sequel.  
• This is the time when Rizal would be writing the truth
about the Church’s abuses of power which he had seen in
the society, triggered by his memory of the cavity mutiny
which led to the execution of the three priests.
References:
• https
://www.persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_1986_num_
32_1_2316
• https://www.scribd.com/document/437332506/Riz
al-and-Chinese-Connection
• http://www.filamer.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/20
17/04/Rizal-on-Agrarian-Issues.pdf
• http://nhcp.gov.ph/the-two-faces-of-the-1872-cavit
e-mutiny/
• http://www.stuartxchange.org/CaviteMutiny.html
• https://brainly.ph/question/1775825