Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine PatriotCraig, Austin
History
Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
Craig, Austin
Rizal, José, 1861-1896
It is certain that Regina Ochoa was of Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog
ancestry, and it is recorded that she was the wife of Manuel de
Quintos. Here we stop depending on memories, for in the restored
burial register of Kalamba church in the entry of the funeral of
Brigida de Quintos she is called "the daughter of Manuel de Quintos
and Regina Ochoa."
Manuel de Quintos was an attorney of Manila, graduated from Santo Tomas
University, whose family were Chinese mestizos of Pangasinan. The
lawyer's father, of the same name, had been municipal captain of
Lingayan, and an uncle was leader of the Chinese mestizos in a
protest they had made against the arbitrariness of their provincial
governor. This petition for redress of grievances is preserved in
the Supreme Court archives with "Joaquin de Quintos" well and boldly
written at the head of the complainants' names, evidence of a culture
and a courage that were equally uncommon in those days. Complaints
under Spanish rule, no matter how well founded, meant trouble for the
complainants; we must not forget that it was a vastly different thing
from signing petitions or adhering to resolutions nowadays. Then the
signers risked certainly great annoyance, sometimes imprisonment,
and not infrequently death.
The home of Quintos had been in San Pedro Macati at the time of Captain
Novales's uprising, the so-called "American revolt" in protest against
the Peninsulars sent out to supersede the Mexican officers who had
remained loyal to Spain when the colony of their birth separated
itself from the mother country. As little San Pedro Macati is charged
with having originated the conspiracy, it is unlikely that it was
concealed from the liberal lawyer, for attorneys were scarcer and
held in higher esteem in those days.
The conservative element then, as later, did not often let drop
any opportunity of purging the community of those who thought for
themselves, by condemning them for crime unheard and undefended,
whether they had been guilty of it or not.
All the branches of Mrs. Rizal's family were much richer than the
relatives of her husband; there were numerous lawyers and priests
among them--the old-time proof of social standing--and they were
influential in the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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