The Ancestry of Robredo - Villafuerte of Camarines

Political foes share Chinese ancestry


By Juan Escandor Jr.

Inquirer

Last updated 09:14am (Mla time) 05/24/2007


MANILA, Philippines – For decades, Camarines Sur has been ruled by descendants of a single Chinese ancestry. The reign started in 1979 when Rep. Luis Robredo Villafuerte Sr., who is of Chinese ancestry, joined the Cabinet of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos as trade minister.

After the assassination of former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. in 1983, Villafuerte joined the opposition and later became a voice in the “revolutionary government” under Corazon Aquino.

After the Edsa I uprising in 1986, Villafuerte worked for the appointment of Jesse Robredo as chief of the Asian Development Bank-funded Bicol River Basin Development Project (BRBDP) and groomed him to occupy Naga’s mayoral post.

Villafuerte, the son of Soledad Robredo who was a daughter of a Chinese migrant father named Lim Payco (baptized Serafin Robredo), had succeeded in propping up his nephew Jesse in 1988 and his son, Gov. Luis Raymund “LRay” Villafuerte Jr. in 2004.

Now a congressman, Villafuerte serves in the 10-town second district of Camarines Sur, that includes Naga where Robredo is the undefeated mayor. LRay is the governor.

In 1988, Robredo, 29, ran for mayor and made history as the youngest to hold the reins of the city government.

He defeated Ramon S. Roco, the younger brother of the late Sen. Raul S. Roco, by a small margin of votes.

It was during Robredo’s first year in office that Villafuerte was appointed acting governor of the province.

In 1991, Robredo and Villafuerte parted ways and became bitter political rivals.


Proxy political battle

Engaging Robredo, now 48, in a proxy political battle, Villafuerte would field his own mayoral candidate to challenge Robredo in five elections, including fielding his elder sister Luisa in 1998.

But the uncle always failed to crush the nephew, and the latter became the longest reigning mayor of Naga. Robredo’s handpicked councilors have also swept the elections since 1991.

Last month, Robredo foresaw the unfavorable ruling of a Commission on Elections’ division that would disqualify him.

The mayor said somebody from Comelec in Manila phoned him that a powerful figure was following up a petition for his disqualification that questioned his Filipino citizenship. The petition was filed by Jojo Villafuerte, his cousin and son of Villafuerte’s elder brother Mariano Jr.

The move was largely attributed to Villafuerte, but he publicly denied such attribution.

Robredo was tormented by disqualification cases filed at the Comelec in the election years of 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007.

A recipient of the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, Robredo was on the brink of being unseated after the Comelec’s First Division acted on the citizenship issue, which was dismissed earlier by the Comelec en banc and the Supreme Court.

On the basis of the decision of Commissioners Romeo Brawner and Nicodemo Ferrer, the division served him a “quo warranto” on May 3 that disqualified him from the race because he was deemed a Chinese citizen.

A third member of the division, Commissioner Resurreccion Borra, dissented, however.

A motion for reconsideration has been filed that stalled the move to disqualify Robredo from the electoral race and government service.


Common ancestry

Robredo and Villafuerte, however, shared a common ancestry, only that it was divided by two marriages.

The great grand patriarch Lim Payco, with his young son Lim Teng (Robredo’s grandfather) from his first wife, whom they left in China, arrived in Manila toward the end of the 19th century. As a boy, Lim Teng was tutored by Spanish friars.

Lim Payco was baptized as Serafin and his son Lim Teng as Juan, and they were given the surname Robredo.

While nothing could be remembered about Lim Teng’s mother, his father took a second wife named Josefa de la Trinidad, a widow.

Josefa bore four children, Soledad (Villafuerte’s mother), Jose, Juan II, and Serafina who became Juan’s (Lim Teng) half-brothers and half-sisters.

They were all surnamed Robredo with their Chinese name sometimes attached to their Filipino name. All were educated under the American school system.

Juan Lim Robredo acquired proficiency in three more languages—Filipino, Spanish and English—which qualified him to take on white-collar jobs.

At 21, Juan married Luisa Chan, a Philippine-born Chinese, and from their union were born six children—Serafin, Adelina, Juanito, Josefina, Jose (Robredo’s father), and Juanita.

Both Serafin and Adelina died young due to illness, while Juanito, along with their mother Luisa, died during an attack by the Japanese soldiers while in hiding in Sipocot, Camarines Sur.

It was at this time that young Jose (Robredo’s father) was wounded by a bullet in the stomach but survived through the help of friends and foot doctors who came to his aid.

Before the war, Luisa operated a grocery store while Juan worked as a court interpreter. Endowed with industry common among Chinese migrants, Juan moonlighted as a commercial photographer by putting up his own studio.

Later, he and half-sister Soledad (Villafuerte’s mother) applied and were accepted as teachers at an Anglo-Chinese School in Naga, where Soledad met her future husband, co-teacher Mariano Villafuerte, at the same Chinese school.

Today, only two of Juan Lim Robredo’s six children are alive—Jose Robredo Sr. (Jesse’s father), blind and suffering from a degenerative ailment in the eyes, and Juanita Robredo Hao Chin, disabled by Alzheimer’s disease.


The Villafuertes

Mariano Villafuerte (the congressman’s father), a fine orator and speaker, was to become a congressman and later governor of Camarines Sur when the Japanese forces invaded the Philippines.

War-time Governor Villafuerte and his wife Soledad, with their eldest son Jose, died in the hands of vengeful guerrillas as the Americans were advancing to free the Philippines from the fleeing Japanese soldiers.

Governor Villafuerte’s body was desecrated and decapitated and his head placed in a jar and then displayed in the plaza, according to old folks in Naga.

The couple left behind six young children—Pura, Fe, Mariano Jr., Carmen, Luis (the congressman) and Lina. Luis was to become a political leader while his brothers and sisters became successful professionals.

After the war, Jose married Marcelina Manalastas from Navotas, which was then part of Rizal. They built a house in Tabuco, a village across the river town of Naga.

They had five children—Jocelyn, Jose Jr., Jesse (the mayor), Jeanne, and Josephine.


(The ancestry part of this article was sourced from Jose Robredo Sr., 83, father of Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo, whom the author interviewed at their ancestral house in Barangay Tabuco, Naga.)



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