Are there still Rizals Today?

Description

For this year’s commemoration of Rizal’s martyrdom, let us answer the question “are there still people today who carry the surname “Rizal”? We know that brothers Paciano and Jose failed to produce descendants who would pass on the surname, and while there are descendants of Jose Rizal’s siblings scattered throughout the world today, they’re from the female line, no one carries the surname Rizal. In fact, within the national hero’s immediate family, the last in the family to bear the surname was Emiliana Decena Rizal de Lopez, the only child of Paciano Rizal, who died on June 28, 1964. However, contrary to people’s belief, there are still 179 people in Calamba City, Laguna, who carry the surname Rizal while there are 293 in the entire Laguna province.             We know based on archival documents and snippets from various biographies of the national hero, that among the siblings of Francisco Rizal Mercado (the father of Jose Rizal), at least two went on to settle in Calamba and one, Gabriel Rizal Mercado, who married Valentina de la Cruz, would later become the great-grandfather of two modern-day Mayors of Calamba: Sisenendo and Taciano V. Rizal, and a great-great-great-grandfather of Mayor Rosseller H. Rizal, elected Mayor of Calamba in 2022. Like Jose Rizal’s branch of the family, while the other Rizals also utilized Rizal Mercado as a compound surname during the last years of Spanish rule, they eventually dropped “Mercado” and used Rizal as their sole family name. Mayors Sisenando and Taciano were the sons of Pelagio Rizal and Romana Vicente; Pelagio’s father was Patricio Rizal, the son of Gabriel Rizal Mercado. Patricio Rizal served as cabeza de barangay in the 1870s, the same time that Francisco was also serving as cabeza. Sisenando V. Rizal, a medical doctor by profession, served Calamba as mayor twice: from 1948 to 1951 and again from 1952 to 1954. His brother Taciano V. Rizal served as mayor from 1960 to 1963, 1964 to 1967, and 1972 to 1975. Taciano V. Rizal was a high-ranking member of the Huk