Understanding Duterte’s attitude towards wealth 

Lopez

(This column was originally posted as a post on my Facebook last Monday; it’s published here with a few changes.)

The critics of the President are now fussing about supposed inconsistencies in his statements during the campaign, claiming he grew up poor, and his recent pronouncement that he actually inherited some money from his father who was former Davao governor and Cabinet secretary.

First of all, before the Duterte family (the President’s line in particular) settled in Davao, they were in Maasin, Southern Leyte. Prior to that, they were in Danao, Cebu.

But before a line of the family settled in Danao and other lines in different parts of Cebu (like Western and Southern Cebu), the Dutertes were originally from Cebu City and were one of Cebu’s oldest, wealthiest Spanish families, according to historical records.

Now I am neither a historian nor the expert on Duterte family history, but I am quite conversant on the matter because my grandmother herself was a Duterte. And since I am one of my generation’s keepers of family documents, secrets, and mementos, I do know a thing or two about it.

The originally Spanish Duterte family is among the oldest families of Cebu City. But because of intermarriages down the line, the family was officially classified as ME (Mestizo Español) by the 19th century (at the time the gremio tax system was in place).

While they are original residents of the cuidad or the original Spanish quarters, they are likewise included in the expanded list of original residents of the Old Parian put together by esteemed American historian Prof. Michael Cullinane who is an expert on Cebu history.

The family is not part of the original list covering the first 28 families (which also included my grandmother’s Del Mar family, as well as the Sansons, Regises, Singsons, etc.) detailed in the book “Life in the Old Parian,” but the Dutertes are definitely among the first 50 — as updated by Dr. Cullinane and as seen in the book — after an intermarriage with a Parian family (the Velosos) made the Duterte family establish roots in Parian, a known community of enterprising Chinese Mestizos (classified as MS or Mestizo Sangley).

By then, the Dutertes straddled both the Old Parian where the mercantile elite (the Chinese Mestizos) thrived, and the cuidad or the Old Spanish quarters, the stronghold of the descendants of the old ruling class.

And what is the Old Parian if not the first genteel district of Cebu, located in the northernmost tip of Colon, the country’s oldest street. And since Cebu is both the oldest city and province in the Philippines, Cebu’s Parian was perhaps the first enclave of the elite in the country.

(In fact, back in the day, if you had a surname registered with the Parian, you were taxed more.) And the Duterte family was part of that. Elite but not oligarchic, there is a huge difference of course.

Furthermore, I believe it’s worth noting that the original Duterte matriarch of the President’s line and our line was Doña Dionisia Francisca Duterte who had children with Don Maximo Veloso. Don Maximo belonged to the Veloso clan of the Parian, considered the wealthiest family in Cebu throughout the 19th century.

As mentioned earlier, it is this marriage with a Veloso that made the Dutertes a Parian family.

For some reason, her children carried her Duterte surname and not Maximo Veloso’s. If they didn’t, the President would’ve been called President Rodrigo Roa Veloso. At any rate, the Duterte and Veloso families were both prominent and came from money.

Now, about the President’s “self-rated poverty.”

You must understand that modesty and simplicity are traditionally prized Cebuano traits, something the President might get from family culture or remember from genetic memory, or both, being an ethnic Cebuano.

I’m talking about pre–Maria Luisa Cebu, okay? The wealthiest Cebuanos lived in beautiful but practical homes, and they shunned like the plague

ostentatious displays of wealth, so unlike the Ilonggos who built mansions they would soon not be able to sustain.

Suffice, as some literati friends would say, “Cebu lived in the lowest of keys.”

Cebuanos are industrious and modest, and talking about one’s wealth was considered taboo and crass back in the day (even until now). Brandishing one’s wealth was seen as tacky and gauche and could only be expected of the nouveau riche.

And this mind-set is perhaps why Cebu stands out as a thriving metropolis despite not having fertile soil, always seemingly immune to the changing political tides that slow the rest of the country down.

When the Villalon Mansion was finished sometime in the ’30s to ’40s, it raised not a few brows among Cebu’s elite.

The beautiful white mansion sitting atop a hill was seen as immodest as it seemed to lord it over the Cebu Capitol right below. It was deemed too much for the Cebuano taste. That was simply not the culture.

So it comes as no surprise now that a President with Cebuano roots, who is actually very typically Cebuano (especially his outlandish sense of humor and brand of sarcasm), would also downplay his wealth or his family’s provenance. And so he lives simply and modestly.

That is culture more than anything else.

That he is rough around the edges won’t make you think for once that his forebears are from gentry, but can you blame him?

His family moved far from the sophistication of an old city like Cebu, growing up instead in the once sleepy backwater that is Davao.

But this modest life is what makes him a man of the people, someone who knows what they go through, despite his illustrious roots.
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If you want to read more about the Duterte family history before Davao, Google the Inquirer lifestyle feature: “‘Kanto boy’? Duterte is so ‘de Buena familia’ (‘sa totoo lang’)” by Gavin Sanson Bagares published right after the elections last year.