Correcting history with new discoveries

Every Rizal Day, the Rizal-Tallano-Marcos hoax gets repeated, with the story changing slightly each year. This story claims that Jose Rizal was left as a child at the doorstep of the Rizal-Mercado family but was supposedly a prince descended from a hidden sibling of Queen Victoria. This story only came out in the mid-2000s, and entered broad online political folklore pointing to a Facebook-era spread by 2011, leading to an explosive growth in 2021–2022 and widely circulated in connection with Marcos-related online propaganda during the 2022 campaign period. Many argue that the hoax continues to be told to legitimize the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses.

History constantly evolves and continues to be revised when empirical data is discovered to correct an existing accepted “truth”. For instance, the Rizal-Tallano myth can be easily proven with historical documentation. For the claim that Rizal was a foundling to be true, his baptismal record should have mentioned that 1.) He was an exposito (foundling), 2.) He was an hijo de padres desconocidos (child of unknown parents), and 3.) A se halló (found/left at) notation should have appeared on his baptismal record. However, none of these notations appear in Rizal's 1862 reconstructed baptismal record.

Established histories can be corrected with authentic documents or scientific proof to support new claims. We can cite the debunking of the long-held belief that former President Sergio Osmeña's father was Don Pedro Singson Gotiaoco. DNA-testing in 2023 established a lesser-known claim that the former president's father was Don Antonio Sanson. While the Sanson claim went as early as the 1930s, it was the Gotiaoco story, which came much later, that gained traction and acceptance by many historians until disproved by DNA testing.

Sometimes, newly-discovered documents that were unavailable or inaccessible before could rewrite existing history. An example is the case of Encarnacion Garcia. For a long time, respected researchers believed that she, the daughter of Pablo Garcia Fernandez and Nieves Fortich, married Januario Chiong Veloso, son of Nicasio Chiong Veloso, who at one point was the richest man in Parian, Cebu. American historian Michael Cullinane in his “A Chinese Life in Late Spanish Era Cebu City: Nicasio Veloso Chiong Tuico, 1838-1903” article published in the Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society in 2015, writes that Januario had married Encarnacion Garcia y Fortich, whose father, Pablo Garcia Fernández, a Spaniard, resided at the time in Sibonga, citing that she was born in 1885 in Sibonga; her father was the patriarch of the late 20th-century political Garcia family.

However, around September 2024, Cebuano genealogist Noah Iñigo Tan discovered that “Encarnacion Garcia” who married Chiong Veloso was not the daughter of Pablo Garcia and Nieves Fortich", confirming this through documents and interviews.

The birth record of a child of Januario and Encarnacion, born in 1915, shows that this Encarnacion was 24 years old and born in Ermita, Manila. The same Encarnacion’s death record lists her as dying in 1974 in Cebu City, listing her as having been born on March 31, 1891, with Manila as her birthplace, and her parents as Francisco Garcia (also a Spaniard) and Catalina Einar.

These records were further validated by Noah Tan by interviewing descendants of Januario and Encarnacion. The initial belief that Januario's wife was the Cebuana Encarnacion Garcia could not have been true as this Cebuana was baptized on June 21, 1885 in Sibonga, while civil records that mention the Manileña Encarnacion give her as having been born on March 31, 1891 in Ermita, Manila.

There are many instances when long-held historical truths are revised or altogether debunked. Sometimes, archival documents can bring the correction. And, scientific discoveries such as DNA testing can overturn more than a century of historical reality. The best thing to do is to be open to challenges to previously-accepted realities, and to know when to adapt to the changing times.