Filed under: San Diego
Mariano Avendaño San Diego was born to Rafael Roxas San Diego and Juana dela Cruz Avendaño of Obando, Bulacan. According to oral narratives, he went to the Visayas together with a priest who was assigned to serve in Pari-an, Cebu in the 1880s; and married Maria Yap (1857 – 1947) soon after. The couple made their home in what is now known as the Yap-Sandiego Heritage House.
Mariano served as a cabeza of the Gremios de Mestizos in the Pari-an district of Cebu. According to interment records, he died de muerte repentina (of sudden death) in 1897. His remains are buried in Carcar, Cebu.
Filed under: San Diego
The Yap-Sandiego Heritage House is a 298-square-meter balay nga bato og kahoy (house of wood and stone) located at the corner of Mabini and Lopez-Jaena Streets in the Parian district of Cebu City. It was built sometime between 1675 and 1700 and is one of the oldest existing residential structures in the Philippines.
Spouses Juan Yap and Maria Florido, its earliest known occupants, passed on the property to the Yap siblings: Maria, Eleuterio, and Consolacion. The eldest daughter, Maria Florido Yap, married Mariano Avendaño San Diego in the 1880s.
The house was crafted from narra and other hardwood and roofed with wooden tiles. Typical houses in the Pari-an district were “substantial stone-and-wood houses that followed a distinct pattern: the solid, permanent-looking structure fronting the street, the bodega ground floor and the upper-floor living quarters with the often excessively large rooms, wide windows and azoteas that responded to the need for ventilation and the impulse toward gracious display… that spoke of the Hispanified lifestyle of the local principalia,” writes noted Cebuano scholar Resil Mojares.
As the business center of Cebu in the late 19th century, the Pari-an district morphed into the most prestigious section of the city, where the founding families of Cebu, mestizos of Chinese and Spanish origin, lived and worked. The area was exclusive and patriarchal — its inhabitants dominating the socio-commercial activities of the growing city. In recent history, the Yap-Sandiego house was used as a boarding house for students of nearby schools and universities. It was passed onto noted Cebuano choreographer and art collector Valentin Mancao Sandiego and his wife Ofelia Pacina Zozobrado in 2003. The house is now undergoing careful renovation and outfitting for a museum and art gallery.
Etymology
Pronounced [por-sing’-ku-la], the family name is a derivative of portiuncula. This word is a likely abbreviation of the Italian phrase porzione piccola or “tiny portion”.
Portiuncula is a chapel (also called St. Mary of the Angels) near Assisi, Italy where St. Francis began the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century. The Portiuncula Indulgence is the first plenary indulgence that was ever sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The indulgence grants to he who visits a church on August 2 and confesses his sins with a contrite heart, freedom from all temporal punishments and purity as after holy baptism. The indulgence was named after the church where St. Francis’ apparitions prodded him to gain Pope Honorius III’s approval.
In 1769, a Spanish expedition in California came across a river that they named El Rio de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula or “the River of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula.” Twelve years later, 12 families settled in the area and named their community El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, after the nearby river. In later years, the city became known as Los Angeles.
Our Line
The line, as we know it, originates from San Bartolome, Malabon, Philippines — where Cirilo Porcincula was born. At the time, Malabon was within the jurisdiction of the province of Rizal. Physical features of the clan indicate a likely Chinese lineage. A Eugenia de Leon Porcincula female married in to the San Diego Family in 1933.
Look through our name database, or request access to the Porcincula Family Tree on Geni.
