In the late 1980s when the venerable Filipino-American historian, Hector Santos, was working at Northrop, one of his fellow employees introduced him to his niece. She was a descendant of the Pobladores (the acknowledged founders of the City of Los Angeles). She was active in the organization which does an annual reenactment of the walk from San Gabriel to the original Los Angeles site. Mr. Santos and Victor Nebrida (who majored in history at the UCLA) cofounded the Philippine History Group of Los Angeles (PHGLA) in 1995.

Mr. Santos asked her if there was an original member of the party whose name was Antonio Miranda Rodriguez. He said the guy could possibly have been Filipino. She checked the organization's records and told him that she couldn't find such a name.

Mr. Santos and this writer checked also the names carried in the plaque honoring the founders of the City of Los Angeles at the El Pueblo Historical Monument, which is site of the original settlement of the Pobladores. The name of Antonio Miranda Rodriguez is not also found in the marker that was put up by the Los Angeles Historical Commission.

Later on when Eliseo Silva was painting that mural on Beverly Blvd. (now at the side of Park Unidad in the Historic Filipinotown District), Mr. Santos asked him where he got his information about the Filipino "founder" of Los Angeles. Mr. Silva told Mr. Santos that he got the information from a Wells Fargo Bank ad that appeared in the Filipinas Magazine. He said such an established institution would never lie about facts. (Editor’s Note: Eliseo Silva appears also in the article, "How Some Filipino Americans Behave Like Second-Class Citizens," at this link http://www.mabuhayradio.com/content/view/593/90/.)

Guess who was the copywriter for the advertisement that started this hoax? Greg Macabenta, the boss man of Minority Media and the public-relations director then of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations (NaFFAA), designed the ad. Mr. Macabenta is neither a historian nor even a writer of historical articles.

People still repeat Mr. Macabenta’s hoax today even if nobody can cite a published article or a written document to prove his claim. The mural helps perpetuate this hoax because Filipino-American students from local colleges and universities stop by there and their guides tell them about the Filipino "founder." And worse, at least two Hispanic-American politicians in Los Angeles have pandered to Filipino-American voters and repeated this lie. While these politicians claim that a Filipino was a cofounder of the city, they never bothered to tell the Los Angeles Historical Commission to verify the claim and come up with the required primary or secondary historical document or proof proving the validity of Mr. Macabenta’s allegation.

It was at this time that this writer was able to coin the term, "Hoaxbalahap." I told Poet-pundit Fred Burce Bunao of the undocumented claim of Mr. Macabenta about Antonio Miranda Rodriguez. Mr. Bunao remarked in Tagalog-English (Taglish), "Hoax ba yan ni Lagareng Hapon?" Almost all of the Filipino-American media practitioners call Mr. Macabenta as the personification of the Filipino colloquial term, "Lagareng Hapon," which is used to denote a person who earns from both the seller and the buyer. Or in the case of ad placements, getting commissions from both from the advertiser and the medium (publication).

A historical hoax is such a terrible thing to spread among your own people. Once it has spread, it is very hard to contain, especially if the Filipino-American National Historical Society (FANHS) "authenticates" (sic) it and proclaims as gospel truth that a Filipino was a cofounder of Los Angeles. The FANHS people have not produced also any primary or secondary proof of evidence to back up their claim about Antonio Miranda Rodriguez.

From 2001 to 2004, this writer posted inquiries in several Filipino-American e-newsgroups that asked if any Rodriguez clans in the Philippines (especially in the provinces of Rizal, Iloilo and Zamboanga, where there are numerous Rodriguezes) have any family anecdote that one of their ancestors was named Antonio Miranda Rodriguez. I wanted to know if there were anecdotal sources that could back up the claim that Antonio Miranda Rodriguez, who is buried in Santa Barbara, California, was a Filipino at all. I said that if there was a Rodriguez family in the Philippines that would assert that Antonio Miranda Rodriguez was its ascendant, then perhaps DNA tests could be conducted to validate the claim. No Rodriguez family in the Philippines ever answered my inquiry.

There is a big possibility that Antonio Miranda Rodriguez was a Spaniard or a Mexican Creole who was simply born in Manila and moved back to Mexico as an adult. Because logic would dictate that if Antonio Miranda Rodriguez was a Filipino-Indio crew member of a Spanish galleon and deserted from the ship, then the Spanish colonial authorities would not send him to California as one of the original settlers (founders) of what is now the City of Los Angeles. If he were caught as a deserter, then the Spaniards would have sent him back to Manila on another galleon or put him in prison in Mexico. # # #