Manuel L. Quezon

Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina (19 August 1878 – 1 August 1944), also referred to by his initials MLQ, was a Filipino statesman, soldier and politician who served as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. He was the first Filipino to head a government of the entire Philippines (as opposed to the government of previous Philippine states), and is considered to have been the second president of the Philippines, after Emilio Aguinaldo (1899–1901).

Quezon, was born in Baler in the district of El Príncipe (now Baler, Aurora). His parents were Lucio Quezon (died 1898) and María Dolores Molina (1840–1893). His father was a primary grade school teacher (maestro) from Paco, Manila and a retired sergeant of the Spanish Civil Guard (sargento de Guardia Civil), while his mother was a primary grade school teacher (maestra) in their hometown. His father spoke and taught Spanish as a teacher. According to historian Augusto de Viana and as written in his timeline on the history of Baler, Quezon's father, Lucio, was a Chinese-Spanish mestizo who came from the Parián or Chinatown district outside Intramuros in Paco, Manila, though learned how to speak Spanish presumably in his time in the Spanish Guardia Civil and eventually married his mother who was a Spanish-Filipino mestiza born through a Spanish priest, Father Jose Urbina de Esparragosa, who arrived in Baler in 1847 serving as the town's parish priest.