Familian Villagomez Tricentennial: Three Hundred Years of Chamorro History

Ramon G. Villagomez, Jose G. Villagomez, and various Laffet children including the author of this essay.

In 2027, the Villagomez family marks its tricentennial in the Mariana Islands. With this anniversary we celebrate not only one of the largest, most prominent families in our islands, but a living chapter in the much longer story of the Chamorro people. The history of our family stretches back at least to 1727, when Cristóbal Villagomez appears in the Guam census, making the Villagomez family one of the oldest continuously documented families in the Marianas.

Cristóbal Villagomez was a Spanish soldier who married Francisca Ana, who was Chamorro. Their descendants married into other Chamorro families and over generations became fully woven into the social and cultural fabric of the islands. As historian Eric Forbes notes, the descendants of these unions grew up speaking Chamorro and living as members of Chamorro society. The story of the Villagomez family is not merely the arrival of a surname. It is the story of how a family became Chamorro and remained Chamorro across centuries of change.

Yet even three hundred years is only a fraction of our story. Different Chamorro families draw their lineages back to different times; while the Villagomez family can trace our name back 300 years, our heritage and identity goes back much further. Long before the arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands had already lived, navigated, cultivated, and built communities across these islands for roughly 4,000 years. The Villagomez family is part of an ancient Chamorro civilization whose roots reach deep into the Pacific and far beyond the colonial records that often define our history.

The tricentennial offers an opportunity to reflect on how much history our family has witnessed. The Villagomez family predates the United States by nearly half a century. When Cristóbal and Ana Villagomez and their children were recorded in the Guam Census in 1727, the American Revolution was still decades away. Our ancestors lived through Spanish genocide, the transfer of Guam to the United States, the German and Japanese administrations in the Northern Mariana Islands, the trauma of World War II, and the modern era. Through each transition, the family endures.

This perspective is especially important because too often the story of the Northern Mariana Islands is told as though it begins in 1944, with the American invasion of our islands during World War II, or with the expansion of American influence afterward. Those events were undeniably significant, but they were not the beginning of our history. As some of the newest American citizens, it can feel like we are "new" to America, when in reality our stories go back centuries and millennia. While much is being made of the America 250 anniversary, it is telling to contrast that with the 300 years of documented Villagomez history in our islands. Our identity was not created by American administration, nor by the war. It was inherited from generations who lived, loved, struggled, and persevered long before those events.

This broader resilience is reflected in our family’s own migration and growth over the last century. Around the time the Spanish started to allow Chamorros to move back to Saipan – about 150 years after Cristóbal and Ana – my great-great-grandfather Joaquin Salas Villagomez moved from Guam to Saipan, married Rita Diaz Castro, and had five children, two boys and three girls. One of the five is my great-grandfather Rafael "Laffet" Castro Villagomez. Laffet had nine kids, including my grandfather Ignacio Pangelinan Villagomez, who in turn had ten children, including my father, Ramon Garrido Villagomez. The Laffets today are one of the largest clans on Saipan; former Governor Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres is my second cousin; community advocate and artist Analee Camacho Villagomez is my first cousin.

Saipan Villagomez Family Tree

The other four Villagomez clans on Saipan -- Kiyu (Villagomez), Nando (Benavente), Marcilliano (Castro), and Pai (Santos) -- are also very large families. A look at our family tree from our 1992 reunion reveals how my family is married into nearly every other Chamorro family on Saipan. There are also Villagomez clans on Guam, and one clan that lived in Yap for many years.

The Villagomez tricentennial is therefore more than a family anniversary. It is a reminder that the Chamorro people possess a history measured not in decades but in centuries and millennia. As we celebrate this milestone, we should proudly say that our family has been an integral part of this island community for 300 years. We are a family of mixed-race heritage that remains proudly Indigenous and Chamorro and people of the Pacific. For three hundred years, the Villagomez family has been part of that story; for four thousand years, the Chamorro people have called these islands home. We honor both histories and reaffirm that our roots in the Marianas run far deeper than any modern political era.