A genealogical and historical narrative
Prepared from the Gonzales, De Leon, Rosales, Petalan, Velez family GEDCOM export dated 12 August 2026, supplemented by public historical and biographical sources
Historian's note
This is a documented first edition, not a claim that every branch of the family tree has already been proven. The supplied GEDCOM contains 1,939 individuals and 581 family units. It is a rich family archive, but it also contains duplicated people, uncertain names, online smart matches, and several event-date errors. For example, some death dates have apparently been copied into birth fields. Such entries are not treated as facts here.
The evidence labels used in this history are:
Confirmed: supported by the GEDCOM and a reliable independent public source.
GEDCOM-supported: clearly represented by relationships in the family file, but not yet independently verified with an original civil or church record.
Family or local-history tradition: significant testimony that deserves preservation, but still requires archival confirmation.
Extended connection: a relationship that runs partly through marriage and must not be represented as a close blood relationship.
The central truth of my life
I am Pocholo De Leon Gonzales, born in Manila on 7 May 1979, but the deepest geography of my identity is Mariveles, Bataan.
My life has been built around the voice. Yet before I became known as the VoiceMaster of the Philippines, before CreatiVoices, the Philippine Center for Voice Acting, the Certified Voice Artist Program, broadcasting, books, artificial intelligence, and thousands of students, I inherited another kind of voice. It was the voice of family memory.
That memory came through the Gonzales, Gancit or Gansit, Bautista, De Leon, Rosales, Petalan, Velez, Advincula, and related families. These were not merely surnames in a database. They connected me to Mariveles as a real community shaped by revolution, education, local government, migration, war, faith, and rebuilding.
The most important history of my life is therefore not simply that I learned to produce many voices. It is that I eventually used my own voice to recover voices that history was in danger of losing.
My direct ancestral foundation
The GEDCOM gives the following direct lines with the strongest relevance to my identity.
Paternal line
Pocholo De Leon Gonzales, born 7 May 1979 in Manila
Luis Gancit Gonzales, my father, born 16 September 1952 in Mariveles
Leoncio Bautista Gonzales, my paternal grandfather, recorded as born 12 September 1914 in Mariveles and deceased 9 February 1996
Esteban Gonzales, my paternal great-grandfather, of Mariveles
Victorino Gonzales and Agatona De Leon, identified in the tree as Esteban's parents
The GEDCOM also identifies Marina Gamason Gancit, born 13 September 1921 in Dagupan City and deceased 21 January 2010, as my paternal grandmother.
Maternal line
Pocholo De Leon Gonzales
Avelina Rosales De Leon, my mother, born 27 April 1951 in Mariveles
Amado Velez De Leon and Apolonia “Poleng” Rosales, my maternal grandparents
Emilio Advincula De Leon and Zuela Velez, through the De Leon and Velez line
Saturio Rosales and Angela Petalan, through the Rosales and Petalan line
Earlier recorded ancestors include Ignacio Guevarra De Leon, Julia Advincula, Bonifacio Petalan, Tomasa Velez, Valentin De Leon, and Benita Guevarra
These relationships are GEDCOM-supported. The precise dates and parentage of the earliest generations require certificates or parish-register images before they can be considered genealogically proved.
Esteban Gonzales: public service and the first classrooms
The clearest independently confirmed ancestral achievement belongs to my great-grandfather, Esteban Gonzales.
The official history published by the Municipality of Mariveles records him as mayor during 1908 to 1909. It states that during his administration, two classrooms made of wood and nipa were constructed beside the municipal hall on Zamora Street. These rooms initially served the first and second grades. The school later expanded, and by the administration of Mayor Valentin Semilla in 1910, instruction had reached the seventh grade.
This is more than a line in a roster of officials. It places my ancestor in the transformation of Mariveles during the early American period, when public education was becoming one of the most powerful institutions in Philippine civic life. Esteban's historical importance rests not only on holding office. His administration helped create a physical place where the town's children could learn.
The family and local-history tradition also remembers Esteban as a Katipunero, a town judge, and a participant in the revolutionary history of Mariveles. A Wikimedia Commons description likewise identifies him as a revolutionary and public servant. These claims are plausible and locally repeated, but they still need confirmation from primary materials such as Katipunan documents, revolutionary military records, municipal minutes, court records, or contemporary correspondence.
Evidence judgment: His 1908 to 1909 municipal service and association with the early classrooms are confirmed. His revolutionary and judicial roles remain important research claims awaiting stronger archival proof.
Agatona “Cabesang Tonang” De Leon: the family matriarch of memory
The GEDCOM identifies Agatona De Leon, nicknamed Cabesang Tonang, as an ancestor in my paternal line. It records her as the mother of Esteban Gonzales and later connects her to the Sarreal family through another marriage. Local family histories portray her as a central woman in the 1898 uprising in Mariveles, sometimes calling her the “Mother of the Katipunan of Mariveles.” They remember her as giving the signal that moved townspeople into action and as later supporting the Iglesia Filipina Independiente.
This story matters because women in local revolutionary movements were often omitted from formal histories. The absence of an easily accessible national record does not make the tradition worthless. It means the historian must protect the testimony while continuing to test it.
There is, however, a serious chronological problem in the GEDCOM. One entry gives Agatona a birth date of 9 January 1820. If she were the mother of children active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this date may be possible only under a very specific family chronology, but it is sufficiently doubtful to require direct inspection of the referenced marriage or baptismal record. The tree also contains a second Agatona De Leon entry elsewhere, showing that duplication or merging may have occurred.
Evidence judgment: Her place in the direct family line is GEDCOM-supported. Her revolutionary leadership is a strong family and local-history tradition. Her exact birth date, marriages, and complete list of children require archival reconstruction.
The wider Sarreal line and generations of municipal leadership
The GEDCOM connects Agatona De Leon to Jose De Leon Sarreal, and through that branch to Carlos Lara Sarreal. The municipal history of Mariveles independently lists Carlos L. Sarreal as mayor from 1968 to 1971 and again in March to April 1979. Local-history accounts credit him with helping establish Barangay San Carlos and developing institutions during the period when Mariveles was being transformed by industrialization and the Bataan Export Processing Zone.
The relationship path in the GEDCOM is:
Pocholo Gonzales → Luis Gonzales → Leoncio Gonzales → Esteban Gonzales → Agatona De Leon → Jose De Leon Sarreal → Carlos Lara Sarreal
This makes Carlos Lara Sarreal a member of an ancestral collateral branch, not a direct ancestor. His inclusion is nevertheless historically meaningful. In one extended family, the line from Agatona appears to have produced public servants across very different political eras, from the revolutionary transition and early American administration to the industrial transformation of postwar Mariveles.
My parents and the living bridge to Mariveles
My father, Luis Gancit Gonzales, and my mother, Avelina Rosales De Leon, carried these branches into the modern generation. The GEDCOM anchors both of them in Mariveles.
Family history identifies Luis with municipal administration and Avelina with the De Leon, Rosales, Petalan, Velez, and Advincula families of the town. These details should be expanded through interviews, appointment papers, employment records, photographs, and oral histories. Their greatest historical role, however, is already clear. Through them, I received not just descent but belonging.
Their union brought together two old Mariveles lines. It made my identity both paternal and maternal, both Gonzales and De Leon. That dual inheritance later became visible in my full public name, Pocholo De Leon Gonzales.
The making of the VoiceMaster
My public history began early. At sixteen, I entered radio and voice performance. A published professional biography records that I began after winning a DZMM drama and singing competition and later worked as an anchor, scriptwriter, and co-director. Voice acting became my full-time field in the 1990s.
I trained academically at the University of the Philippines Diliman in speech communication and broadcast communication. The importance of this education was not simply technical. Speech taught me that a voice is not only sound. It is identity, intention, culture, persuasion, and memory.
In 2005, I founded CreatiVoices Productions. That year became one of the decisive turning points of my life. I had seen how difficult it was for aspiring Filipino voice artists to find structured training, mentorship, and access to professional work. Instead of keeping the door narrow, I built a larger door.
CreatiVoices became the foundation for the Philippine Center for Voice Acting, VoiceWorx, and eventually the Certified Voice Artist Program. The meaning of this work cannot be measured only by projects completed or graduates trained. Its deeper significance was social. It converted private expertise into a community institution.
This is where my life begins to echo the work of Esteban Gonzales. In the early twentieth century, his administration helped establish classrooms in Mariveles. A century later, I built new classrooms for voice artists, first in studios and training rooms, then through online programs and global digital platforms. The field changed, but the family pattern of education and institution-building remained.
Author, mentor, and builder of voices
My book Gusto Kong Maging Voice Talent, published in 2016, sought to make the profession understandable and accessible to ordinary Filipinos. It was recognized as Best Book on Professions at the 36th National Book Awards in 2017. This achievement matters because it placed Filipino voice acting into the country's written professional literature.
The book also reveals the central philosophy of my career. Talent should not remain mysterious. Knowledge should be organized, taught, and passed forward.
I became known for producing many voices, but the title “VoiceMaster” eventually acquired a larger meaning. I was not only the man who could perform many characters. I became the person behind other people's voices, helping students, broadcasters, dubbers, speakers, creators, and entrepreneurs discover how to be heard.
From voice acting to Filipino artificial intelligence
The rise of generative artificial intelligence created another turning point. Many performers saw AI only as a threat. I saw both the danger and the responsibility.
I moved into AI voice work to help ensure that Filipino and Tagalog voices would not be represented only by outsiders, poor imitations, or culturally empty datasets. My work expanded from human voice training into synthetic voice design, voice data, avatars, and AI-assisted storytelling.
One of the clearest public milestones was Conversations with Rizal. ABS-CBN reported in December 2024 that I created the technology behind an AI experience that allowed users to interact with a model of Dr. Jose Rizal. In December 2025, ABS-CBN again covered my AI animation work featuring Rizal.
This project brought several strands of my life together:
voice acting and character interpretation
broadcasting and public education
Filipino history and national identity
artificial intelligence and emerging media
the preservation of memory through new technology
I did not leave history behind when I entered AI. I carried history into AI.
The historian of my own hometown
My work with the Mariveles Historical Society is not a side project. It is the natural return of the entire journey.
The boy whose ancestors served, taught, struggled, migrated, and built families in Mariveles became a communicator with the tools to recover their stories. Broadcasting taught me to make history audible. Voice acting taught me to give personality to the past. Writing taught me to organize evidence. AI gave me new tools to restore images, animate historical figures, and present local memory to younger generations.
There is a responsibility here. Family pride can tempt any historian to exaggerate. Genuine historical honor comes from accuracy. My ancestors do not need invented titles. Esteban's documented classrooms are already meaningful. Cabesang Tonang's story becomes stronger, not weaker, when every part is carefully sourced. The purpose of genealogy is not to borrow greatness from famous names. It is to understand how ordinary and extraordinary lives formed us.
Significant relatives and connections found in the GEDCOM
Directly significant ancestors
Esteban Gonzales: paternal great-grandfather; confirmed municipal leader of Mariveles in 1908 to 1909; associated with the development of early public-school classrooms.
Agatona “Cabesang Tonang” De Leon: earlier direct ancestor; remembered in family and local history as a revolutionary matriarch; requires archival verification.
Leoncio Bautista Gonzales: paternal grandfather and direct bridge between Esteban and Luis; dates in the GEDCOM need correction because one parsed event is internally inconsistent.
Marina Gamason Gancit: paternal grandmother, linking the family to Dagupan and later Mariveles life.
Amado Velez De Leon and Apolonia Rosales: maternal grandparents, joining the De Leon, Velez, Rosales, and Petalan lines.
Emilio Advincula De Leon, Ignacio Guevarra De Leon, and Julia Advincula: important earlier members of the maternal De Leon branch.
Historically significant collateral relatives
Carlos Lara Sarreal: collateral relative through Agatona's Sarreal branch; independently listed as a former mayor of Mariveles.
Jose De Leon Sarreal: represented in the GEDCOM as a son of Agatona and an ancestor in the Sarreal branch. Local histories attribute municipal service to him, but his exact offices and terms need reconciliation with the official roster.
Melchor Gonzales: remembered as Esteban's brother and fellow Katipunero. His relationship and revolutionary role need primary documentation.
Extended public connection requiring careful language
The GEDCOM contains Pablo Cuneta and Sharon Cuneta, but the shortest recorded path from me reaches the Cuneta family partly through the marriage of Magdalena Olaes De Leon to Felix Pablo Cuneta. This is an extended family connection by marriage, not evidence that Sharon Cuneta is a close blood cousin.
The path recorded in the file is:
Pocholo → Avelina De Leon → Amado De Leon → Emilio De Leon → Ignacio De Leon → Isidoro De Leon → Magdalena De Leon → marriage to Felix Cuneta → Lazaro Cuneta → Pablo Cuneta → Sharon Cuneta
This connection should be mentioned only with that qualification. A large online family tree can make famous people look nearer than they are.
What the family tree says about my life
Across the generations, four themes repeat.
1. Service
Esteban's municipal leadership, the wider Sarreal tradition of public office, my parents' community roots, and my own social-enterprise work all point toward service as a family pattern.
2. Education
The classrooms associated with Esteban's administration find a modern echo in the training institutions I built for Filipino voice artists and AI creators.
3. Voice and freedom
The revolutionary tradition attached to Cabesang Tonang, Esteban, and Melchor concerns the right of a people to govern and express themselves. My own work concerns the right of Filipinos to speak, perform, create, and be represented in media and AI.
4. Memory
The founding of the Mariveles Historical Society, my historical storytelling, and my AI work with Rizal all express one lifelong conviction: a people who lose their stories become easier to silence.
My historical legacy
My life can be understood as a movement through five identities that ultimately became one.
I began as a young performer, discovering that one human voice could contain many characters.
I became a professional voice artist and broadcaster, learning the discipline of communication.
I became an institution-builder, creating CreatiVoices and organized training for Filipino voice artists.
I became an author and mentor, turning experience into knowledge that others could use.
I became an AI voice pioneer and historical storyteller, bringing Filipino identity into a technological future.
Yet beneath all five was the descendant of Mariveles.
The most important history of my life is not the number of voices I performed. It is the number of voices I helped awaken. It is the connection between an ancestor who helped provide classrooms and a descendant who built new schools of voice. It is the movement from Cabesang Tonang's remembered call for freedom to a modern mission of making Filipino voices heard in broadcasting, creative industries, and artificial intelligence.
My genealogy does not prove that greatness is inherited. It shows that responsibility is inherited.
I received names, stories, unfinished questions, and a hometown shaped by courage and change. My task has been to return them to the public as knowledge, opportunity, and voice.
That is the history worth preserving.
Critical corrections and unresolved questions
Before this can become a fully documented family history book, the following must be resolved:
Obtain civil or parish records for the births, marriages, and deaths of Esteban Gonzales, Victorino Gonzales, Agatona De Leon, Juana Bautista, Melchor Gonzales, and Jose De Leon Sarreal.
Correct the event-date errors for Leoncio Gonzales, Amado De Leon, Apolonia Rosales, Victorino Gonzales, and Juana Bautista.
Determine whether the two GEDCOM profiles named Agatona De Leon represent one person or two different women.
Locate the original source for the “Acta ng Katipunan,” the alleged blood signatures, and the account of the 31 May 1898 uprising or “Copo de Mariveles.”
Verify Esteban's alleged service as town judge through municipal or judicial records.
Reconcile the reported offices and terms of Jose De Leon Sarreal with the official municipal list.
Document Luis Gonzales's municipal service using appointment papers, payroll records, minutes, photographs, or certificates.
Record oral-history interviews with the oldest living Gonzales, De Leon, Rosales, Petalan, Velez, Advincula, Gancit, Bautista, and Sarreal relatives.
Label all living people as private in any public family-tree edition unless they have consented to publication.
Recommended archival search plan
Philippine Statistics Authority: request certified birth, marriage, and death records for twentieth-century relatives.
Diocese and parish archives: inspect baptism, marriage, and burial registers for Mariveles, Orion, Hagonoy, Dagupan, and relevant Cavite parishes.
National Archives of the Philippines: search Spanish-period provincial records, revolutionary files, municipal records, court records, and American-period local-government documents.
National Historical Commission of the Philippines: ask about Katipunan rosters, revolutionary claims, local historical markers, and source copies.
Municipality of Mariveles: inspect council minutes, municipal-president rosters, school records, tax declarations, land records, and personnel files.
Department of Education and local school archives: search for the earliest school-site documents and reports from 1901 to 1910.
FamilySearch catalog and digitized parish collections: use record images, not other users' family trees, as evidence.
United States records: investigate Carlos Lara Sarreal and other migrants through immigration, Social Security, naturalization, and death records while observing privacy rules.
Sources consulted
Gonzales family GEDCOM, “GONZALES-DE LEON-ROSALES-PETALAN-VELEZ FAMILY TREE,” exported from MyHeritage Family Tree Builder on 12 August 2026. Primary source for relationship hypotheses, not independent proof of every event.
Municipal History, Municipality of Mariveles. Official source confirming Esteban Gonzales's 1908 to 1909 administration and the early classroom construction, and providing the municipal historical roster.
File: Esteban Gonzales.jpg, Wikimedia Commons. Public description identifying Esteban as a revolutionary, public servant, and municipal president. Useful lead, but not a substitute for the record on which the description was based.
The Story of the De Leon Clan, Barangay San Carlos and Its Founders. Local-history and family account concerning Agatona, Esteban, Melchor, the De Leon line, and Carlos Lara Sarreal. Treated as testimony requiring archival corroboration.
TV Patrol profile of Pocholo De Leon Gonzales, ABS-CBN News. Independent media recognition of the VoiceMaster and his character-voice work.
We asked an AI chatbot modeled after Rizal, ABS-CBN News. Independent report on Conversations with Rizal and Pocholo Gonzales's role.
New website makes it possible to talk to Dr. Jose Rizal, ABS-CBN News. Additional independent report on the Rizal AI project.
“Makabagong pluma”: Jose Rizal takes center stage in AI animation, ABS-CBN News. Independent report on the later Rizal AI animation project.
Pocholo Gonzales professional profile, Voice123. Career account covering early radio, education, voice work, and the founding of CreatiVoices. Biographical source, to be cross-checked with institutional records where needed.
Books by the VoiceMaster. Author source for the National Book Award recognition of Gusto Kong Maging Voice Talent.
Final assessment
The best-supported genealogical-historical conclusion is this: Pocholo De Leon Gonzales descends directly from Esteban Gonzales, a documented municipal leader associated with the early development of public education in Mariveles. His wider family tree preserves a powerful revolutionary tradition centered on Agatona “Cabesang Tonang” De Leon and connects him to several generations of Mariveles public life. His own career extended that inheritance into voice education, cultural entrepreneurship, broadcasting, authorship, artificial intelligence, and local historical preservation.
The revolutionary details are promising but not yet fully proven. They should be researched, not repeated as settled fact. The documented story is already important enough: a Mariveles family tradition of service and education found a modern continuation in a man who made it his life's work to help Filipinos find, train, protect, and amplify their voices.
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