Vicente Gregorio Lava was born on December 24, 1894, in Bulakan, Philippines, at the end of the Spanish colonial period. He was the eldest child of Adeodato and Maria (Baltazar) Lava. Four years after he was born, the Spanish were driven out of the Philippines, followed by the American suppression of an independence movement in 1901 and the beginning of American neocolonialism in the islands.