Ang Bayan at Mga Anak ng Bayan Bilang Pamilya: Ang Patuloy na Katuturan ni Tandang Sora sa Kasalukuyang Panahon

Abstract

Long after her death and as we mark the 200th birth anniversary of Melchora Aquino, the "Mother of the Philippine Revolution," her life and sacrifices for the country remain relevant. Tandang Sora was already 84 years old at the outbreak of the 1896 Revolution to end the Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. Her home and her farm became the sanctuary for members of the Katipunan, the organization that initiated the revolution. She fed the revolutionaries, ministered to the sick and considered them as her own children. She was captured and imprisoned and was exiled to Guam. When she finally returned to the country in 1902 at the age of 91, she refused the offer of a pension by the American colonial government. She reportedly said her participation in the revolution was never for personal benefit. Tandang Sora remains alive because of her love of country, her courage and her sacrifices. Her immortality is not just reflected on the presence of monuments in her honor or streets and buildings named after her; she is immortal as a model for Filipino women who love this country and who continue to struggle for independence and democracy especially those women who, like Tandang Sora, are of an age that should merit them retirement. There are those who say that Tandang Sora was unable to free herself from the stereotypical role of women as responsible for reproductive work - cooking and feeding members of the family and treating the sick. This trivialization of Tandang Sora's contribution to the revolution is blind to the essential difference that her so-called reproductive work was in the public domain. She did not confine her definition of family to blood relatives but expanded it to include those who are bound together by the common objective of gaining independence from Spain. This is the heroism of Tandang Sora - her embrace of the children of the revolution as her own children and her embrace of the nation as her own home.