By Severino Samonte/PNA
MANILA — Residents and officials of Barangay Tandang Sora in Novaliches District, Quezon City will celebrate on Sunday the 207th birth anniversary of the revolutionary heroine, Melchora Aquino or better known as Tandang Sora — the Mother of the 1896 Revolution.
The center of the celebration will be at the heroine’s shrine in her birthplace along Banlat Road in Barangay Tandang Sora, about a kilometer away from the Himlayang Pilipino Memorial Park in neighboring Pasong Tamo.
Jacinto Francisco Jr., a great, great grandson of the heroine and former caretaker of the shrine, told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) that the celebration will be highlighted by floral offerings to be led by QC Vice Mayor Joy G. Belmonte. She will be assisted by QC District 6 Rep. Christopher “Kit” Belmonte and the district’s six city councilors.
Francisco said the celebration coincides with the annual fiesta of Barangay Tandang Sora, which has a population of 90,290 as of the 2015 national census.
History shows that Melchora Aquino was born on Jan. 6, 1812. Although she was already 84 years old when the revolution against Spain broke out in August 1896, she joined the movement and was called Mother of the Katipuneros or revolutionaries led by Gat Andres Bonifacio. She offered food to Bonifacio’s men and treated the wounded and sick ones.
Despite her age, she used to go as far as Barrio Binugsok in Novaliches, about 6 km. away from her home, to treat the wounded and the sick Katipuneros under the shade of a large duhat tree in the area.
That tree has been marked and renamed the “Katipunan Tree” to perpetuate the memory of Bonifacio and his men.
When the Spanish authorities learned about her activities, a hunt for her was ordered. She was arrested subsequently in a relative’s house in the then barrio of Pasong Putik in Novaliches.
After being incarcerated at the old jail in Manila, she was exiled to the Marianas islands in Guam.
During the American regime, Tandang Sora was allowed to return to the Philippines on Feb. 26, 1903. She died at the age of 107 in 1919 and was buried at the Mausoleum of the Veterans of the Revolution at the Manila North Cemetery.
On Jan. 6, 1970, on the occasion of her 158th birthday and 51 years after death, her remains were transferred to her shrine at the Himlayang Pilipino Memorial Park in Pasong Tamo, Novaliches.
Another transfer of the heroine’s remains was made on Jan. 6, 2012, her 200th birth anniversary. This time, her final resting place was where she was born in 1812.
