Katipuneras and other heroines

Katipuneras and other heroines


Posted 00:19am (Mla time) Mar 09, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 9, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I WAS going through a textbook used for a Grade I Sibika at Kultura (Civics and Culture) course and found, on a page discussing national heroes, drawings of Apolinario Mabini, Andres Bonifacio, Jose Rizal and an elderly woman, presumably Tandang Sora. That's three heroes and one heroine. No wonder we tend to associate the word "bayani" [hero] with men.

It's not just the textbooks that seem to have forgotten our heroines. Just look at the names of our schools, hospitals, streets, cities and towns, and we again see how men (including quite a few scoundrels) tend to be commemorated more often than women. I realized I didn't know too many of our heroines either, so I did some research and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was enough material to help me write several columns. (MSC Communications Technologies' "Centennial" site on the Internet was particularly useful for information on women and the Katipunan.)

Rising from their knees

For this year's women's month commemorations, I picked out a few heroines who stand out. Today I'll focus on heroines from the war against Spain and the United States. (On Friday, I'll write about more recent times, through the American and Japanese occupation, into the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship.) I also thought I'd give more space to the less known heroines. I'm not going to use subheadings today and will instead do a chronological listing of some of these important bayani.

I'd like to start off with the Women of Malolos, the 20 Chinese “mestiza” [mixed-blood] women who dared, in 1888, to petition Spanish Governor-General Weyler for permission to open a night school so they could study Spanish, something unthinkable at that time. Their parish priest objected so the governor-general turned down their petition, but the women persisted and finally got their way. For more information about these gutsy Bulakeñas, get Nick Tiongson's "Women of Malolos," published by the Ateneo de Manila University press.

Jose Rizal heard about these young audacious women and wrote, in 1889, a letter "To the Young Women of Malolos." Rizal's piece has many passages that are worth revisiting. One should set the tone for our discussion of Filipina heroines: "You know that the will of God is different from that of the priest; that religiousness does not consist of long periods spent on your knees, nor in endless prayers, big “rosaries” [rosaries], and grimy “scapularios” [scapulars], but in a spotless conduct, firm intention and upright judgment."

Katipuneras

We move on to the rebellion against Spain. We forget that there were many other women who helped the Katipunan and got involved in all kinds of subversive activities from gun-running to bearing arms themselves, with some of them even reaching the rank of general. Few people know, for example, of Trinidad Teczon, who led a raid on a courthouse in Kalookan to seize firearms for the rebels.

Not all of the heroism consisted of fighting in battlefields. Many women converted their homes into safe havens for rebels on the run. Some wealthy Filipinas also converted their homes into hospitals for the sick and the wounded.

Tandang Sora is perhaps the best-known woman rebel, with one of Quezon City's main thoroughfares now named after her. Yet, many Filipinos would be hard pressed to remember her real name: Melchora Aquino. Although already in her 80s when Filipinos rose against Spain, she helped the rebels for which she was eventually arrested and exiled to Guam. She returned to the Philippines in 1903 and lived to the ripe old age of 107. (Patriotism doesn't always mean martyrdom. Many of the Katipuneras seemed to have lived to ripe old ages, although I suspect there were also many unsung heroines, unsung because they died during the Revolution or during the Filipino-American War.)

We know all too little about Rosa Sevilla, one of two women staffers of La Independencia, the newspaper of the Philippine revolutionary movement. She later founded Instituto de Mujeres, the first Filipino school to offer all levels of education up to college.

Then there was Patrocinia Gamboa of Jaro, Iloilo, mainly remembered for smuggling a flag to be used for the inauguration of a revolutionary government. She was literally wearing the flag, which would have been uncovered at a Spanish checkpoint if she hadn't thought of a ploy. When they reached the checkpoint, she staged a fight with her escort, a young rebel lieutenant, taking on the role of a spiteful wife, "pinching, biting and boxing" according to one account. Distracted and amused, the Spanish soldiers let them through.

Fighting the Kano

Because the Americans took over the Philippines from Spain, there's an overlap between the heroines of the Katipunan and that of the Filipino-American War, as rebels continued their struggle against two colonizing powers. An example was Agueda Kabagan, who fought alongside Generals Miguel Malvar and Artemio Ricarte against Spain but refused to give up when the Americans invaded.

We also have Teresa Magbanua, the first woman general in the Visayas. She is described as an excellent horserider and a sharpshooter and led troops in the Battle of Barrio Yoting in Capiz. She also joined the resistance against the Americans. It's curious how one article about Magbanua described her as a "tomboy" who climbed trees and rode horses. This is the type of biographical detail that needs to be picked up. Our heroines had childhoods, too, and probably had rather turbulent lives in their youth, not quite fitting into prescribed social molds.

The history books are largely silent about women resisting the Americans, but some do mention Clemencia Lopez of Batangas, who waged war by entering the belly of the whale. In 1902, following the arrest of her three brothers in the Philippines, she went to the United States to appeal for their release. There she began to speak and write about the brutality of the US "counterinsurgency" campaign in the Philippines and the Filipinos' quest for independence, her eloquence belying claims that the Filipinos were "savages" that needed to be civilized.

One of her speeches, "Women of the Philippines," delivered to the New England Woman Suffrage Association on May 29, 1902, is a gem. She describes how political our women could be and explained why liberty meant as much to Filipinos as it did to Americans.

Lopez's speech is part of a collection of audio recordings, "Twenty Speeches that Moved a Nation," produced by Platypus. Lopez's piece is read out by Tessie Tomas. Do note that of the 20 speeches in the anthology, Lopez's is the only one written by a Filipina.