Mothers Of Revolution And Liberty

Call them by their maiden names.

- LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL

Mother's Day is a thoroughly American concept — but when one thinks of the United States' most famous moms, from Michelle Obama to Barbara Bush, or even Jackie Kennedy, all these ladies were known by their husbands' last names. By both Spanish custom and Catholic circumstance, Filipino wives stayed true to the names they were born with; and as a result, the mothers of the Philippine Revolution and our very liberty are remembered to this day by their own names.

Leading the list is, of course, Teodora Alonso, mother to the country's most beloved hero and 10 of his siblings. Jose Rizal was her seventh child. Teodora bore him when she was 34, and in those days, well past her middle age. She was the guiding light of Rizal's life, weaning him on tales that would shape his character and no doubt made him a better man. Her sufferings and imprisonment would be seared into Rizal's young heart and taught him at an early age the meaning of justice withheld.

Teodora would be the steadfast caretaker of his bones until they were taken for proper burial in the Luneta. Rizal's sisters, Josefina and Trinidad, would also take up the fight for freedom and not shirk from taking the Rizal name. There are records of their presence (along with their older brother Paciano) at the Tejeros Convention, when the torch would be passed from Bonifacio to Aguinaldo. The Rizal sisters, as were their husbands, would be persecuted for being faithful to that name.