Tandang Sora was not 107 years old

The first week of 2026 has passed, and I have yet to buy (or receive from my favorite publisher) a physical planner. I use a big desk calendar that shows me the month at a glance. I also use Google Calendar, but I resist shifting from physical to digital. Wall and desk calendars, like wristwatches, are slowly being replaced by apps on our smartphones.

I remember two types of calendars from my childhood. On the kitchen wall was a big printed one, with the dates in blue boxes on a white background; it had phases of the moon, too. The other calendar was glossy with scantily clad women holding alcoholic drinks; this one was for the drivers, who hung them in the garage out of my mother’s sight. The kitchen calendar had the names of saints for each day, when, in another time, parents or priests picked out the names of infants brought in for baptism. This explains why in my research on the Spanish colonial period, people carried saints’ names straight out of the calendar: Andres Bonifacio was born on Nov. 30, the Feast of St. Andrew, and Jose Rizal’s second name, Protacio, was the saint for June 19.

Old names for girls picked out of the calendar, like Concepcion (Dec. 8), Asuncion (Aug. 15), or Natividad (Dec. 25), are not really names but church feasts: Concepcion for the Immaculate Conception, Asuncion for the Assumption, and Natividad for the Nativity or Christmas Day. A friend once told me she overheard a mother scolding her daughters in the jeep, “Hoy! Christmas, Bigyan mo ng kendi si Valentine!” That is not half as funny as a friend of my grandfather who was born on Jan. 1, the feast of the Lord’s circumcision. Her name was Circumcision Garcia, and according to my aunts, she was known as “Apung Tuli.”

Melchora Aquino Ramos, better known as “Tandang Sora,” was commemorated in Quezon City last Jan. 6, the former Feast of the Three Kings, which is a big Spanish holiday where children receive a second round of Christmas gifts from the Three Kings, not Santa Claus. The Jan. 6 Feast of the Three Kings has now been forgotten because it is now known as the Feast of the Epiphany, set on a Sunday between Jan. 2 and 8. If it were in the calendar, Tandang Sora could have been named “Epifania,” instead her parents chose one from the names of the Three Kings: Gaspar, Melchor, and Baltazar. Tandang Sora could have been Baltazara, Gaspara, or even Gasparilla (little Gaspar). Someone commented on my Facebook post on this that he knew someone born on Jan. 6 named “Melgabar” for Melchor-Gaspar-Baltazar. That’s just like the former vice president’s name, Jejomar, for Jesus, Jose, and Maria.

Tandang Sora goes by many titles. Historian Gregorio Zaide dubbed her the “Grand Old Woman of the Revolution.” In other sources, she is called the “Mother of Balintawak,” later tweaked into “Grandmother of Balintawak.” The bare bones of her story are that she was born on Jan. 6, 1812, in a part of present-day Quezon City, once known as Gulod ng Banilad, described by Zaide as “a barrio of Caloocan in the hills of Balintawak.” She married Fulgencio Ramos and bore six children: Juan, Simon, Estefania, Saturnina, Romualdo, and Juana.

Her heroism was not one of fighting in battle, but rather through quiet support of the revolution by feeding the Katipuneros. Zaide adds that she allowed her house to be a “secret meeting place” for the patriots. According to Teodoro Agoncillo, on Aug. 23, 1896, a thousand Katipuneros gathered in the yard of Juan A. Ramos and were fed by his mother, Tandang Sora. Bonifacio advised Tandang Sora to flee to Novaliches, but she was captured by the Guardia Civil in Pasong Putik on Aug. 29, 1896, and deported to Guam on Sept. 2. She returned to the Philippines on board the American vessel “Uranus” on Feb. 26, 1903, and returned to Banilad where she died on March 2, 1919 at the age of 107. Her remains are interred in the Tandang Sora Shrine in Quezon City.

Women are often absent in a history dominated by men and written by men. Not much has been added to what we know of Tandang Sora because archival sources are lean, or perhaps have not been discovered. Jim Richardson, the eminent historian of the Katipunan, in a recent Facebook post, revealed that Tandang Sora was not born in 1812 but much later, probably in 1836. Richardson notes that her eldest child was born in 1855, the youngest in 1873, so “if it were true that Melchora Aquino was born in 1812, as official history says, she would have conceived her first child at the age of 42, and her last at 61. That pattern of child-bearing has not been recorded anywhere ever.”

Richardson also blasts the embellishment of Tandang Sora, not only feeding the Katipuneros but nursing their wounds, because there were no battles fought between Aug. 24 and Aug. 26, 1896. So much for official history, Richardson notes correctly that Tandang Sora’s “heroism does not need to be gilded with legend.” Tandang Sora was once used as an image model for sanitary napkins! She isn’t as old as we want her to be; she died in her late 60s, not 107.

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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net