Filipino Braveheart

(Heneral Sakay,third from left-sitting)

On Sept.13,1907 Heneral Sakay was hanged by the american invaders for "insurgency".Does it sound familiar? After 100 years they still call people who fight for independence insurgents.

Anyway,Heneral Sakay is finally given the overdue recogniton he obviously deserves.He gets a monument in his place in Tondo,where he was born.Indeed another feather in the cap of the place where I grew up as well.Tondo the place of heroes. Not just a place of abject poverty and rampant criminality.

Heneral Sakay,for me is our filipino "Braveheart".There is an uncanny similarity of the history that enveloped this heroes life.Take for example the political squabbling in the filipino revolutionarios that time.He was a major part in trying to unify the doomed fight against the american invaders.He's end came like William Wallace's as well.Betrayed by his own people.At the end he refused to be branded as an insurgent but a freedom fighter.Which he actually is!For me and the rest of filipinos who "Know" the real history!History by filipinos and not by anyone else.