Mothers in our history
Protecting a child or any living creature, one’s own or not, is natural for mothers – humans or animals – but condoning a grave mistake, say killing human beings out of rage, is a different matter altogether.
This blog tries to piece together how mothers in the Philippines reacted to their son’s predicament (for it is usually sons who got caught in the quagmire of these controversial issues of rage, killing and fleeing) as they tried to protect their sons from harm.
Trinidad Famy, Emilio Aguinaldo’s mother, was in the convento where the revolutionaries hold office when General Antonio Luna was killed by her son’s men in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija that tragic afternoon of 5 June 1899.
Seeing Luna bleed profusely from more than 30 wounds from bolo hacks and gun bullets, she was described in the book The Rise and Fall of Antonio Luna by Vivencio Jose as shouting: “Why did you kill the general? Don’t you recognize him? You are all bad men!”
The book says Aguinaldo’s mother showed her head from a window of the convento after the mayhem and shouted those words showing her innocence and compassion to the general.
However, another witness, continues Jose, reported that Aguinaldo’s mother blurted out another statement: “Well, does he still move?” insinuating that she knows about the plan to kill Luna while her son she endearingly called Miniong was apparently not in the scene of the crime.
Fast forwarding the incident to the much talked about Jason Aguilar Ivler road rage after a traffic altercation where Presidential Adviser for Resettlement Nestor Ponce was killed in 2004 and Malacanang official son Renato Ebarle Jr. in 2009 that also brought the Filipino-American’s mother to the limelight for allegedly “covering up her son,” an ordinary mortal would think that a mother’s love can defy everything – any human law or even the universal dictum of “Thou shall not do unto others what you do not want to be done unto you” by whatever faith one may have.
Whether Aguinaldo plotted Luna’s death or not, same thing that he allegedly ordered Andres Bonifacio’s death or not, the Filipino public are still discussing it as historians have been debating on its veracity since 110 years ago.
Here is a piece of unsolicited advice to Marlene Aguilar: Stop talking about Jason’s having thousands of friends on his Facebook account, or his being “the most beautiful human being” even comparing him to your other children (it is unfair to them), or you and your son being “geniuses.”
The more she tries to be credible purportedly to save her son, the more she lose it.
The Filipino public could always discern when a mother’s love can breathe life or can kill a son to oblivion. History has proven it many times over.
Have you ever wondered why Aguinaldo lost in the 1935 presidential elections? Or why he had only one monument around the country that stands, where else, but in his home province Cavite?
