My Favorite Filipino Hero (For May 3, 2016)

ANDRES BONIFACIO

  

        I choose Andres Bonifacio as my favorite Filipino Hero because the way he fought for our freedom under Spanish Colonization.

      Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro (November 30, 1863 – May 10, 1897) was a Filipino nationalist, revolutionary leader, and the first president of the Philippine archipelago which he preferred naming "Bansa ng Katagalugan" or Tagalog Republic instead of Philippines due to its origin was derived from the Spaniards. He is often called "the Father of the Philippine Revolution and Filipino Nation". He was a founder and later Supremo ("supreme leader") of the Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan or simply and more popularly called Katipunan, a movement which sought the independence of the Philippines from Spanish colonial rule and started the Philippine Revolution. He is considered a de facto national hero of the Philippines, and is also considered by some Filipino historians to be the first President of the Philippines (through the revolutionary government he established), but officially he is not recognized as such.

      Andrés Bonifacio was born in Tondo, Manila, the son of Santiago Bonifacio, a native of Taguig, and Catalina de Castro, a native of Iba, Zambales. He was the eldest of six children. His siblings were Ciriaco, Procopio, Troadio, Esperidiona and Maxima. His father was a tailor who served in the colonial government as a teniente mayor of Tondo, Manila, while his mother was a supervisor at a cigarette factory in Manila and was a mestiza born of a Spanish father and a Filipino-Chinese mother. As was custom, upon baptism he was named for the saint on whose feast he was born, Andrew the Apostle.