Saturnina Hidalgo


Saturnina Rizal Mercado de Hidalgo, or simply Saturnina Hidalgo, was the eldest sister of Philippine national hero José Rizal. She was married to Manuel T. Hidalgo, a native and one of the richest persons in Tanauan, Batangas. She was known as Neneng.
While, in 1890, she initially begged her brother, José, to remedy the political situation in which her husband, whom she called Maneng, became deported to Bohol for his alliance with Rizal, a letter from later that year revealed her change of heart. When her husband was sent into exile a second time, this time to Mindoro, she assured Rizal she had refrained from crying. She wrote: "I have been inured to the pain of separation, especially when I consider that all this cruelty and misfortune will be for the good of all. My faith has become stronger because of everything you told me."
An article documenting the emergence of Western medicine in the Philippines and healthcare consumption among wealthy Filipinas around the turn of the 20th century discussed gynecologist Felipe Zamora's diagnosis that Hidalgo possessed a "swollen, out of place, and dirty" uterus.
In 1909, Hidalgo published the first Tagalog/Filipino translation of her brother's revolutionary novel Noli Me Tángere, thus ensuring Rizal's words became accessible, beyond elite Spanish-speaking circles, to the common Filipino.
She died on September 14, 1913.

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