General Macario Sakay y de Leon was born on Mar. 1, 1878, along Tabora Street in Tondo, Manila. and died 114 years ago today on Sept. 13, 1907, at age 29. He first worked as an apprentice in a kalesa (carriage) manufacturing shop. He was also a tailor, a barber, and a stage actor.

Sakay grew up in Tondo, where he had gotton to know Andres Bonifacio. Joining the Katipunan in 1894, Sakay acted in popular Tagalog verse dramas, which were staged in different neighborhoods in Manila, thus providing the perfect cover for the young Katipunero to move about. He fought alongside Bonifacio as a Filipino general in the 1896 Philippine Revolution against Spain. In 1899, he continued the struggle for Philippine independence against the United States.

The Philippine-American War, also called the Philippine Insurrection by the United States, was a war fought from 1899 to 1902 by forces of…