Sultan Kudarat

Most venerated of national heroes. Oculist, writer, painter, born in 1861 to well-to-do family, educated in Spain. His polemical novel Noli Me Tangere was Filipino equivalent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, stimulated opposition to Spanish rule. Though championed assimilation with Spain, convicted of treason in 1896, and executed. (In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines - Stanley Karnow)