<div class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-16/saturnina-rizal.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Saturnina "Neneng" Rizal Mercado de Hidalgo" />
<div>
(Saturnina "Neneng" Rizal Mercado de Hidalgo)
</div>
</div>
<p>
Neneng married Manuel T. Hidalgo, a well-to-do native of Tanauan, Batangas, on November 3, 1881 in Calamba, Laguna. 
</p>
<p>
Being the eldest sister of Jose, Neneng was truly a big sister. She diligently reported daily events and happenings in Calamba and told stories in vivid detail about the Rizal family, when Jose was overseas. During Rizal's hardships abroad, Saturnina sent him a diamond ring to help him with his finances.
</p>
<p>
Neneng, along with her mother and eight sisters, shared health concerns and sought medical advice from her brother Jose. While he ultimately chose a different path, the females of the family encouraged Rizal in the direction of gynecology and obstetrics because of the high rates of maternal death and sickness from various women's diseases the country experienced at the time. In one letter, she wrote:
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"I am sending you news that I now have two children, the eldest is Alfredo, next is Adela, and now I am eight months pregnant. Study well how you may be of assistance to our situation, certainly with so many of us there will always be someone suffering the hardships of this sickness."
</p>
</div>
<p>
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.
</p>


<p>
In 1890, she initially begged her brother, Jose, 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: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"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."
</p>
</div>
<p>
In 1909, Hidalgo published the first Tagalog/Filipino translation, by <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1663/today-in-philippine-history-may-17-1857-pascual-poblete-was-born-in-naic-cavite" class="news_link">Pascual H. Poblete</a>,  of her brother's revolutionary novel Noli Me Tangere, thus ensuring Rizal's words became accessible, beyond elite Spanish-speaking circles, to the common Filipino.
</p>
<p>
She died on September 14, 1913 in Manila.  
</p>


June 4, 1850: Saturnina Rizal, the eldest sister of Jose Rizal, was born in Calamba, Laguna