JOSE PROTASIO RIZAL MERCADO y ALONSO REALONDA
by Anton Antonio
June 19, 2015
154 years ago today, Jose Rizal, our National Hero, was
born. Doing a research on Jose Rizal is
like jumping into a lake without sinking simply because the lake is full of
information… there’s just too much information about the man in the Internet. Luckily, I surfed on a link (
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/profilesofasianleaders/p/joserizalbio.htm)
that seems to have some lesser-known information about the man together with important
and significant events and accomplishments in his life…
Jose Rizal was a man of incredible intellectual power, with
amazing artistic talent as well. He
excelled at anything the he puts his mind to --- medicine, poetry, sketching,
architecture, sociology… the list seems nearly endless. Thus, Rizal’s martyrdom by the Spanish
colonial authorities while he was still quite young was a huge loss to the
Philippines, and to the world at large.
Today, the people of the Philippines honor him as their national hero.
EARLY LIFE: On June
19, 1861, Francisco Rizal Mercado and Teodora Alonzo welcomed their seventh
child into the world at Calamba, Laguna.
They named the boy Josw Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda. The Mercado family were wealthy farmers who
rented land from the Dominican religious order.
Descendants of a Chinese immigrant named Domingo Lam-co, they changed
their name to Mercado (“market”) under pressure of anti-Chinese feeling amongst
the Spanish colonizers. From an early
age, Jose Rizal Mercado showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at 3,
and could read and write at age 5.
EDUCATION: Jose Rizal
Mercado attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, graduating at the age of 16
with highest honors. He took a
post-graduate course there in land surveying.
Rizal Mercado completer his surveyor’s training in 1877, and passed the
licensing exam in May 1878, but could not receive a license to practice because
he was only 17 years old. (He was
granted a license in 1881, when he reached the age of majority.) In 1878, the young man also enrolled in the
University of Santo Tomas as a medical student.
He later quit the school, alleging discrimination against Filipino
students by the Dominican professors.
RIZAL GOES TO MADRID:
In May of 1882, Jose Rizal got on a ship to Spain without informing his
parents of his intentions. He enrolled
at the Universidad Central de Madrid. In
June of 1884, he received his medical degree at the age of 23; the following
year, he also graduated from the Philosophy and Letter department. Inspired by his mother’s advancing blindness,
Rizal next went to the University of Paris and then the University of
Heidelberg to complete further study in the field of ophthalmology. At Heidelberg, he studies under the famed
professor Otto Becker. Rizal finished
his second doctorate at Heidelberg in 1887.
RIZAL’S LIFE IN EUROPE:
Jose Rizal lived in Europe for 10 years.
During that time, he picked up a number of languages; in fact, he could
converse in more than 10 different tongues.
While in Europe, the young Filipino impressed everyone who met him with
his charm, his intelligence, and his mastery of an incredible range of
different fields of study. He excelled
at martial art, fencing, sculpture, painting, teaching, anthropology, and
journalism, among other things. During
his European sojourn, he also began to write novels. Rizal finished his first book, Noli Me
Tangere, while living in Wilhemsfeld with Reverend Karl Ullmer.
NOVELS AND OTHER WORKS:
Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere in Spanish; it wa published in 1887 in
Berlin. The novel is a scathing
indictment of the Catholic Church and Spanish colonial rule in the
Philippines. This book cemented Jose
Rizal on the Spanish colonial government’s list of troublemakers. When Rizal returned home for a visit, he
received a summons from the Governor General, and had to defend himself from
charges of disseminating subversive ideas.
Although the Spanish governor accepted Rizal’s explanations, the Catholic
Church was less willing to forgive. In
1891, Rizal published a sequel, titled El Filibusterismo.
PROGRAM OF REFORMS:
Both in his novels and in newspaper editorials, Jose Rizal called for a
number of reforms of the Spanish colonial system in the Philippines. He advocated freedom of speech and assembly,
equal rights before the law for Filipinos, and Filipino priests in place of the
often-corrupt Spanish churchmen. In
addition, Rizal called for the Philippines to become a province within Spain,
with representation in the Spanish legislature (the Cortes Generales). Rizal never called for independence for the
Philippines. Nonetheless, the colonial
government considered him a dangerous radical, and declared him an enemy of the
state.
EXILE AND COURTSHIP:
In 1892, Rizal returned to the Philippines. He was almost immediately accused of being
involved in the brewing rebellion, and was exiled to Dapitan, on the island of
Mindanao. Rizal would stay there for
four years, teaching school and encouraging agricultural reforms. During that same period, the people of the
Philippines grew more eager to revolt against the Spanish colonial
presence. Inspired in part by Rizal’s
organization, La Liga, rebel leaders like Andres Bonifacio began to press for
military action against the Spanish regime.
In Dapitan, Rizal met and fell in love with Josephine Bracken, who
brought her stepfather to him for a cataract operation. The couple applied for a marriage license,
but were denied by the Church (which had excommunicated Rizal).
TRIAL AND EXECUTION:
The Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896. Rizal denounced the violence, and received
permission to travel to Cuba in order to tend victims of yellow fever in
exchange for his freedom. Bonifacio and
two associates sneaked aboard the ship to Cuba before it left the Philippines,
trying to convince Rizal to escape with them, but Rizal refused. He was arrested by the Spanish on the way,
taken to Barcelona, and then extradited to Manila for trial. Jose Rizal was tried by court martial,
charged with conspiracy, sedition and rebellion. Despite a lack of any evidence of his
complicity in the Revolution, Rizal was convicted on all counts and given the
death sentence. He was allowed to marry
Josephine two hours before his execution by firing squad on December 30, 1896. Jose Rizal was just 35 years old.
JOSE RIZAL’S LEGACY:
Jose Rizal is remembered today throughout the Philippines for his
brilliance, his courage, his peaceful resistance to tyranny, and his
compassion. Filipino school children
study his final literary work, a poem called Mi Ultimo Adios (“My Last
Goodbye”), as well as his two famous novels.
Spurred on by Rizal’s martyrdom, the Philippine Revolution continued
until 1898. With assistance from the
United States, the Philippine archipelago was able to defeat the Spanish
army. The Philippines declared its
independence from Spain on June 12, 1898.
It was the first democratic republic in Asia. Freedom was the legacy left by Jose Protasio
Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda.
