Information AboutJose Rizal |
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Dr. José Protacio Mercado Rizal y Alonzo Realonda ( June 19 , 1861 – December 30 , 1896 ), variously called the "Pride of the Malay Race," "The Great Malayan," "The First Filipino," "The Messiah of the Revolution," "The Universal Hero," "The Messiah of the Redemption," was an eye surgeon and is the national hero of the Philippines . Rizal was a Polyglot . He had mastered 23 languages, which included Arabic , Dutch , Swedish , Russian , Portuguese , Catalán , Chinese , English , French , German , Greek , Hebrew , Japanese , Latin , Malay , Italian , Sanskrit , Chavacano , Spanish , Tagalog , Cebuano , Ilocano , and Subanun . He was a Poet . As a Polymath , he was also an Architect , Artist , Educator , Economist , Ethnologist , scientific Farm er, Historian , Inventor , Journalist , Music ian, Myth ologist, Internationalist , Naturalist , Novel ist, Ophthalmologist , Physician , Propagandist , Sculptor , and Sociologist . A Patriot of the highest order, the anniversary of Rizal's death, December 30 , is now celebrated as a Holiday In The Philippines , called Rizal Day. FAMILY José Rizal was born into a prosperous middle class Chinese-mestizo family in the town of Calamba in the Province of Laguna . His parents were Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonzo. He was the seventh child of their eleven children. Dominican friar landlords granted the family the privilege of the Lease of a Hacienda and an accompanying rice farm, but contentious litigation followed the friars' attempts to raise tenant rental fees, which the farmers, led by Rizal, disputed while exposing the non-payment of taxes due on friar land taken over by the Dominicans from the Jesuits after their expulsion; later, General Valeriano Weyler had the buildings on the farm torn down. Upon enrolling at the Ateneo, Rizal changed his surname to "Rizal" to escape the infamy of the name "Mercado"--his brother, Paciano, had been linked to the Filipino priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos And Jacinto Zamora who had been declared subversives, suffering horrible death by "garrote". Rizal was descended from Domingo Lam-co, a Chinese immigrant who sailed to the Philippines from Amoy , China in the mid 17th century (see Chinese Filipino ). Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley native of Luzon. To free his descendants from the anti-Chinese animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the family surname to the Spanish surname "Mercado" (''market'') to indicate their Chinese merchant roots, although their original application was for the name Ricial, apropos their main occupation of farming, which was arbitrarily denied. The name Rizal, originally Ricial, or the green of young growth, was adopted as an alias with Paciano to enable Jose to travel freely, as the Mercados had gained notoriety by their son's intellectual prominence. It is to be noted that Rizal was from early childhood already advancing unheard of political ideas of freedom and individual rights which to the authorities must have been infuriating. Aside from his indigenous Malay and Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that José had traces of Spanish , Japanese and Negrito ancestry. His maternal great-great-grandfather (Teodora's great-grandfather) was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, who married a Filipina named Benigna (surname unknown). These two gave birth to Regina Ursua who married a Sangley mestizo from Pangasinán named Atty. Manuel de Quintos, Teodora's grandfather. Their daughter Brígida de Quintos married a mestizo (half-caste Spaniard) named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo, the father of Teodora. Austin Craig mentions Lacandula, Rajah of Tondo at the time of the Spanish incursion, also as an ancestor. EDUCATION Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna . He went to Manila to study at the Ateneo Municipal De Manila where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1877 and graduated at the top of the class. He continued his education in the Ateneo Municipal to obtain a degree in land surveying and assessor, and at the same time in the University Of Santo Tomas where he studied Philosophy and Letters. Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he then decided to study medicine ( Ophthalmology ) in the University of Santo Tomas, but did not complete it because he felt that Filipinos were being discriminated by the Dominicans who operated the University. Without his family's knowledge and consent, but wholly and secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Madrid and studied medicine at the Universidad Central De Madrid where he earned the degree, ''Licentiate in Medicine''. His education continued at the University Of Paris and the University Of Heidelberg where he earned a second doctorate. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow . Following custom, he delivered a learned address in German before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language, a shining moment in the relations between East and West. Ten years later, the society met to honor him in death with a reading of a German translation of his farewell poem. He left Heidelberg a poem, "A las flores del Heidelberg," which was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare of his native land, but which presaged the unification of common culture and common values, of a melding of East and West, the hoped-for relations between peoples, the relations of today. WRITINGS José Rizal's most famous works were his two novels, '' Noli Me Tangere '' and '' El Filibusterismo '', social commentaries on the Philippines under Spanish colonial rule. These books, inspired by the ideals in '' Cervantes '', '' Uncle Tom's Cabin '', '' Don Quixote '' and '' The Count Of Monte Cristo '', angered both the Spaniards and the Hispanicized Filipinos, due to the blatant and insulting symbolism in the books. Rizal's first critic was Ferdinand Blumentritt, the sympathetic Philippine Expert, a Researcher and Scholar, whose first reaction was of grave misgiving. The longest and most arduous argument for the truth contained in his novels was with the Austrian, whose mother was the daughter of Andreas Schneider, Imperial Treasurer at Vienna, an orthodox and far advanced thinker in defense of the Catholic Faith. But this did not dissuade him from writing the preface of 'El Filibusterismo,' after he had translated 'Noli me Tangere' into German. As Blumentritt had warned, these led to Rizal's prosecution as the inciter of revolution and, eventually, to a military trial and execution. The intended consequence, of teaching the natives where they stood, brought about the obverse reaction, as the Philippine Revolution of 1896 took off virulently thereafter. Rizal's trial was regarded a travesty even by the prominent Spaniards of his day. Soon after his execution, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, in an impassioned and unforgettable utterance, recognized Rizal as a Spaniard, raised in the best traditions of the country, "...more Spanish than those poor wretches who, over his still warm body, hurled like an insult heavenward that blasphemous cry, 'Viva Espana'." Even in death, Rizal's words inspired. When the Philippine Organic Act was being debated in the U.S. Congress, doubts about the capacity of Filipinos for self-government were swept by a passionate speech by Congressman Henry Cooper of Wisconsin in which he recited an English translation of the valedictory poem "ultimo adios," and capped by a stirring peroration, "Under what clime or what skies has tyranny claimed a nobler victim?" COURAGE After writing ''Noli me Tangere,'' among the numerous other poems, plays and tracts he had already written, he gained further notoriety with the Spaniards. Against the advice of his family and friends, he came back to the Philippines to aid his family, which was having trouble with the Dominican landlords. He led the townspeople of Calamba to speak out against the friar attempts to raise rent, initiating a litigation which, although backed by overwhelming evidence of tax evasion, only roused their vindictiveness. In retaliation, the Dominicans persecuted the Calamba farmers even more, going so far as to evict them from their homes for refusing to pay the exorbitant land rental fees. Persecutions and suffering could not break his unified family. Equal courage was displayed by Paciano who was tortured by Spaniards trying to extract evidence of Jose's complicity in the revolution, to bolster accusations before the tribunal. Two officers took turns applying pins under the fingernails; with his hands bound behind him and raised several feet, he was dropped repeatedly till he lost consciousness. Not a word fell from his lips. Wenceslao Retana had slighted Rizal by a careless reference to his parents, and promptly apologized after being challenged to a duel. He survived by issuing an apology, became an admirer, and wrote Rizal's first European biography. Memory as a ten-year old of his mother's unjust treatment at the hands of the civil authorities, doubtless with the knowledge and approval of the church authorities, hurt so much as to explain his reaction to Retana. The incident stemmed from an unfounded accusation that his mother tried to poison the wayward wife of a cousin when she only intervened to help. Without as much as a hearing she was ordered to prison in Santa Cruz and made to walk the ten miles from Calamba. Only after two and a half years of costly appeals to the highest court, the Royal Audiencia, was his mother finally released. Moments before his execution by a firing squad of Filipino native infantry, backed by an insurance force of a squad Spanish infantry, the Spanish surgeon general requested to take his pulse; it was normal. Aware of this, the Spanish sergeant in charge of the backup force hushed his squad to silence when they began raising "vivas" with the partisan crowd. His last words, 'consummatum est', Jesus' own, prefigured in ways that he knew but could not exactly foresee, that his death would be the end of Spain in the Philippines, and she would lose her moral right to rule. He was the best friend Spain had, and she failed to see it. Indeed, the shot that the crowd heard that moment was the shot that brought Spanish Rule in the Philippines to an end. LEGACY Rizal was a reformer for an open society rather than a revolutionary for political independence; he advocated popular representation in effecting institutional reforms by peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. In this sense, he was Asia's first modern non-violent proponent of political reforms. Forerunner of Gandhi and contemporary of Tagore and Sun Yat Sen, all four created a new climate of thought throughout Asia, leading to the attrition of colonialism, sapping the colonial powers' self-confidence, and brooking the emergence of new asiatic nations by the end of World War II. As a leader of the Propaganda Movement of Filipino students in Spain, he contributed newspaper articles to '' La Solidaridad '' in Barcelona with the following agenda:
The colonial authorities in the Philippines did not favor these reforms, even if they were more openly endorsed by Spanish intellectuals like Morayta, Unamuno, Pi y Margal and others. Upon his return to Manila in 1892, he formed a civic movement called La Liga Filipina . This league advocated these moderate social reforms through legal means, but was disbanded by the governor. At that time, he had already been declared an enemy of the state by the Spanish authorities because of his incendiary novels. ''Noli me Tangere'', in particular, had portrayed the friars in a very bad light, with little or no hope of redemption. As a political reformer, he is the peer of Gandhi, Tagore and Sun Yat Sen as pioneers who remoulded thinking on the Asian continent, but as modernist who accepted the best that European civilization could offer he transcends both nation and continent, a far-seeing visionary with a relevant message for our time. LAST DAYS Rizal was implicated in the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July of 1892 was deported to Dapitan in the province of Zamboanga (in Mindanao). There he built a school and a hospital. In addition he designed a water supply system for the population. He met and courted the step-daughter of a patient, an Irishwoman named Josephine Bracken , but he was unable to obtain an eclesiastical marriage because he would not return to the religion of his youth and was not known to be clearly against revolution. But he considered Josephine to be his wife, with a special place in his heart to the end, the only person mentioned in the poem, "Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy..." To dissociate himself from a bloody revolution Rizal volunteered and was given leave by the Spanish Governor General Ramon Blanco y Erenas, who later was to present his sash and sword to the Rizal family as an apology, to serve in Cuba to minister to victims of Yellow Fever . By 1896, the rebellion fomented by the Katipunan , a Nationalist secret society, had become a full blown revolution, proving to be a truly nationalist uprising and leading to the proclamation of the first truly democratic republic in Asia. Rizal was arrested en route, imprisoned in Barcelona, and made to stand trial. He was implicated in the revolution through his association with members of the Katipunan and was to be tried before a court-martial for Rebellion , Sedition , and Conspiracy . During the entire passage, he was unchained and had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. It was a signal emblem of his character that no Spaniard ever laid a hand on him. Rizal was convicted of all three charges and sentenced to Death . The level-headed Governor General Blanco had been forced out of office, and the willful friars had 'intercalated' Polavieja in his stead, sealing Rizal's fate. With his execution nearing, Rizal wrote his last poem, which, though untitled, eventually came to be known as "'' Mi Último Adiós ''" (''My Last Farewell''). The poem is more aptly titled, "Adios, Patria Adorada" (literally "Farewell, Beloved Country"), by virtue of logic and literary tradition: the words come from the first line of the poem itself. Written during the early hours before his execution, in his fine handwriting in two small pieces of paper, it was hidden in an alcohol burner and handed to his family with his few remaining possessions, including the final letters and his last bequests. Within hearing of the Spanish guards, he said in English, "there is something inside," to emphasize the poem's importance. In his final letter, of a voluminous exchange unparalleled in Asian letters, to the Sudeten-German Professor Fernando Blumentritt - ''My dear Brother, when you receive this letter, I shall be dead by then. Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion...'' He had to reassure him that he had not turned revolutionary as he once considered being, that the ideals they both had fought for were his to the very end. He also bequeathed a book personally bound by him in Dapitan to his 'best and dearest friend.' When the Austrian received it he broke down and wept. After Rizal's execution, doubts about the account of the events surrounding his death surfaced. Many continue to believe that Rizal neither married his sweetheart Josephine Bracken in Roman Catholic rites hours before his execution nor ever retracted those parts of his writings that were anti-Roman Catholic, a controversy which has not abated, with the Church still locked, as it were, trying to defend the marriage and retraction, but with decreasing vigor. Rizal's prescience would be his own defense after life. Tucked in 'Adios' is a revealing clue, "I go where there are no slaves, no hangmen or oppressors, where faith does not kill..." It was his final comment on the Catholic Church of his day, when precious few of its colonial missionaries were at all men of character and probity, men of the cloth who were the real rulers and the real government, in effect a Frailocracy, whose ire demanded his martyrdom. Much of the Church's case rests on priestly claims of a signed retraction, a copy of which could not even be produced and shown to the Rizal family despite their repeated requests. Rizal was all too wary of friar duplicity, hence the importance he gave to his poem. Jose Rizal stands among a few who belong to no particular epoch, whose lives have a universal message. Although his field of action lay in politics which he bore in the cause of duty--rendering him a rarity in human affairs, a leader without ambition and a revolutionary without hatred--his real interests lay in the arts and sciences, in literature and in his profession as an ophthalmologist. Few people have had a leader who so entirely gave of himself as he did, and who asked so little for himself. A statue now stands at the place where he fell, designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling of the famed "William Tell" sculpture. The statue carries the inscription "I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him". SEE ALSO
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