Dr. Jose. P Rizal

José Rizal was born into a prosperous middle class Filipino and 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 (namely,

Saturnina, Paciano, Narcisa, Olympia, Lucia, Maria, Jose, Concepcion, Josephina,

Trinidad and Soledad.)

-Ancestry of Dr. Jose P. Rizal-

Francisco Mercado, Rizal's father

Rizal was descended on his father side from

Domingo Lam-co, a Chinese immigrant who sailed

to the Philippines from Amoy, China in the mid-

17th century. 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. 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 which also means "green fields",

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. Rizal was from early childhood

already advancing unheard of political ideas of freedom and individual rights which

infuriated the authorities.

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-

Early Education of Rizal

Rizal learned from his mother the alphabet at the age of 3. the family have an extensive

family library, the largest library in Calamba at that time, it helped him brighten his

interest in reading and in literature. As a young lad, he also manifest his talents in

painting, sketching and sculpture. As his mother his 1st teacher, Dona Teodora

encouraged him to express his ideas and sentimentsin verse. At a young age of 8 yrs old,

throudh his mother’s intensive care to his learnings, Jose had wrote a poem, Sa Aking

Mga Kabata. And his profoung memories was a tale that his mother told him a fable “

The Story of the Moth” was about a mother moth giving warning to its offspring of the

danger that the fire can bring, but at the end the offsring didn’t heed the adviced that the

mother told, the offspring burned his wings by the flame. Jose would not forget this tale

because it gave him the moral lesson that if one must have to succeed, he must then take

risk and prepare for the worst consequences.

Formal Education

Jose Rizal as an 18 year old student of medicine at the U.S.T. Rizal first studied under

Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna. He went to

Manila to study. He was accepted at the Ateneo

Municipal de Manila where he received his Bachelor

of Arts in 1877 and graduated as one of the nine

students declared sobresaliente or outstanding. 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 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 and Dr. Virchow delivering the eulogy. 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. Its message presaged the unification of common culture and common values;

the melding of East and West which can be said is the hoped-for relations between

peoples and the relations of today.

Rizal's multifacetedness was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Mayer, as

"stupendous." He developed an uncommon ability to master various skills and subjects.

Documented studies show him to be a polymath. He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor,

painter, educator, farmer, historian, inventor, playwright and journalist. Besides poetry

and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying degrees of expertise, in architecture,

cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts,

fencing and pistol shooting. He was a Freemason.

-Travels-

Judging by the vast and extensive records written by and about Rizal, one can safely

conclude that Rizal's is the most documented Asian life of the nineteenth century, perhaps

of any Asian ever. It seems everything in his short life is recorded somewhere, being

himself a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, much of these materials having

survived. He can thus be seen from many angles with unusual clarity. His biographers

have faced the engaging difficulty of translating his writings which switch from one

language to another with facility, drawing more from his travel diaries with their insights

of a young oriental encountering the occident for the first time. They included his later

trips, home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States, and, finally,

through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong. This period of his education and his

frenetic pursuit of life, including his recorded affections Gertrude Becket of Chalcot

Crescent, wealthy and high-minded Nelly Boustead of the English and Iberian merchant

family, the idyllic romance with Usui Seiko 'The last descendant of a noble family, true

to an unfortunate vengeance, you are beautiful and his earlier friendships with Segunda

Katigbak and his cousin, Leonor Rivera have kindled abiding interest in his story.

He left much more than goodwill among his European friends who kept almost

everything he gave them, even doodling on pieces of paper. In the home of a Spanish

liberal, Pedro Ortiga y Perez, he left an impression that was to be remembered by his

daughter, Consuelo Ortiga y Rey. In her diary, she wrote of a moment to be cherished for

a lifetime of a day Rizal spent there and regaled them with his brilliant intellect, social

graces, and sleight of hand tricks. In London, during his research on Morga's writings, he

became a regular guest in the home of Dr. Reinhold Rost, head of the India Office

Library of the British Museum, who referred to him as "a gem of a man." The Ullmers,

family of Karl Ullmer, pastor of Wilhelmsfeld , and the Blumentritts were aware of the

aura of destiny surrounding him that they treasured everything he gave them, even

buttonholes and napkins with sketches and notes. They were ultimately bequeathed to the

Rizal family to form a treasure trove of memorabilia.

-Accomplishment-

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's Don Quixote, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 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 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 defender 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

adverse reaction, as the Philippine Revolution of 1896 took off virulently thereafter.

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:

*That the Philippines be a province of Spain

*Representation in the Cortes (Parliament)

*Filipino priests instead of Spanish friars Augustinians, Dominicans, and

Franciscans--in parishes and remote sitios

*Freedom of assembly and speech

*Equal rights before the law for both Filipino and Spanish plaintiffs

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. The 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 for

redemption.

Even in death, Rizal's words inspired. When the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 Jones

Law) was being debated in the U.S. Congress, doubts about the capacity of Filipinos for

self-government were swept by a speech by Congressman Henry Cooper of Wisconsin

where Cooper recited an English translation of the valedictory poem "Adios", and capped

by the peroration, "Under what clime or what skies has tyranny claimed a nobler victim?"

-As a Professional-

As a professional Rizal had a lot of profession. He’ profession brought a lot of

help in his fellow Filipinos. He became a farmer that help the natives of Talisay to

cultivate their fields. He then bought a 16 hectares of agricultural land where he build a

house, school and a medical clinic. He planted cacao, coffee, coconut and sugar cane,

corn and fruit trees of different varieties. He introduce a modern methods which he have

learned in Europe about agriculture. In short he help the farmers in talisay to improve

their farming.

He also engaged in business matters, he break the Chinese monopoly of domestic

trade, he and a business partner Ramon Carreon engaged into the copra and abaca trading

and fishing business. The most profitable of Rizal’s business ventures in Dapitan was the

abaca trading, at one time he was able to ship 150 bales of hemp to a foreign buer in in

Manila gaining a huge profit for himself and to Carreon.

He was also been an Engineer, applying his limited knowledge of the matter, he

then provide the town with a water system that was completed in 1895. Ever conscious of

the town people welfare, he planned to set new road streets to layout and also providing

lights in Dapitan. Indeed Rizal as a little knowledge of engineering helped again his

fellow Dapitanians.

He also was a scientist and inventor at his time. Rizal had explored Dapitan so

thoroughly that he sent to the Ateneo Museum, he was able to send 68 crustaceans, 45

reptiles, 13 species of birds and fishes and 9 mammals. He researched the medicinal

values of plants and prescribing them to some of his patients. As a botanist, he

established a herbibarium, where he religiously observed the characteristics of each plant

species, whether for decorative or medicinal purposes.

Giving those plants that he had researched, he was also a Doctor indeed. As a

physician, Rizal practiced Ophthalmology in Dapitan. Rizal charged his rich patients fees

proportionate to their capacities, and he gave free medical service in his poor country

folks. Being famous as an Ophthalmologist, he was then visited by a foreigner, Mr.

George Taufer for a medical service. The patient’s adopted daughter Josephine Bracken

later became Rizal’s wife, accompanied him.

Being so aficionado in learning’s Rizal was also a teacher. He builds a school

near his home and taught academic. He was then catering a group of 16 boys. Being

functional by integrity toward home and community development is what he taught.

Academic training was held daily from 2-4 in the afternoon. They were taught the 3 R’s –

(Reading, writing and Arithmetic), Geometry, Geography and History. Language the

Spanish and English were also being taught to them. Rizal also included lesson in boxing,

swimming, wrestling and arnis which were the physical components of his self-

prescribed curriculum.

Those were the Profession that Dr. Jose Rizal had in his time. He didn’t waste in any

aspect of his time by he devote it in his fellow Filipinos. He done what he can do in was

he is and what may his situations are.

-Loves-

As what I’ve have read and noticed in Rizal’s life, he never ceases to stop doing

something purposely helpful in his fellow countryman. Being so adroit in everything he

is, is not an easy job to do and sharing it to others. In my view of Rizal’s love, is his

being in-love to education. He never stops acquiring knowledge. In his love of

knowledge that he met his wife Josephine Bracken. In his love of knowledge that he is

being now called as our national hero. For me knowledge also pays love for him. As our

national hero lies at his tomb, still he is being loved by knowledge that knowledge never

forgets his name until in our days.

-Life in Dapitan-

Rizal’s life in Dapitan was peaceful and productive. When he was exile there, he adjusts

to the ways and means of the people of the town. He manages to be friendly and the same

time helpful to them, in fact he was a big help in that place that he inspired many. He

implied advancement in agricultural means. He taught what he had learned in Europe, he

then bought some machinery from other country to be taught and used by the people. He

bought 16 hectares of agricultural land that became 70 hectares. In his land he builds a

school where he trained 16 selected boys, which in return helped him in his daily duties.

He had also came up with a medical clinic in his territory, where he had help many and

made him famous. In his popularity, he was visited by foreigners just to his medical

services; this is where he met his wife. He also taught trade and business that widen that

trade and industry of the town. The most helpful thing that he had gave the town of

Dapitan is outlaying a road street were the people of the town could render their trade and

business easily. He also had worked for the water system of the town that was completed

in 1895. There was a time when Dr. Pio Valenzuela, Bonifcio’s emissary, visited Rizal

and informe him about a plan of the Katipunan to launch a bloody revolution. Rizal

objected to the plan, stating that such would be a veritable suicide. There were persons

who wanted to help out Rizal to escape the country but Rizal rejected it because he had

laid his word to the government of Spain that he will remain exile in the town of Dapitan.

-Execution-

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 men 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. Most historians agree that the shot heard that moment

was the shot that brought Spanish rule in the Philippines to an end.

Rizal's trial was regarded a travesty even by prominent Spaniards of his day. Soon after

his execution, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in an impassioned utterance

recognized Rizal as a Spaniard raised in the best tradition of the country, "profoundly and

intimately Spanish, far more Spanish than those wretched men forgive them, Lord, for

they knew ot what they did those wretched men, who over his still warm body hurled like

an insult heavenward that blasphemous cry,'Viva Espana!

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. This is a controversy which has not

abated, with the Church still locked, as it was, 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, which he believed 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. Besides, his

deeply religious mother and sisters would have been greatly unburdened and relieved if

he had assured them so. Rizal was all too wary of friar duplicity, hence the importance he

gave to his poem.

Reflection on the Spanish character of Rizal's era may disparage the monumental efforts

of their predecessors over three hundred years of religious and humanizing influences on

the Philippines on whose Hispanic soil Jose Rizal was nurtured and whose civilization he

had earnestly and justly embraced. But he knew Morga's words conveyed a genial image

of the land and its people, quite apart from the failed nature of Spain's later generation

which gave rise to Gomburza and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.

Rizal Park, Manila

***