hemybel
24th January 2006, 07:00
http://mozcom.com/~gpbts/magazine/images/rizal.jpg
Many people all around the globe admired Gandhi, but they don't know about Jose Rizal. Jose Rizal fought for human rights without the use of violence even before Gandhi. His two books the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo costs him his life... The National Hero of The Philippines.
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 mastered 22 languages which included Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tagalog, Cebuano and other Philippine languages.
As a polymath, he was also an architect, artist, educator, economist, ethnologist, scientific farmer, historian, inventor, journalist, musician, mythologist, internationalist, naturalist, novelist, ophthalmologist, physician, poet, propagandist, sculptor, and sociologist.
José Rizal was born into a prosperous middle class Filipino family in the town of Calamba in the Province of Laguna. His parents were Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonzo. He was the seventh of their eleven children.
Dominican friars granted the family the privilege of the lease of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm, but contentious litigation followed; later, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau 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.
Along one lineage, 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.
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.
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.
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, Don Quixote, Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Count of Monte Cristo, angered the Spanish colonial bureaucracy and especially the Catholic hierarchy, due to the blatant and insulting symbolism in the books. This eventually led to his execution, and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.
Courage
After writing Noli me Tangere, he gained 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 petitioned the townspeople of Calamba to speak out against the friars. 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. Rizal later left the country again.
Legacy
Rizal was a reformer for an open society rather than a revolutionary for political independence, a peacemaker, Asia's first.
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 rather than the Spanish Augustinians, Dominicans, or Franciscans
* Freedom of assembly and speech
* Equal rights before the law (for both Filipino and Spanish plaintiffs)
The authorities in the Philippines did not accept these reforms. 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 painted the friars in a very bad light, with no hope of redemption.
Last days
Rizal was implicated with the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July of 1892 was deported to Dapitan in the province 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 a marriage license because he would not return to the religion of his youth and was not known to be clearly against revolution. Rizal was given leave by the colonial government to serve in Cuba as a volunteer to minister to victims of yellow fever.
In 1896, the Katipunan, a Nationalist secret society, launched a revolution. 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 tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy. During his internment, he had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. Rizal was convicted of all three charges and sentenced to death.
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.
One of his last letters was to the Austrian, 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.
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. But none of these would detract from the fact that because of his incomparable intellect, his exemplary behavior towards both his friends and known enemies, his good fight and his brave actions all in the name of peace, makes him tower above all heroes in the Philippines.
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".
Many people all around the globe admired Gandhi, but they don't know about Jose Rizal. Jose Rizal fought for human rights without the use of violence even before Gandhi. His two books the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo costs him his life... The National Hero of The Philippines.
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 mastered 22 languages which included Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tagalog, Cebuano and other Philippine languages.
As a polymath, he was also an architect, artist, educator, economist, ethnologist, scientific farmer, historian, inventor, journalist, musician, mythologist, internationalist, naturalist, novelist, ophthalmologist, physician, poet, propagandist, sculptor, and sociologist.
José Rizal was born into a prosperous middle class Filipino family in the town of Calamba in the Province of Laguna. His parents were Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonzo. He was the seventh of their eleven children.
Dominican friars granted the family the privilege of the lease of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm, but contentious litigation followed; later, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau 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.
Along one lineage, 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.
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.
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.
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, Don Quixote, Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Count of Monte Cristo, angered the Spanish colonial bureaucracy and especially the Catholic hierarchy, due to the blatant and insulting symbolism in the books. This eventually led to his execution, and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.
Courage
After writing Noli me Tangere, he gained 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 petitioned the townspeople of Calamba to speak out against the friars. 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. Rizal later left the country again.
Legacy
Rizal was a reformer for an open society rather than a revolutionary for political independence, a peacemaker, Asia's first.
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 rather than the Spanish Augustinians, Dominicans, or Franciscans
* Freedom of assembly and speech
* Equal rights before the law (for both Filipino and Spanish plaintiffs)
The authorities in the Philippines did not accept these reforms. 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 painted the friars in a very bad light, with no hope of redemption.
Last days
Rizal was implicated with the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July of 1892 was deported to Dapitan in the province 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 a marriage license because he would not return to the religion of his youth and was not known to be clearly against revolution. Rizal was given leave by the colonial government to serve in Cuba as a volunteer to minister to victims of yellow fever.
In 1896, the Katipunan, a Nationalist secret society, launched a revolution. 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 tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy. During his internment, he had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. Rizal was convicted of all three charges and sentenced to death.
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.
One of his last letters was to the Austrian, 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.
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. But none of these would detract from the fact that because of his incomparable intellect, his exemplary behavior towards both his friends and known enemies, his good fight and his brave actions all in the name of peace, makes him tower above all heroes in the Philippines.
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".