Dr.

Jos Rizal
In full, JOS PROTACIO RIZAL MERCADO Y ALONSO
REALONDA (born 19 June 1861, Calamba, Philippines- died 30
December 1896, Manila, Philippines), patriot, physician and man
of letters whose life and literary works were an inspiration to the
Philippine nationalist movement.

Rizal was the son of a prosperous landowner and sugar planter of

Chinese-Filipino descent on the island of Luzon. His mother,
Teodora Alonso, one of the most highly educated women in the
Philippines at that time, exerted a powerful influence on his
intellectual development.

He was educated at the Ateneo de Manila and the University of

Santo Tomas in Manila. In 1882, he went to study medicine and
liberal arts at the University of Madrid. A brilliant student, he soon
became the leader of the small community of Filipino students in
Spain and committed himself to the reform of Spanish rule in his
home country, though he never advocated Philippine
independence. The chief enemy of reform, in his eyes, was not
Spain, which was going through a profound revolution, but the
Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars who held the
country in political and economic paralysis.

Rizal continued his medical studies in Paris and Heidelberg. In

1886, he published his first novel in Spanish, Noli Me Tangere, a
passionate exposure of the evils of the friars rule, comparable in
its effect to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. A
sequel, El Filibusterismo, 1891, established his reputation as the
leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He
annotated an edition in 1890 on Antonio Morga's Sucesos de las
Islas Filipinas, which showed that the native people of the
Philippines had a long history before the coming of the Spaniards.

He became the leader of the Propaganda Movement, contributing

numerous articles to its newspaper, La Solidaridad, published in
Barcelona. Rizal's political program, as expressed in the
newspaper, included integration of the Philippines as a province of
Spain, representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), the
replacement of the Spanish friars by the Filipino priests, freedom
of assembly and expression, and equality of Filipinos and

Spaniards before the law.

Against the advice of his parents and friends, Rizal returned to

the Philippines in 1892. He found a nonviolent reform society, La
Liga Filipina, in Manila, and was deported to Dapitan, in
northwest Mindanao, an island south of the Philippines. He
remained in exile for four years, doing scientific research and
founding a school and hospital. In 1896, the Katipunan, a
nationalist secret society, launched a revolt against Spain.
Although he had no connections with that organization or any part
in the insurrection, Rizal was arrested and tried for sedition by the
military. Found guilty, he wa publicly executed by a firing squad
in Manila. His martyrdom convinced Filipinos that there was no
alternative to independence from Spain. On the eve of his
execution, while confined in Fort Santiago, Rizal wrote Mi Ultimo
Adios ("My Last Farewell"), a masterpiece of 19th-century
Spanish verse.

Short Biography of Jose

Rizal
Updated on June 8, 2014

Patriot, physician and man of letters whose life and literary works were an inspiration to the
Philippine nationalist movement.

Dr Jose Rizal - National Hero of the Philippines

Dr Jose Protacio Rizal was born in the town of Calamba, Laguna on 19th June
1861. The second son and the seventh among the eleven children of Francisco
Mercado and Teodora Alonso.
With his mother as his first teacher, he began his early education at home and
continued in Binan, Laguna. He entered a Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal de Manila
in 1872 and obtained a bachelor's degree with highest honors in 1876. He
studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas but had to stop because he
felt that the Filipino students were being discriminated by their Dominican tutors.
He went to Madrid at Universidad Central de Madrid and in 1885 at the age of
24, he finished his course in Philosophy and Letters with a grade of "Excellent".
He took graduate studies in Paris, France & Heidelberg, Germany. He also
studied painting, sculpture, he learned to read and write in at least 10 languages.

Rizal was a prolific writer and was anti-violence. He rather fight using his pen
than his might. Rizal's two books "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not) which he
wrote while he was in Berlin, Germany in 1887 and "El Filibusterismo" (The
Rebel) in Ghent, Belgiun in 1891 exposed the cruelties of the Spanish friars in
the Philippines, the defects of the Spanish administration and the vices of the
clergy, these books told about the oppression of the Spanish colonial rule. These
two books made Rizal as a marked man to the Spanish friars.

In 1892 when Rizal returned to the Philippines, he formed La Liga Filipina

,an non violent reform society of patriotic citizen and a forum for Filipinos to
express their hopes for reform, to promote progress through commerce,
industry and agriculture and freedom from the oppressive Spanish colonial
administration.

On July 6, 1892, he was imprisoned in Fort Santiago, on the charge of

instigating unrest against Spain, he was exiled to Dapitan, in northwestern
Mindanao. He remained in exile for four years, while he was in political exile
in Dapitan, he practice medicine, he established a school for boys, promoted
community development projects, he applied his knowledge in engineering
by constructing a system of waterworks in order to furnish clean water to the
towns people. In Dapitan he also met, fell in love and lived with Josephine
Bracken.

Books written by Jose Rizal

Source: MM del Rosario Photo Gallery

In 1896, the Katipunan, a nationalist secret society launched a revolt

against the Spaniards, although Jose Rizal had no connection with the
organization, his enemies were able to linked him with the revolt. To avoid
being involved in the move to start a revolution, he asked Governor Ramon
Blanco to send him to Cuba but instead he was brought back to Manila and
jailed for the second time in Fort Santiago.

Rizal Monument at Luneta Park

The Rizal monument was created by a Swiss sculptor named Richard Kissling. The site is
guarded 24 hours a day 7 days a week by ceremonial soldiers known as Kabalyeros de Rizal.

On December 26, 1896, after a trial, Rizal was sentenced to die, he was
convicted of rebellion, sedition, and of forming illegal association. On the eve of
his execution while confined in Fort Santiago, Rizal wrote a poem Mi Ultimo
Adios (My Last Farewell) and hid it inside the gas burner and gave the gas
burner to his sister Trinidad and his wife Josephine.

He was executed on December 30, 1896 at the age of 35 by a firing squad at

Bagumbayan, now known as Luneta Park in Manila.
Jose Rizal was a man of many accomplishments - a linguist, a novelist, a poet, a
scientist, a doctor, a painter, an educator, a reformer and a visionary, he left his
people his greatest patriotic poem, Mi Ultimo Adios to serve as an inspiration for
the next generations.