THE

TRUTH
BEHIND
RIZAL
Table of Contents
introduction

biographical
journey

family of rizal

Education
pursuits

literary legacy
Jamiel Gwyneth L. Catapang
 roduction
nt
i BONJOUR AMIGOS!
THIS MAGAZINE DEPICTS OUR MODEL HERO .
OUR HERO A LIFE INSPIRATION LIKE RIZAL, AND ENDURING
LEGACY OF ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC
FIGURES IN PHILIPPINES HISTORY AND THE GLOBAL
FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY, THERE ARE
INDIVIODUALS WHOSE LIVES TRANSCEND
THEIR TIME AND PLACE, LEAVING AND INDELIBLE MARK ON
THE WORLD. JOSE RIZAL IS UNDENIABLY ONE OF THESE
EXCEPTIONAL SOULS.BORN IN QUIET
TOWN OF CALAMBA, LAGUNA, ON JUNE 19, 1861. RIZAL’S LIFE
UNFOLDED WITH BRILLIANCE THAT WOULD CHANGE THE
COURSE OF AN ENTRE NATION’S DESTINY.

JOIN US ON THIS JOURNEY INTO LIFE

AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF JOSE RIZAL.
A MAN WHO EXEMPLIED THE VERY
ESSENCE OF A HERO. A VISONARY AND
AN ETERNAL SOURCE OF INSPIRATION
FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!

1
 J OSE RIZAL, the national hero of the Philippines
and pride of the Malayan race, was born on June
19, 1861, in the town of Calamba ,Laguna. He was
the seventh child in a family of 11 children (2 boys
and9 girls). Both his parents were educated and
belonged to distinguished families.
Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892. He
founded a nonviolent-reform society, the Liga
Filipina, in Manila, and was deported to Dapitan in
northwest Mindanao.

INTRODUCTION
His father , Francisco Mercado Rizal , an industrious farmer whom Rizal called "a model of
fathers," came from Biñan, Laguna; while his mother, Teodora Alonzo y Quintos, a highly
cultured and accomplished woman whom Rizal called "loving and prudent mother, was
born in Meisic, Sta. Cruz, Manila. At the age of 3, he learned the alphabet from his mother;
at 5, while learning to read and write, he already showed inclinations to be an artist. He
astounded his family and relatives by his pencil drawings and sketches and by his
moldings of clay. At the age 8,he wrote a Tagalog poem, “Sa Aking Mga Kabata" the theme
of which revolves on the love of one’s language. In 1877, at the age of 16, he obtained his
Bachelor of Arts degree with an average of "excellent" from the Ateneo Municipal de
Manila.

In the same year, he enrolled in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas,
while at the same time took courses leading to the degree of surveyor and expert assessor
at the Ateneo. He finished the latter course on March 21,1877 and passed the Surveyor’s
examination on May 21, 1878; but because of his age, 17, he was not granted license to
practice the profession until December 30, 1881. In 1878, he enrolled in medicine at the
University of Santo Tomas but had to stop in his studies when he felt that the Filipino
students were being discriminated upon by their Dominican tutors.

O n May 3, 1882, he sailed for Spain where he continued his studies at the Universidad
Central de Madrid. On June 21,1884, at the age of 23, he was conferred the degree of
Licentiate in Medicine and on June 19,1885, at the age of 24, he finished his course in
Philosophy and Letters with a grade of "excellent. "Having traveled extensively in Europe,
America and Asia, he mastered22 languages. These include Arabic, Catalan, Chinese,
English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Malayan, Portuguese,
Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tagalog, and other native dialects. A versatile genius, he was an
architect, artists, businessman, cartoonist, educator, economist, ethnologist, scientific
farmer, historian, inventor, journalist, linguist, musician, mythologist, nationalist, naturalist.

2
 The Family Tree of Rizal
Teodora Alonso
Francisco Mercado (1826-1911)
(1818-1898)

Saturnina Mercado Narcisa Mercado Lucia Mercado

(1850-1913) (1852-1939) (1857-1919)

Jose Mercado Josefa Mercado Soledad Mercado Paciano Mercado

(1861-1896) (1865-1945) (1870-1929 (1851-1930)

Olympia Mercado Maria Mercado Concepcion Mercado Trinidad Mercado

(1855-1887) (1859-1945) (1859-1945) (1865-1951

3
 José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861, to Francisco Rizal Mercado y
Alejandro and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos in the town of Calamba
in Laguna province. He had nine sisters and one brother. His parents were
leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm held by the
Dominicans. Both their families had adopted the additional surnames of
Rizal and Realonda in 1849 after Governor General Narciso Clavería y
Zaldúa decreed the adoption of Spanish surnames among the Filipinos for
census purposes (though they already had Spanish names).

Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mestizo origin.
José's patrilineal lineage could be traced to Fujian in China through his
father's ancestor Lam-co, a Hokkien Chinese merchant who immigrated to
the Philippines in the late 17th century.[12][13. Lam-co traveled to Manila
from Xiamen, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his home
district, and more probably to escape the Manchu invasion during the
transition from Ming to Qing. He decided to stay in the islands as a farmer.
In 1697, to escape the bitter anti-Chinese prejudice that existed in the
Philippines, he converted to Catholicism, changed his name to Domingo
Mercado and married the daughter of Chinese friend Augustin Chin-co.
On his mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included Chinese and Tagalog. His
mother's lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina family of Chinese
mestizo families originating in Baliuag, Bulacan. He also had Spanish
ancestry. Regina Ochoa, a grandmother of his mother, Teodora, had mixed
Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog blood. His maternal grandfather was a half-
Spanish engineer named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo.

From an early age, José showed a precocious intellect. He learned the

alphabet from his mother at 3, and could read and write at age 5. Upon
enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he dropped the last three
names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother, Paciano
and the Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of
this, he later wrote: "My family never paid much attention [to our second
surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving me the appearance of
an illegitimate child!" This was to enable him to travel freely and
disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with earlier
links to Filipino priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora
(popularly known as Gomburza), who had been accused and executed for
treason.

4
E D U C Aof T I O N
Pepe

5
 Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before
he was sent to Manila. He took the entrance examination to Colegio de
San Juan de Letran, as his father requested, but he enrolled at the Ateneo
Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class
declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the
Ateneo Municipal de Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree
and simultaneously at the University of Santo Tomas, where he studied a
preparatory course in law and finished with a mark of excelente, or
excellent. He finished the course of Philosophy as a pre-law.

Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to
medicine at the medical school of Santo Tomas, specializing later in
ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical training in medicine at
Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. In his last year at medical school,
he received a mark of sobresaliente in courses of Patologia Medica (Medical
Pathology), Patología Quirúrgica (Surgical Pathology) and Obstretics.
Although known as a bright student, Rizal had some difficulty in some
science subjects in medical school such as Física (Physics) and Patología
General (General Pathology).

Rizal as a student at the University of Santo Tomas

Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his
brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Madrid in May 1882 and studied
medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid. There he earned the
degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at the
University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. 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 an address in German in
April 1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and
structure of the Tagalog language. He wrote a poem to the city, "A las flores
del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare
of his native land and the unification of common values between East and
West.

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FAMOUS
WORKS
FAMOUS
WORKS
FAMOUS
WORKS 8
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 LIFE AND WORKS OF RIZAL
DET 2101

Jamiel Gwyneth L. Catapang