WHO IS JOSE RIZAL?

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Realonda (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse riˈsal];

June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the
tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by
profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda
Movement which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.
He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime
of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution, inspired in part by his writings, broke out.
Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved
of its goals which eventually led to Philippine independence.
He is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has
been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes
Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or
issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He was the
author of the novels Noli Me Tángere and El filibusterismo, and a number of poems and
essays.
José Rizal was born in 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 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 mixed origin. José's
patrilineal lineage could be traced back to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor
Lam-Co, a Chinese merchant who immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century.
Lam-Co traveled to Manila from Amoy, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in
his home district, and more probably to escape the Manchuinvasion during
the Transition from Ming to Qing. He finally 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, Japanese and Tagalog blood. His mother's lineage can be traced to
the affluent Florentina family of Chinese mestizo families originating in Baliuag,
Bulacan. José Rizal also had Spanish ancestry. His grandfather was a half Spaniard
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 his earlier links to Filipino priests Mariano
Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora(popularly known as Gomburza) who had
been accused and executed for treason.
Despite the name change, José, as "Rizal" soon distinguished himself in poetry
writing contests, impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other
foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that were critical of the Spanish historical
accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies. Indeed, by 1891, the year he finished
his El Filibusterismo, this second surname had become so well known that, as he writes
to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal instead of Mercado because
the name Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and be worthy of this
family name.
Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was
sent to Manila. As to his father's request, he took the entrance examination in Colegio
de San Juan de Letran but he then enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and
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 at the same time at the University of Santo
Tomas where he did take up a preparatory course in 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.
Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his
brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Madrid, Spain in May 1882 and studied medicine
at the Universidad Central de Madrid where 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 left Heidelberg a poem, "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.
At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal, completed in 1887 his eye specialization
under the renowned professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly
invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann von Helmholtz) to later operate on his
own mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I spend half of the day in
the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to
the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He lived in a
Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl
Ullmer and stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld, where he wrote the last few chapters
of Noli Me Tángere.
Rizal was a polymath, skilled in both science and the arts. He painted, sketched,
and made sculptures and woodcarving. He was a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist
whose most famous works were his two novels, Noli Me Tángere and its sequel, El
filibusterismo. These social commentaries during the Spanish colonization of the
country formed the nucleus of literature that inspired peaceful reformists and armed
revolutionaries alike. Rizal was also a polyglot, conversant in twenty-two languages.
Rizal's multifacetedness was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Bernhard
Meyer, as "stupendous." Documented studies show him to be a polymath with the
ability to master various skills and subjects. He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor,
painter, educator, farmer, historian, 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 also a Freemason, joining Acacia
Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain and becoming a Master Mason in 1884.