[UPDATED JUNE 2020]

 
Jose Rizal: A Biographical Outline
© 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog
 
THE MAN tied elbow to elbow refused the
traditional blindfold and even requested to face
the firing squad that would seal his fate on that
day.
 
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso
Realonda was born on June 19, 1861, approximately 35 years before that
fateful day. The seventh of the eleven children born to a relatively well-
off family in a Dominican-ownedtenant land in Calamba, Laguna, Jose
Rizal lived and died during the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines.
 
Jose’s father, Francisco Mercado Rizal, was a productive farmer  from
Binan, Laguna, while his mother, Teodora Alonzo y Quintos, was an
educated and highly cultured woman from Sta. Cruz, Manila. 

In his early childhood, Jose had mastered the alphabet, learned to write
and read books like the Spanish version of the Vulgate Bible. At young
age, he already showed inclinations to arts. He amazed his family by his
pencil drawings, sketches, and moldings of clay. Later in his childhood,
he showed special talent in painting and sculpture, wrote a Tagalog play
which was presented at a Calamba fiesta, and penned a short play in
Spanish which was presented in school.
 
At the age of eleven, Rizal attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and
obtained at the age of 16 his Bachelor of Arts degree with an average of
"excellent". In the same year (1877), he took Philosophy and Letters at
the University of Santo Tomas, while at the same time enrolled in a
course in land surveying at the Ateneo. He finished his surveyor's
training in 1877, passed the licensing exam in May 1878, though the
license was granted to him only in 1881 when he reached the age of
majority. He enrolled in medicine at the University of Santo Tomas in
1878. Sensing however that the Filipino students were being
discriminated by the Dominican professors, he left UST without
finishing his course.
 
On May 3, 1882, he went to Spain and enrolled at the Universidad
Central de Madrid. In June of 1884, he received the degree of Licentiate
in Medicine at the age of 23. A year later, he completed his course in
Philosophy and Letters with the grade of “excellent.” Wanting to cure
his mother's advancing blindness, Rizal went to Paris, Heidelberg, and
Berlin to get further knowledge and training in ophthalmology. In
Heidelberg, he completed his eye specialization.
 
Being well-traveled, he is said to have learned 22 languages. He wrote
extraordinary poems, contributed nationalistic essays to publications,
religiously kept his diary, and corresponded to his friends and relatives.
In March 1887, he published in Berlin his first controversial novel,
the Noli Me Tangere, which revealed the tyranny and arrogance of the
Spanish clergy and officials in the Philippines. To bring to light that the
Filipinos had an impressive civilization even long before the Spanish
colonization, he annotated and reprinted in Paris Morga’s Successos De
Las Islas Filipinas. On September 18, 1891, Rizal’s more militant
novel, El Filibusterismo was printed in Ghent.
 
As leader of patriotic Filipinos, he became one of the leadersof the
literary and cultural organization Propaganda Movement, the patriotic
society Asociacion La Solidaridad (Solidaridad Association), the
temporary social society Kidlat Club, the society of Filipino patriots in
Paris Indio Bravo, the mysterious Redencion de los
Malayos (Redemption of the Malays), and founded the La Liga Filipina,
a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan. In
various ways, Rizal asked for radical reforms in the Spanish colonial
system and clerical powers in the Philippines and advocated equal rights
before the law for Filipinos.
 
When Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892 (his second
homecoming), he was imprisoned in Fort Santiago from July 6 to July
15 on a trump-up charge that anti-priest leaflets were found in the
pillow cases of his sister Lucia who arrived with him from Hong Kong.
He was then exiled to Dapitan, an island in Mindanao. While an exile,
he engaged in agriculture, fishing, and commerce while operating a
hospital and maintaining a school for boys. Moreover, he did scientific
researches, collected specimens of rare species, corresponded with
scholars abroad, and led construction of water dam and a relief map of
Mindanao.
 
Rizal fell in love with Josephine Bracken, a woman from Hong Kong
who brought her stepfather to Dapitan for an eye operation. Josephine
became Rizal’s ‘common-law wife’. The couple had a child who was born
prematurely, Francísco Rizal y Bracken, who died a few hours after
birth. Prior to his relationship with Josephine, Jose Rizal had become
romantically involved with other women, the most notable of whom
were Segunda Katigbak, his first love, and Leonor Rivera, his so called
true love.
 
In 1896, Rizal received a permission from the Governor General to
become a volunteer military physician in the revolution in Cuba, which
was at the time also raged by yellow fever. But the ‘Katipunan’ started
the Philippine Revolution on August 26, 1896. The powerful people
whose animosity Rizal had provoked took the opportunity to implicate
him to the rebellion. After a trial in a kangaroo court, he was convicted
of rebellion and sentenced to death by firing squad at Bagumbayan Field
(now Luneta).
 
Dressed in a black coat and trousers and tied elbow to elbow, Rizal
refused to kneel and declined the traditional blindfold. Placid and a bit
pale, he even requested to face the firing squad, maintaining that he was
not a traitor to his country and to Spain. After some sweet-talk, Rizal
agreed to turn his back but requested that he be shot in the small of the
back, for that would twist his body and cause him to fall face upward.
 
The night before his execution, Rizal perhaps had a mental flash back of
the meaningful events in his 35-year existence we have outlined here.
But more than anyone, he himself had known for long that his execution
would certainly come to pass, and not even an Andres Bonifacio nor
Emilio Aguinaldo would have saved him from the executioners’
Remingtons and Mausers.
 
Facing the sky, the man died in that serene morning of December 30,
1896. But since then, he has lived perpetually in the hearts and minds of
true Filipinos.  (© 2013 by Jensen DG. Mañebog)

MARY JOY M. PALATTAO

Soc 12 Professor