“Understanding the Secret Life of

Dr. Rizal”
Every family has a secret, even Dr. Jose Rizal’s family has it. Family is the mirror of all
people, because how people look on your family, it reflects on you. The story of the Secrets of
Rizal’s Family depicts that perfection does not exist. The conflict between Rizal’s family does
contributes in his journey as a normal person up to becoming the national hero of our country. It
became his inspiration. The story was a bit messy; it has a lot of twist and turns and theories that
made it more complex. We only recognize Rizal by his deeds and heroism but not his story. The
story of the secret life of Rizal played a crucial role in his life, what happened to his family was a
massive family scandal that, every family line and blood line in his family has affected. Home is
meant to be the lived by family but in that mansion in Binan, Laguna the home of Rizal’s family,
it was full secrets and controversies and there a lot of things that still unexplained or needs
clarification.
According to the documentation of Howie Severino entitled “Mga Lihim ng Pamilya ni
Rizal” which aired on GMA network, the Mansion of the Alberto’s are slowly demolished by the
authorities but there are people that halt this action. These people who stand for this structure
aims to preserve it, for they believed that, it has a connection to Jose Rizal. The Mansion was
believed to be the abode of Theodora Alonzo, the mother of Jose Rizal. The mansion of the
Alberto’s possessed some of the secrets of the life of our National Hero. The mansion possessed
the imperfection of Rizal’s family, the horror of the dark past of the Alberto’s and Alonzo’s.
It started from the unfaithful wife Theodora Formoso, betrayed Jose Alonzo by having an
affair to another man. She was locked into a room by Jose Alonzo and aske Theodora Alonzo,
his sister and mother of Jose Rizal. When Theodora Alonzo brought Theodora Formoso food,
Theodora Formosa gave the food to her dog and after eating it the dog died which she accused
the mother of Rizal of attempting to poison her. From this scenario, we really can sense that
Rizal’s family has conflict from each other leaving them to have a very difficult life. This
scenario leads to the imprisonment of her mother for not less than two years and made her
confess to something she did not do. But as we ca see there are a lot of unexplained and very
questionable actions from the people involved in this scenario, for example, “Why did Theodora
Formoso didn’t eat the food instead she gave it to the dog, does she now about the poison?” from
this one action there are a lot of angles to be seen or, “what is the reason, why Theodora Alonzo
poison Theodora Formoso?, there are no clear reasons or evidences the she did it on purpose.
The next issue is the illegitimacy of Theodora Alonzo as child of Lorenzo Alberto,
maybe this is the reason why Rizal made a very suspicious family tree which, there are no
branches in her mother side. The illegitimacy of her mother and her siblings except for Jose
Alonzo was only made up for their own good, basically, this issue was rather planned by the
siblings for the sake of their family image. The family of Rizal has gone through a lot of issues
and these issues are no simple for it may ruin their family reputation and so as the image of
highly respected person.
 The Rizal’s family has involved in a lot of issues and controversies, those issues are one
of the skeletons in his closet but for some reason it has been dug out by the Philippine historians
and researchers which unravels the truth and the secrets that are hidden in that mansion. Though
according to the descendants of Rizal’s family that, there is no connection of Rizal in that
mansion, for he lived with her aunt in a different house due to discrimination from his family.
The family conflict resulted to a misunderstanding and ignorance between the two families. Even
though the family of Rizal has a lot of issues, based on his letters shown in the video, he still
cares for them and loved them especially his mother.
Thus, the secrets of Rizal’s life does not invalidate his title as National Hero of our
country, instead it will serve as a lesson that your are who you are, you may be came from a
certain family line but at the end of the day your choice as a person defines who you wanted to
be in life. In the case of Rizal’s family, the family was in chaos due to certain issues that made
their family disconnected with each other.