JOSÉ PROTACIO RIZAL MERCADO Y ALONSO REALONDA was born on June 19,

1861, in Calamba, Laguna, the seventh child and the second son of the 11 children of

Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso. Rizal’s parents were not only well-to-do, but

also well educated, a rarity among Filipino families then. His father, a sugar planter and

landholder, attended a Latin school in his native Binan town, also in Laguna, and a

college in Manila. His mother, who had a good business sense managed some small

enterprise, also studies at a Manila college.

Rizal was a precocious child. At the age of two, he could already recite the alphabet and,

at four write sentences in Tagalog as well as Spanish. Rizal had his first formal education,

which consisted of Latin and arithmetic, with a private tutor. He was about seven when

his parents enrolled him at a school in town. Virtually the same home-study arrangements

was made after his father sent him to a Latin school in Binan, where he stayed with his

relatives, except that the reason he did not last there was tow-fold: the schoolmaster was

unimaginative and sadistic, and his relatives kept sloppy household.

Rizal was at that age, or a little younger, when he started writing poems in Tagalog. He

also wrote a short Tagalog comedy which was well received when it was staged in

Calamba. His fascination for Tagalog poetry inspired him to write a poem on Tagalog

itself, extolling it as an equal Spanish and other advanced languages. Sensitive and quite

observant, Rizal, while still young, was already aware of the arrogant and condescending

attitude of the frailocracy towards Filipinos, whom it often humiliated and maltreated.

In June 1872, aged 11, Rizal started attending the Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal in

Intramuros, Manila. At the Ateneo, his varied intellectual and artistic gifts began to
develop and mature all at once. His command of Spanish also vastly improved, no doubt

aided by his wide readings and his conscious effort to improve his already retentive

memory. Shortly after Rizal graduated from Ateneo, his father decided to send him to the

University of Santo Thomas (UST), a Dominican institution, for further studies. He

initially enrolled in metaphysics to humor his father, but as a practical alternative, took up

land surveying at the Ateneo at the same time. Only on finding out, upon returning to

Calamba for the Christmas vacation, that his mother was getting blind from a cataract-a

condition her imprisonment could have brought on, did he make up his mind to study

medicine, along with philosophy and letters. In 1879, his poem, "A La Juventud Filipino"

("To Philippine Youth") won first prize in a contest sponsored by Manila’s Liceo

Artistico-Literario. In 1880, in another Liceo-sponsored literary contest, held in

observance of the Spain’s most famous writer, Miguel de Cervantes, Rizal again won top

prize-and national prominence, beating even peninsular Spaniard, writing in their own

language.

Even while he was at the Ateneo, the idea had occurred to Rizal that, to fulfil his mission,

he would have to go abroad. Toward the latter part of his stay at UST, this idea-in

confidential consultations with his brother Paciano, who shared and encouraged his

emerging political attitudes and convictions - had firmed up. Rizal left on May 3, 1882,

saying goodbye to his parents through a letter delivered to them when he was already

seaborne. A decrepit Spanish ship first took him to Singapore. From there, he boarded a

modern French liner for Marseilles, France, which he reached on June 13. In September

he left for Spanish capital, to enrol at its Universidad Central de Madrid (UCM).
Even in just his first year in Spain, particularly Madrid, Rizal quickly realised that the

enemy reform in the Philippines was not Spain or religion but the friars. By his example,

he, too, could inspire his fellow students-who made up the bulk of the Filipino

community, to abandon their dissipating ways and take a more active role in enlightening

the Spanish public about the evils of frailoracy in the Philippines. He initiated this attack

by writing letters to the editors of Madrid newspapers.

By the time he obtained his licentiate in medicine , in 1884, with creditable performance

in his medical subjects, he had become one of the premier students at UCM, rated

‘outstanding’ in general, Greek, Latin and Spanish literature, as well as in history and

advanced Greek, and Hebrew.

Initially, Rizal also wrote for the magazine put out by the Circulo Hispano-Filipino, an

association of Filipino students and some Spaniards who had stayed in Philippines.

When, with the association’s dissolution, it folded up for lack of financial support, he

thought of coming up with a book, with Filipino expatriates in Europe-not just in Spain,

each contributing an article on Philippines concerns. Quietly, he began actual work on the

Noli me Tangere later in 1884. To improve himself, Rizal travelled in Europe and he was

exposed to a vast range of idea, meeting with people from all walks of life, political

persuasions, and religious beliefs.

His novel was ready for publication in February 1887. Noli me Tangere came off the

press the following month. He sent his first copies to his friends., Curiously, he also sent

individual copies to the governor-general of the Philippines and the archbishop of Manila,

a gesture which could only underline his guilelessness, convinced he was of utter justness
of the novel’s intent-to expose a festering social cancer and seek enlightened political

remedy for it. The rest of the edition was for distribution in Spain and the Philippines.

The Noli was an instant success. The friars considered the Noli as an attack on the

religion and Spanish colonial rule. After five years in Europe, Rizal was returning to

Philippines as a well trained ophthalmic surgeon and a linguist: aside from Spanish, he

was fluent in German and French, and could converse in English, Italian and Dutch. In

the eyes of friars, though, he was returning as a filibustero ("subversive") and disrupter of

the public order, a reputation first gains in his speech extolling Luna and Hildago, and

bolstered by the Noli me Tangere, which had been enjoying brisk sales in Manila even

before he arrived there.

In late December 1887 and early January 1888, two developments, occurring almost

simultaneously, were to make his departure imperative, for his own safety. One of them

concerned the controversy over his novel in manila, and the other, the matter of friar

corruption in the Dominican-held Calamba state.

First published in February 1889, La Solidaridad was the mouth-piece of a Masonary-

oriented association, also called La Solidaridad, which was founded in Barcelona in

December 1888 with Rizal as honorary president. A long piece Rizal wrote for it in 1889

was "Filipinas Dentro de Cien Anos" (‘The Philippines A Century Hence’) where, among

other things, he uncannily predicted the imperialist incursion in Asia of the United States.

While he was in Paris, 1889, Rizal who had become a Freemason- organised its Filipino

colony into the Indios Bravos, which had a secret core group dedicated to the liberation

from colonial rule of people of the Malay race, starting with Filipinos. In January 1890, at
his own expense- he decided to publish the annotated Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas, with

a preface by Blumentritt. To Rizal, patriotic Filipinos staying abroad, except students or

scholars, should go home where they could better serve their country, even at the risk of

their lives. The idea of death had often assailed him at this time. While in Biarritz, 1891,

he continued correcting El Filibusterismo. Rizal had dedicated El Filibusterismo to the

memory of the three Filipino priests garrotted in 1878.

On December 23, 1891, he wrote his successor, Eulogio Despujol, offering his services in

pointing out to him the country’s ills and aiding him to cauterise the wound of recent

injustices. On March 21, 1891, prior to his visit to Sandakan, he wrote again, explaining

to Despujol his Borneo project and asking him among other things to allow Filipinos who

wished to resettle in Sandakan. This time, Despujol reacted swiftly. Rejecting the Borneo

project, he instructed the Spanish consul in Hong Kong to persuade Rizal to return to the

Philippines. Even without Despujol’s guarantee for his personal safety, Rizal decided to

do so.

Despujol effected his arrest on July 6, when Rizal saw him in Malacanang. The reason

given was the presence of anti-clerical handbills- obviously planted by friars agents, in

his luggage at the hotel in Binondo where he was staying. To preclude any attempt by the

friars to snatch him or have him assassinated, Despujol had him conveyed in utmost

secrecy to Dapitan past midnight of July 14.

In February 1895, the Cuban revolution had broke out. In December, on Blumentritt’s

suggestion, he wrote to Blanko to apply as a volunteer medical officer with the Spanish

army in Cuba, in answer to the government’s appeal. On September21, the captain of the
ship that would sail to Europe, told Rizal that he was under custody, adding that he would

be placed under arrest, on orders from Blanco, when the ship arrived in Barcelona.

Blanco had given him personal letters of introduction to the Spanish minister of war and

of overseas territories, vouching for his non-involvement in the revolution. He had

another custodian when the ship arrived in Barcelona on October 3, no less than

Despujol, now the local captain-general October 6, he was jailed for part of the day in

fortress of Monjuich.

It reached Manila on November 3 and, forthwith, he was taken to his cell in Fort

Santiago, there to wait for his trial for treason against Spain. On November 20, the judge

advocate-general, colonel Francisco Olive, the officer who led the military operation in

Calamba in 1890, submitted his findings to Blanco. Blanco then appointed a special

judge who, after reading the findings, sent them back to Blanco with a note referring to

Rizal as the "principal organiser and living soul of the insurrection". By December 10, it

had been decided that Rizal, who had provided with a military officer as his counsel, Luis

Taviel de Andrada, the younger brother of his Calamba escort, would be tried by court

martial. Added to the original charge was that of Rizal promoting separation from Spain

through his writings. The well attended court martial, which was covered by two Madrid

newspapers, took place in a soldiers’ dormitory in Intramuros on December 26. That very

afternoon the verdict was out: guilty as charged.

Rizal was prepared for death.

Castillo, Jhomhel L.
BBA MN 3-1D