Rizal as a Filipino

I. Introduction
Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal Dr Jose Protacio Rizal was born in the town of Calamba, Laguna on 19th June 1861. The second son and the seventh among the eleven children of Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso. With his mother as his first teacher, he began his early education at home and continued in Binan, Laguna. He entered a Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1872 and obtained a bachelor's degree with highest honors in 1876. He studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas but had to stop because he felt that the Filipino students were being discriminated by their Dominican tutors. He went to Madrid at Universidad Central de Madrid and in 1885 at the age of 24; he finished his course in Philosophy and Letters with a grade of "Excellent". He took graduate studies in Paris, France & Heidelberg, Germany. He also studied painting, sculpture, he learned to read and write in at least 10 languages. Rizal was a prolific writer and was anti-violence. He rather fight using his pen than his might. Rizal's two books "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not) which he wrote while he was in Berlin, Germany in 1887 and "El Filibusterismo" (The Rebel) in Ghent, Belgiun in 1891 exposed the cruelties of the Spanish friars in the Philippines, the defects of the Spanish administration and the vices of the clergy, these books told about the oppression of the Spanish colonial rule. These two books made Rizal as a marked man to the Spanish friars.
• In 1892 when Rizal returned to the Philippines, he formed La Liga Filipina, a non violent reform society of patriotic citizen and a forum for Filipinos to express their hopes for reform, to promote progress through commerce, industry and agriculture and freedom from the oppressive Spanish colonial administration.
• On July 6, 1892, he was imprisoned in Fort Santiago, on the charge of instigating unrest against Spain, he was exiled to Dapitan, in north western Mindanao. He remained in exile for four years, while he was in political exile in Dapitan, he practice medicine, he established a school for boys, promoted community development projects, he applied his knowledge in engineering by constructing a system of waterworks in order to furnish clean water to the towns people. In Dapitan he also met, fell in love and lived with Josephine Bracken.
• In 1896, the Katipunan, a nationalist secret society launched a revolt against the Spaniards, although Jose Rizal had no connection with the organization, his enemies were able to linked him with the revolt. To avoid being involved in the move to start a revolution, he asked Governor Ramon Blanco to send him to Cuba but instead he was brought back to Manila and jailed for the second time in Fort Santiago. On December 26, 1896, after a trial, Rizal was sentenced to die, he was convicted of rebellion, sedition, and of forming illegal association. On the eve of his execution while confined in Fort Santiago, Rizal wrote a poem Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell) and hid it inside the gas burner and gave the gas burner to his sister Trinidad and his wife Josephine. He was executed on December 30, 1896 at the age of 35 by a firing squad at Bagumbayan, now known as Luneta Park in Manila. Jose Rizal was a man of many accomplishments - a linguist, a novelist, a poet, a scientist, a doctor, a painter, an educator, a reformer and a visionary; he left his people his greatest patriotic poem, Mi Ultimo Adios to serve as an inspiration for the next generations.

Topics to Discuss About Jose Rizal
Rizal as a Filipino

A.) Why is Jose Rizal our National Hero? Dr. Jose Rizal Mercado y Alonzo or simply Jose Rizal (1861- 1896) is unquestionably the greatest hero and the martyr of our nation. The day of his birth and the day of his execution are fittingly commemorated by all classes of our people throughout the length and breadth of this country and even by Filipinos and their friends abroad. His name is a byword in every Filipino home while his picture adorns the postage stamp and paper money of widest circulation. No other Filipino hero can surpass Rizal in the number of monuments erected in his honor, in the number of towns, barrios, and streets named after him, in the number of educational institutions, societies and trade names that bear his name, in the number of persons both Filipinos and foreigners who were named Rizal or Rizalina because of their parents admiration for the Great Malayan, and in the number of Laws, Executive Orders and Proclamations of the Chief Executive and bulletins, memoranda, and circulars of both the bureaus of public and private schools. Who is the Filipino writer, thinker whose teachings and noble thoughts have been frequently invoked and quoted by authors and public speakers on almost all occasion? None but Rizal. And why is this so? Because the biographer Rafael Palma said “The doctrines of Rizal are not for one epoch but for all epochs”. They are as valid today as they were yesterday. It cannot be said that because the political ideals of Rizal have been achieved because of the change in institutions, the wisdom of his counsels or the value of his doctrines have ceased to be opportune. They have not. Unfortunately, however there are some Filipinos who entertain the belief that our Rizal is a “made to order” national Hero and that the maker or manufacturer in this case were the Americans particularly Civil governor William Howard Taft. This was done allegedly in the following manner. “ And now gentlemen you must have a national hero” these were supposed to be the words addressed by Governor Taft to Messrs, Pardo de Tavera, Legarda and Luzurriaga, Filipino members of the Philippine Commission of which Taft was the chairman. It was further reported that in the subsequent discussion in which the rival merits of the revolutionary heroes Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Jose Rizal, Antonio Luna, Emilio Jacinto, and Andress Bonifacio were considered, the final choice now universally acclaimed the wise one was Rizal and so history was made.

B.) What is most admirable in Rizal? His complete self denial, his complete abandonments of his personal interest in order to think only of those of his country. He could have been whatever he wished to be considering his national endowments he could have earned considerable sums of money from his profession, he could have lived relatively rich, happy, prosperous, had he not dedicated himself to public matters. But in him the voice of the species was stronger than the voice of personal progress or of private fortune and he preferred to live far from his family and to sacrifice his personal affections for an ideal he had dreamed of. He heeded not his brother not even his parents begins whom he respected and venerated so much in order to follow the road his conscience had traced for him. He did not have great means at his disposal to carry out his campaign but that did not discourage him he contented himself with what he had. He suffered the rigors of the cold winter of Europe he suffered hunger, privation, and misery but when he raised his eyes to heaven and saw his ideal his hope was reborn. He complained of his countrymen he complained of some who has promised him help but did not help him until at times profoundly disillusioned he wanted to renounce his campaign forever giving up everything. But such moments were evanescent he soon felt comforted and resumed the task of bearing the cross of his suffering.

C.) What was Rizal’s Inherited Traits? His consuming life purpose was the secret of his moral courage. Physical courage it is true was one of his inherited traits. But that high courage to die loving his murderers, which he at last achieved that cannot be inherited. It must be forged out in the fires of suffering and temptation. As we read through his life we can sinew and fiber grew year by year as he faced new perils and was forced to make fearful decisions. It required courage to write his two novels telling nothing that no other man had ventured to say before, standing almost alone against the most powerful interest in his country and in Spain and knowing full well that despotism would strike back. He had reached another loftier plateau of heroism when he wrote those letters in Hong Kong. To be opened after my death. And sailed into the trap in Manila without any illusions. Then in his Dapitan exile when he was tempted to escape and said “ No” not once but of hundreds of times for tour long years and when on the way to Cuba Pedro Roxas pleaded with him to step off the board on Singapore upon British territory and save his life what inner struggle must have caused him to answer over and over again No No No when the sentenced of death and the fateful execution brought the final test December 30, 1896 he walked with perfect calm to the firing line as thought by his own choice the only heroic figure in that sordid scene. To the Spaniards in Spain and in the Philippines Rizal was the most intelligent most courageous and most dangerous enemy of the reactionaries and the tyrants therefore he should be shot publicly in order to serve as an example and warning to those of his kind. This was the reason why Rizal was sentenced to death and made to face the firing squad at Bagumbayan Field now the Luneta in the early morning of December 30, 1896.

D.) Who made Rizal the foremost hero of the Philippines? The answer is no single person or groups of person were responsible for making the Greatest Malayan the number one Hero of his people. Rizal himself his own people and the foreigners all together contributed to make him the greatest hero and martyr of his people. No amount of adulation and canonization by both Filipinos and foreigners could convert Rizal into a greatest hero if he did not possess in himself

Rizal as Filipino was a man of many accomplishments He became a linguist, a novelist, a poet, a scientist, a doctor, a painter, an educator, a reformer and a visionary. Jose Rizal, a man with so many accomplishments. Jose Rizal gives all of us inspiration in all the things we do. He is inspires us to be hardworking and diligent which most of us are not. I am amazed that even though Rizal was in exile, he didn't mind the fact that he was sent to Dapitan to live like a prisoner and yet he still manages to accomplish many things. He has taught the poor Mindanao folk to unite for trading so that they may become independent and free themselves from the Chinese and thus become less exploited, in the sense that he organized a cooperative even in exile. While many people would be in panic, despair or lose hope for any success in their lives because of being exiled Jose Rizal continued to serve his country. Rizal truly was a person for his countrymen, he truly was a patriot and nationalistic for he never wanted to see his fellow countrymen being oppressed and being exploited. That made Jose Rizal stand out of the others as a hero to a nation. He truly was a man of action, he did not only looked over the people nor just tell people what to do, he helped them in their everyday work. Rizal is our hero, our inspiration, our lesson of the past that we should be a man for our country. Rizal was intelligent and yet very humble. Was it coincidence, was it dedicated to Rizal, or is this an indication that Rizal was born to be our hero? I wish I could go to Dapitan for a glimpse of how our hero lived in Dapitan while being exiled. It would be such an honor to know more about our hero. That's two lifetimes for the average Filipino, quite a long time.