ETHNIC DIVERSITY – PHILIPPINES/NATIONAL HERO JOSE RIZAL – III
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José Rizal – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rizal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rizal
Dr. José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda[1] (June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896, Bagumbayan), was a Filipino polymath, patriot and the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. He is considered a
national hero of the Philippines,[2] …….
The seventh of eleven children born to a wealthy family in the town of Calamba, Laguna, Rizal attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, earning a Bachelor of Arts. He enrolled in Medicine and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas and then traveled alone to Madrid, Spain, where he continued his studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid, earning the degree of Licentiate in Medicine. He attended the University of Paris and earned a second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg……
As a political figure, Jose Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan[8] led by Andrés Bonifacioand Emilio Aguinaldo. He was a proponent of institutional reforms by peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. The general consensus among Rizal scholars, however, attributed his martyred death as the catalyst that precipitated the Philippine Revolution.
FAMILY
……Rizal was a 5th-generation patrilineal descendant of Domingo Lam-co (traditional Chinese: 柯儀南; simplified Chinese: 柯仪南; pinyin: Kē Yínán), a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who sailed to the Philippines from Jinjiang, Quanzhou in the mid-17th century.[10]
Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley native of Luzon. To free his descendants from the Sinophobic animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the surname to the Spanish “Mercado” (market) to indicate their Chinese merchant roots. In 1849, Governor-General Narciso Claveria ordered all native families in the Philippines to choose new surnames from a list of Spanish family names. José’s father Francisco[9] adopted the surname “Rizal”…..
Aside from Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that José had traces of Spanish. His maternal great-great-grandfather (Teodora’s great-grandfather) was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, …..
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Last days
Main article: Philippine Revolution
By 1896, the rebellion fomented by the Katipunan, a militant secret society, had become a full-blown revolution, proving to be a nationwide uprising and leading to the first proclamation of a democratic republic in Asia. To dissociate himself, Rizal volunteered and was given leave by the Governor-General, Ramón Blanco, to serve in Cuba to minister to victims of yellow fever. Blanco later was to present his sash and sword to the Rizal family as an apology.
About two weeks before he left Dapitan, Rizal met Dr. Pio Valenzuela an emissary from the Katipunan, to whom Rizal expressed his doubts of an insufficiently armed revolution. Rizal argued that the revolution cannot succeed until sufficient arms can be assured and the support of the wealthy Filipinos had been won over.[3]
Rizal was arrested en route to Cuba, imprisoned in Barcelona, and sent back to Manila to stand trial. He was implicated in the revolution through his association with members of the Katipunan. During the entire passage, he was unchained, no Spaniard laid a hand on him, and had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. While imprisoned in Fort Santiago, he issued a manifesto disavowing the revolution and declaring that the education of Filipinos and their achievement of a national identity were prerequisites to freedom; he was to be tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, andconspiracy. Rizal was convicted on all three charges and sentenced to death. Blanco, who was sympathetic to Rizal, had been forced out of office, and the friars, led by then Archbishop of Manila Bernardino Nozaleda, had ‘intercalated’ Camilo de Polavieja in his stead, as the new Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines after pressuring Queen-Regent Maria Cristina of Spain, thus sealing Rizal’s fate.
His poem, undated and believed to be written on the day before his execution, was hidden in an alcohol stove and later handed to his family with his few remaining possessions, including the final letters and his last bequests. Within hearing of the Spanish guards he reminded his sisters in English, “There is something inside it,” referring to the alcohol stove given by the Pardo de Taveras which was to be returned after his execution, thereby emphasizing the importance of the poem. This instruction was followed by another, “Look in my shoes,” in which another item was secreted. Exhumation of his remains in August 1898, under American rule, revealed he had been uncoffined, his burial not on sanctified ground granted the ‘confessed’ faithful, and whatever was in his shoes had disintegrated.[3]
In his letter to his family he wrote: “Treat our aged parents as you would wish to be treated…Love them greatly in memory of me…December 30, 1896.”[19
]In his final letter, to Blumentritt – Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience.[19] He had to reassure him that he had not turned revolutionary as he once considered being, and that he shared his ideals to the very end. He also bequeathed a book personally bound by him in Dapitan to his ‘best and dearest friend.’ When Blumentritt received it in his hometown Litoměřice (Leitmeritz) he broke down and wept.
Execution
A photographic record of Rizal’s execution in what was thenBagumbayan.
Moments before his execution by a firing squad of native infantry of the Spanish Army, backed by an insurance force of Spanish troops, the Spanish surgeon general requested to take his pulse; it was normal. Aware of this, the Spanish sergeant in charge of the backup force hushed his men to silence when they began raising ‘¡vivas!’ with the partisan crowd. His last words were those of Jesus Christ: “consummatum est“,–it is finished.[4][29][30]
He was secretly buried in Pacò Cemetery in Manila with no identification on his grave. His sister Narcisa toured all possible gravesites and found freshly turned earth at the cemetery with guards posted at the gate. Assuming this could be the most likely spot, there never having any ground burials, she made a gift to the caretaker to mark the site “RPJ”, Rizal’s initials in reverse.
Rizal’s tomb in Paco Park (formerly Paco Cemetery).
A national monument
Main article: Rizal Park
A monument, with his remains, now stands near the place where he fell, designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling of the famed William Tellsculpture.[31] The statue carries the inscription “I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him.”[19]
[edit]
LEGACY
Last days
By 1896, the rebellion fomented by the Katipunan, a militant secret society, had become a full-blown revolution, proving to be a nationwide uprising and leading to the first proclamation of a democratic republic in Asia. To dissociate himself, Rizal volunteered and was given leave by the Governor-General, Ramón Blanco, to serve in Cuba to minister to victims of yellow fever. Blanco later was to present his sash and sword to the Rizal family as an apology.
About two weeks before he left Dapitan, Rizal met Dr. Pio Valenzuela an emissary from the Katipunan, to whom Rizal expressed his doubts of an insufficiently armed revolution. Rizal argued that the revolution cannot succeed until sufficient arms can be assured and the support of the wealthy Filipinos had been won over.[3]
Rizal was arrested en route to Cuba, imprisoned in Barcelona, and sent back to Manila to stand trial. He was implicated in the revolution through his association with members of the Katipunan. During the entire passage, he was unchained, no Spaniard laid a hand on him, and had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. While imprisoned in Fort Santiago, he issued a manifesto disavowing the revolution and declaring that the education of Filipinos and their achievement of a national identity were prerequisites to freedom; he was to be tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, andconspiracy. Rizal was convicted on all three charges and sentenced to death. Blanco, who was sympathetic to Rizal, had been forced out of office, and the friars, led by then Archbishop of Manila Bernardino Nozaleda, had ‘intercalated’ Camilo de Polavieja in his stead, as the new Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines after pressuring Queen-Regent Maria Cristina of Spain, thus sealing Rizal’s fate.
His poem, undated and believed to be written on the day before his execution, was hidden in an alcohol stove and later handed to his family with his few remaining possessions, including the final letters and his last bequests. Within hearing of the Spanish guards he reminded his sisters in English, “There is something inside it,” referring to the alcohol stove given by the Pardo de Taveras which was to be returned after his execution, thereby emphasizing the importance of the poem. This instruction was followed by another, “Look in my shoes,” in which another item was secreted. Exhumation of his remains in August 1898, under American rule, revealed he had been uncoffined, his burial not on sanctified ground granted the ‘confessed’ faithful, and whatever was in his shoes had disintegrated.[3]
In his letter to his family he wrote: “Treat our aged parents as you would wish to be treated…Love them greatly in memory of me…December 30, 1896.”[19
]In his final letter, to Blumentritt – Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience.[19] He had to reassure him that he had not turned revolutionary as he once considered being, and that he shared his ideals to the very end. He also bequeathed a book personally bound by him in Dapitan to his ‘best and dearest friend.’ When Blumentritt received it in his hometown Litoměřice (Leitmeritz) he broke down and wept.
Execution
A photographic record of Rizal’s execution in what was thenBagumbayan.
Moments before his execution by a firing squad of native infantry of the Spanish Army, backed by an insurance force of Spanish troops, the Spanish surgeon general requested to take his pulse; it was normal. Aware of this, the Spanish sergeant in charge of the backup force hushed his men to silence when they began raising ‘¡vivas!’ with the partisan crowd. His last words were those of Jesus Christ: “consummatum est“,–it is finished.[4][29][30]
He was secretly buried in Pacò Cemetery in Manila with no identification on his grave. His sister Narcisa toured all possible gravesites and found freshly turned earth at the cemetery with guards posted at the gate. Assuming this could be the most likely spot, there never having any ground burials, she made a gift to the caretaker to mark the site “RPJ”, Rizal’s initials in reverse.
Rizal’s tomb in Paco Park (formerly Paco Cemetery).
A national monument
A monument, with his remains, now stands near the place where he fell, designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling of the famed William Tellsculpture.[31] The statue carries the inscription “I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him.”[19]
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LEGACY
…..Although his field of action lay in politics, Rizal’s real interests lay in the arts and sciences, in literature and in his profession as an ophthalmologist. Shortly after his death, the Anthropological Society of Berlin met to honor him with a reading of a German translation of his farewell poem and Dr. Rudolf Virchow delivering the eulogy.[63]
The Taft Commission in June 1901 approved AcT 137 renaming the District of Morong into the Province of Rizal, and Act 346 authorizing a government subscription for the erection of a national monument in Rizal’s honor. Republic Act 1425 was passed in 1956 by the Philippine legislature that would include in all high school and college curricula a course in the study of his life, works and writings. The wide acceptance of Rizal is partly evidenced by the countless towns, streets, and numerous parks in the Philippines named in his honor. Monuments in his honor were erected in Madrid[64] Wilhelmsfeld, Germany,[65] Jinjiang, Fujian, China,[66]
Tribute to Rizal, Cavenagh Bridge,Singapore
Chicago,[67] Cherry Hill Township, New Jersey, San Diego,[68] Seattle, U.S.A.,[69] Mexico City, Mexico, Lima, Peru,[70] and Litomerice, Czech Republic, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[71] Several titles were bestowed on him: “the First Filipino”, “Greatest Man of the Brown Race,” among others. The Order of the Knights of Rizal, a civic and patriotic organization, boasts of dozens of chapters all over the globe [15] [16]. There are some remote-area religious sects who claim him as a sublimation of Christ.
A two-sided marker bearing a painting of Rizal by Fabian de la Rosa on one side and a bronze bust relief of him by Philippine artist Guillermo Tolentino stands at the Asian Civilisations Museum Green. This marks his visits to Singapore (1882, 1887, 1891,1896).[72]
A Rizal bronze bust was erected at La Molina district, Lima, Peru, designed by Czech sculptor Hanstroff, mounted atop a pedestal base with 4 inaugural plaque markers with the following inscription on one: “Dr. José P. Rizal, Héroe Nacional de Filipinas, Nacionalista, Reformador Political, Escritor, Lingüistica y Poeta, 1861–1896.”[73][74][75]
