Blackwell Reference Online

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José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda was a Filipino patriot, physician, and polymath, considered the most prominent propagandist and reformist in the Philippines during the spanish colonial era. He is recognized as one of the martyrs of the Philippine Revolution and the anniversary of his death is commemorated as a national holiday called Rizal Day.Rizal was born to a middle-class family in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines, on June 19, 1861. His father, Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado, was a prosperous landowner and sugar planter of Filipino-Chinese descent from Laguna, while his mother, Teodora Morales Alonzo Realonda, was a well-educated woman from Manila. Rizal was the seventh of 11 children. His only brother, Paciano Rizal Mercado, and a number of his sisters also participated in the Filipino revolutionary movement.After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1877 at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, Rizal continued his education there and finished a land surveyor's degree. He enrolled in medical school at the Universidad de santo Tomás but did not finish due to spanish discrimination against Filipino students. In 1882, he traveled to Madrid where he studied medicine and took art courses at the Universidad Central de Madrid.While studying in Madrid, he became the most prominent member of the Circulo Hispano-Filipino, a small community of Filipino students in spain who campaigned ... log in or subscribe to read full text