Rizal Life: Exile, Trial

and Death
 Arrival in Manila
• June 1892: second homecoming
• Philippines as his battleground

• He told his European compatriots what when

he returned home, they should meet there.
• They will help one another, and they will suffer
together,
 Arrival in Manila
• June 26, 1892,
• 12:00 noon
• With sister his Lucia

• Malacanang Palace:
4:00 o’clock
• Audience with the
Gov. Gen.
 Arrival in Manila
• Tutuban Station- 6 p.m. on June 27, 1892
• Visit friends:
• Malolos (Bulacan)
• Fernando (Pampanga)
• Tarlac (Tarlac)
• Bacolor (Pampanga)

• Returned to Manila on June 28, 1892

• 5 o’clock in the afternoon
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• Sought to involve people directly in the reform

• La Liga Filipina: a league or association sought to unite

all Filipinos of good character for concerted action toward
the economic advancement of their country, for a higher
standard of manhood and to ensure opportunities for
education and development for talented Filipino youth.

• Rizal’s last act at liberty

 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• Resistance through legal means:
encouraged
• Slaves those who toadied to power, and men
without self-respect made possible and
fostered tyranny, abuses and disregard of the
rights of others

• Many were drawn

• Andres Bonifacio- one of its founders
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• Resistance through legal means:
encouraged
• Slaves those who toadied to power, and men
without self-respect made possible and
fostered tyranny, abuses and disregard of the
rights of others

• Many were drawn

• Andres Bonifacio- one of its founders
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
GOAL:
• To consolidate the entire archipelago into a single
compact, vigorous, and homogenous body;
• Mutual protection in times of need;
• Defense against all forms of violence and
injustice;
• Encouragement of education, agriculture and
commerce and research implementation of
reforms.
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• Rizal envisioned the league to be some sort of
mutual aid and self-help society, dispensing
scholarship funds and legal aid, lending capital
and stablishing cooperatives.

• Spanish were ALARMED: July 6, 1892 arrested

Rizal
• Four days after La Liga was formed
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• July 3, 1892: attended a
meeting with patriots
• Home of Doroteo
Ongjunco on Ylaya St,
Tondo, Manila

• Explained the goals of the La

Liga Filipina and its role in
people’s socioeconomic
lives.
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
OFFICERS OF THE NEW LEAGUE

• President: Ambrosio Salvador

• Secretary: Deodato Arellano
• Treasurer: Agustin de la Rosa
• Fiscal: Bonifacio Arevalo
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• Unus Instar Omnium (One Like All):
motto
• Supreme Council: governing body
• Jurisdiction: entire country
• Pres, Sec, Tres, Fiscal
• Provincial Council (Province)
• Popular Council (Town)
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
Responsibilities:
1. To obey the Supreme Council’s orders
2. To assist in recruiting new members
3. To keep the Liga authorities decisions
strictly confidential
4. To have a symbolic name that he
cannot change until he becomes
president of his council
5. To report to the fiscal anything he
hears that affects the Liga
6. To behave well as befits a good
Filipino
7. To help fellow members in any way.
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• During Rizal’s last meeting with the Gov. Gen., he was
asked if he still supported his plan for a Filipino colony
in British North Borneo.
• Rizal wrote Despujol when he was in HK that he should
be allowed to build a Filipino colony in British North
Borneo.
• Despujol: with so much PH land lying idle, it did not
seem patriotic to divert labor needed at home to
develop a foreign land
• He had found no reason to change his original
viewpoints
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
• “Poor Friars”: discovered in a roll of bedding sent
with Rizal’s baggage
• From Lucia, would not have hidden in an area
where it can be discovered
• Rizal was arrested and exiled to Dapitan 3 days
after La Liga Filipina was founded
• La Liga Filipina was overshadowed by KKK
(Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galang na Katipunan ng mga
Anak ng Bayan)
 Founding of La Liga Filipina
KKK
• Established a day after Rizal’s
arrest

• July 7, 1892

• Members of Liga, led by

Andres Bonifacio (planned
since January 1892)
Exile in Dapitan
• Dapitan, Zamboanga
del Norte
• 1892-1896 (4 years)

• Monotonous life but

accomplished a lot.
• Practiced medicine and
pursued scientific studies.
• Continued his artistic and
literary works
 Exile in Dapitan
• Improved his language skills

• Established a boy’s school

• Supported community development projects

• Invented machine for making bricks
• Farming
• commerce
 Exile in Dapitan
• Medical practice: attracted a large number of low
income patients

• Philippine Medicinal Plant: those who couldn’t

afford imported medicine.
• Both wealthy and impoverished patients are
welcomed.
• Poor patients: charged less (in-kind payments)
 Exile in Dapitan
• Fr. Francisco Sanchez
• Former Jesuit teacher
• Assisted him in getting to work
Water system
• He improved the town plaza
(relief map)
• Water system: access to clean
water
Plan of the waterworks for Dapitan constructed by Dr. Jose Rizal and the Jesuit lay brother Juan Costa. Rizal’s name was omitted
for political reasons
Specimens
collected by Rizal
and Fr. Sanchez,
now in the Jesuit
Museum.
 Exile in Dapitan
• Drained Marshes: Reduce Malaria
• 500 pesos fee- rich Englishman- devoted by
Rizal
• Lighting the town

• Opened a school: importance of education

• Implement the educational system he
had learned abroad
 Exile in Dapitan
• Math and languages: given importance

• English and Spanish

• Entire day (utter a word wrong: punishment)
wear rattan handcuff
 Exile in Dapitan
• Nature study

• Helping the Doctor gather

specimens of flowers, shells,
insects and reptiles

• Ship to German museums

Exile in Dapitan
• Collected animal and plant
specimens in Dapitan
• In exchange for scientific books
and surgical instruments
• European Museum of Dresden

• 346 shells from 203 species

• Draco rizali (a flying dragon)

• Apogonia rizali (a small beetle)
• Rhacophorus rizali (a rare frog)
 Exile in Dapitan
• Studied: Bisayan, Subanum, and Malayan
languages and wrote a Tagalog grammar

• POEMS
• A Don Ricardo Carnicero
• Himno A Talisay
• Mi Retiro
• El Canto del Viajero
• Josephine
 Exile in Dapitan
• Drawings and sculptures of people and
insects.
• Bought 70 hectares of land

• House
• School
• Hospital
• Planted (fruit trees, corn, coffee, cacao,
sugarcane and hemp)
 Exile in Dapitan
• Ramon Carreon- business ventures in
fishing, copra and hemp
• Cooperative Association of Dapitan
Farmers- break the monopoly of
Chinese

• Improve farm products, obtain better

outlets, collect funds, and assist producers
 Exile in Dapitan

• Sulpukan: wooden
cigarette lighter-
compressed air
 Exile in Dapitan
• Josephine Bracken

• 18 year old, Irish

• Slim, blonde, blue eyes,
and dressed elegantly
• Born on Oct. 03, 1876
 Exile in Dapitan

• Francisco: their child lived

only for three hours
 Exile in Dapitan
• July 7, 1892: KKK was established
• Dr. Pio Valenzuela informed Rizal of their
plans.
• Blind man- seek Jose’s assistance

• Jose opposed the uprising-unprepared for

revolution

• Declined the offer to save him

 Exile in Dapitan
• Blumentritt informed him of the dire
situation in Cuba: yellow fever epidemic
• Volunteer – army doctor
• Dec 17, 1895
• Sent a letter to Gov. Gen. Ramon
Blanco
• July 30, 1896- allowed to travel
• Manila Spain Cuba
• July 31, 1896- left Dapitan
 Trial of Rizal
• August 26, 1896: Cry of Balintawak
• Attacked San Juan (August 30)

• State of War in the Eight Provinces

(Bulacan, Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, Pampanga, Nueva
Vizcaya, and Tarlac)

• Jose received two letters from the Gov. Gen. exonerating

him from the insurgency

• Sept. 3, 1896: last trip abroad

 Trial of Rizal
• Before reaching Barcelona, he was unexpectedly
apprehended and unlawfully detained as a prisoner on a
Spanish steamer.

• Colon: informed that he would be returned to Manila

• November 3, 1896

• Fort Santiago
• November 20: preliminary investigation
• 15 pieces of documentary evidences
 Trial of Rizal
• Don Luis Taviel de Andrade: Rizal’s bodyguard in
Calamba

• Colonel Francisco Olive (Judge Advocate): briefed Jose on

the charges leveled against him

• Capt. Dominguez sent summary of the action to Gov. Gen.

Ramon Blanco who forwarded it to Don Nicolas De la Pena
 Trial of Rizal
• Pena made the following recommendations:
1. The accused be brought to trial immediately
2. He be kept in prison
3. An order of attachment be used against his
property in the amount of one million pesos as
indemnity; and
4. He be represented in court by an army officer
rather than a civilian lawyer.
 Trial of Rizal
• December 1, 1896: charges were read to JPR in
prison
• “the principal organizer and the living soul of the Filipino
insurgency, the founder of societies, periodicals, and
books dedicated to fomenting and propagating ideas of
rebellion”
• Gov. Gen. Ramon Blanco was replaced Gov. Gen.
Camilo G. de Polavieja (Dec. 13, 1896)

• Rizal’s Trial: Spanish injustice and misrule (Dec. 26)

 Trial of Rizal
• December 28, 1896
• Gov. Gen. Camilo G. de Polavieja
• Signed the decision of the court-martial to execute Jose
Rizal

The 28th of December, 1896, in Manila. In accordance with

the preceding opinion. I approve the Court Martial’s decision
in this case, which imposes the death penalty on the
accused Jose Rizal Mercado, which will be carried out by
shooting him at 7:00 a.m. on the 30th of this month in
Bagumbayan field.
 Teodora’s Letter to Governor Polavieja
• Dec. 28, 1896
• Doña Teodora wrote Gov. Gen. Camilo Polavieja
and asked for clemency for her son
Excellency:

Teodora Alonso de Rizal, a resident of Kalamba, born in

Sta. Cruz, Manila, with all due respect and esteem has
the honor to state to your excellency:

That her son, Jose Rizal y Mercado, having been

sentenced
 Teodora’s Letter to Governor Polavieja
by the court-martial to the extreme penalty for the
offense charges against him of rebellion against the
Mother Country, an offense which in all conscience and
strictest justice has not been proved conclusively, all the
more since she who has the honor to have recourse to
your Excellency is certain of the absolute innocence of her
unfortunate son, she is now bound to entreat your
generous heart and upright sense of justice to deign to
turn your eyes and consider the tribulations of an
unhappy mother, who at the close of her life and at the
advanced age at seventy-one, will have to endure the ….
 Teodora’s Letter to Governor Polavieja
Greatest and most bitter of sorrows, which is to witness
the death of her unfortunate son, the victim only of fate
and of unlucky circumstances which have surrounded
him.
Excellency, I am certain, and it is most evident, that
my unfortunate son Jose Rizal, who suffered with humility
and resignation the exile to which he was sent five years
ago by order of the highest authority of this archipelago,
is innocent of the serious offense of which he is charged
and for which he has been sentenced to suffer the
extreme penalty.
 Teodora’s Letter to Governor Polavieja
It is not my intention, Excellency, to censure or question
in any manner the legality of the decision of a just
tribunal, but due to unfortunate and fatal circumstances,
it has apparently made my unhappy son responsible for
the most infamous crimes, when he is in reality innocent.

In view of the foregoing, Your Excellency, I beg Your

Excellency to deign take pity on the grief of the poor
mother, who in the most crucial moment of witnessing
the death of the fruit of her womb, turns to Your
Excellency in the name of our God, beseeching him with
 Teodora’s Letter to Governor Polavieja
tears of sorrow in her eyes and her heart in pieces to
grant to her unfortunate son the commutation of the
death sentence to which he has been condemned.

This is a boon which she expects to obtain from the

recognized goodness of Your Excellency’s magnanimous
heart, and for which the undersigned and all her family
will be eternally grateful, raising prayers to heaven to
preserve your valuable life for the good and honor of our
Mother Spain and the Consolation of mothers.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
• Last moments: Jose Rizal to F. Blumentritt, 29th
prison chapel December 1896
(death penalty
read) When you receive this letter, I shall be
dead. I shall be shot tomorrow at
• Turned to writing seven o'clock, but I am innocent of the
crime of rebellion.
I am going to die with a clear
conscience.
Farewell, my best, my dearest friend,
and never think ill of me.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
Jose Rizal to Paciano Rizal, 29th December 1896

It had been four and half years that we have not seen or spoken
or written to each other, not, I believe, because of any lack of
affection on my part or on yours, but because knowing each other
so well we did not need to speak to understand each other.

Now that I am to die, it is to you I write last to tell you how sorry
I am to leave you alone in life, bearing all burden of the family and
our aged parents.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
I think of how you have worked to give me a career; I believe
that I tried not to waste my time. My brother, if the fruit has
been bitter, it has not been my fault but the fault of the
circumstances. I know you have suffered a lot for my sake; I am
sorry.

I assure you my brother. That I die innocent of this crime of

rebellion. I shall not utterly deny that what I wrote in the past
may have contributed (to the insurrection), but I thought that
the past would be expiated with my deportation.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
Tell our father that I remember him. How? I remember his
tenderness and love. I ask him to forgive me for the grief which
unwillingly I cause him.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
• Mi Ultimo Adios: December
29, 1896

• Insert the poem-alcohol

looking lamp
• Trinidad ‘There is
something in it’

• Without title, unsigned

 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
To his family…

I would like to see each one of you before dying, though it

may cost much pain. Come the most valiant, I have some
important things to say.

I beg forgiveness for the grief I cause you, bit one day or
another, I had to die, and it is worth more to die today in
the fullness of my faculties.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
Dear parents, brothers, sisters: give thanks to God who has kept me tranquil
before my death. I die resigned, hoping that with my death, they will leave you in
peace. Ah, it is better to die than live in suffering. Be consoled.

I commend you to forgive one another the little vexations of this life and to try
to live in peace and good harmony. Treat your aged parents as you would wish to
be treated afterwards by your own children. Love them much, in memory of me.

Bury me in the earth, put a stone on top, and a cross. My name, the date of my
birth, and that of my death. Nothing more. If you want to fence in my grave
afterwards, you can do so. But no anniversary celebrations! I prefer Paang
Bundok.
 Rizal’s Message of Farewell
My Most Beloved Father:

Forgive me the sorrow with which I repay the anxieties and toil
you have underwent to give me an education. I dod not want this
nor expected it.

Farewell, father farewell!

For his mother, words seemed to
have failed him.
A small book given by
Rizal to Josephine
Bracken
 Execution and Death
• December 30, 1896
• Approximately 6:30 a.m.
• Journey to death: trumpet blast-Fort Santiago

• Advance guard
• 4 soldiers-bayoneted rifles
• Dr. Jose Rizal walked behind with Lt. Luis Taviel de
Andrade (defense counsel) and Fr. March and Fr.
Vilaclara (Jesuit priests)
 Execution and Death
• Arms were tied behind his back from elbow to elbow
• The cavalcade marched slowly to the muffled sound of the
drum.
• A small crowd lined the street from Fort Santiago to Plaza
del Palacio in front of the Manila Cathedral
• A large crown gathered to witness the death of the martyr
• Jose remarked on the beauty and serenity of the morning
• After receiving the final blessings, he bid farewell to Fr.
March, Fr. Villaclara, and Lt. Taviel de Andrade

• Request denied: shot facing the firing squad

 Execution and Death
• Troops held back the crowd and left a square for the tragedy
• Artillery stood behind to suppress any recue attempt

• Paciano joined the insurgent forces in Cavite after the death

sentence for Jose was showed
• He discouraged the insurgent: armed scantily

• Firing Squad: Filipino soldiers

 Execution and Death
• Spanish military surgeon intrigued by Jose’s calm demeanor
• “Colleague, may I feel your pulse?”
• Beats were steady and showed no signs of
excitement or fear.
• Request to face executioners were denied
• Promised that the head would be respected
 Execution and Death
• Blindfolded and erect, Rizal
turned his back to receive the
bullets

• He twisted a hand to indicate

under his shoulder the
location of his heart

• As bullet struck, he turned

and fell face upwards
• Received “shots of grace”
Execution and Death
• Cadiz March was played

• Vivas, laughter and

applause could be heard

• Social Event:
breakfasting parties on
walls and carriages
 The After-Life in Memory
• Dead wagon: took Rizal’s
body
-San Juan de
Dios Hospital to
Paco Cemetery
- one hour
after

• Dressed in black suit and

derby hat
 Execution and Death
• Dr. Felipe Ruiz Castilllo:
measured his pulse
• Jose did not fear
death

• Consummatum Est!- last

words

• Fuego! (took his life) -7:03

a.m. (declared dead)
Execution and Death
• Rizal’s death was met
with joy by his
enemies

• Hero and martyr:

loved, respected, and
supported him
(heartbroken and
painfully inflamed)
 After-Life in Memory
• The remains were placed in a plain box
• No visitors were allowed into the cemetery during
interment
• For several weeks: the grave was guarded (steal the
body, divide clothing as relics)
• Location: secret

• Friends of family were present

• Marble slab dropped unto the grave- full baptismal name in
reverse
After-Life in Memory
• Burial record of Rizal in
the Paco Register