Jose Rizal Mercado, more commonly known as Jose Rizal, is a revered national hero of the Philippines and considered the father of modern Philippines.
He was born on 19th June 1861 in the then Spanish colony, and was the 7th of 11 children of a rich land-owning father and a highly-educated mother.
Rizal was a brilliant student and acquired his first degree at the age of 16. In May 1882, when he was 21 years old, he left for Spain to study medicine. His first stop on his way to Spain was Singapore, which was the first foreign land that he visited.
Singapore was then a thriving British port-city and he found it buzzing with people and economic activity. He visited numerous churches and temples around today’s Bras Basah area and was impressed by the Botanical Gardens as he was also a keen botanist. He was to visit Singapore on four other occasions. In his visits here, except for the last visit when he was held as a prisoner in a ship, he stayed at the Hotel de la Paix which was located at the site of today’s Peninsular Hotel in Coleman Street.
Rizal is remembered best for his two novels, Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer), (1887) and its sequel, El Filibusterismo (1891). Together, the two books exposed the excesses and abuses of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and generated a sense of national identity and consciousness among Filipinos.
Rizal used his writings to struggle for equality between the Spanish and Filipinos through peaceful means. Unfortunately, he was not successful in this attempt. His peaceful call for a more open and just society was rejected by the colonials. He was executed on December 30th 1896, at the age of 35, implicated in acts of sedition, treason and instigating a popular revolt that he never supported.
Rizal’s sacrifice was not in vain; his death became a rallying point against colonial domination. Filipinos declared their independence from Spain on 12th June 1898.