THE VISAYAS is host to the three major festivals of the country—the Ati-atihan of Aklan, the Dinagyang of Iloilo, and the Sinulog of Cebu.

They are held at around the same time of the year, and all celebrate the Santo Niño, which icon was used by the Spanish conquistadors to tame the natives and Christianize the islands in the 16th century.

Of the three, Ati-atihan is the oldest, tracing its roots to a 13th-century Aeta ritual; while Dinagyang has attained the status of premier festival of the country, having been elevated by the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines to the Hall of Fame as the Best Tourism Event in the country.

Started in 1969 as an offshoot of Ati-atihan and renamed in 1977, Dinagyang (Hiligaynon for “merrymaking”) is held every fourth Sunday of January, or a week after Ati-atihan and Sinulog. It has a reputation for costumery and performance, and is the source of choreographers and drummers for other festivals in the country, which hire them to train their own.

This year’s edition of the festival, Jan. 22-23, was attended by Indian Ambassador Shri Yogendra Kumar and Vietnamese Ambassador Vu Xuan Truong; Senators Franklin Drilon, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Miguel Zubiri; the President’s sister Ma. Elena “Ballsy” Aquino-Cruz, who was formally declared as adopted daughter of Iloilo City.
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To see how commercialization and tourism have secularized the Queen Festival of the Philippines and pushed its original religious devotion down the drain, one only has to listen to what the merrymakers are shouting the loudest in the streets. While they are shouting “Viva Señor Santo Niño!” in the Ati-atihan and “Pit Señor!” in the Sinulog, in the Dinagyang it is “Hala bira!”

(It has been observed that the Ati-atihan is the most religious of the three, and certainly the most spontaneous in celebration.)

Holy crap. I’m not going to touch on Duero’s ideas (yet), but there is some astoundingly bad history in evidence here.

First of all, there is no way that the Ati-Atihan is an offshoot of an Aeta ritual; because no ritual exists that it could have. Just because it’s name is taken from the Atis language does not mean that that is where it’s origins are from. As well, the patron saint of Kalibo (where the Ati-atihan originates) is not the Santo Nino, but John the Baptist. So, this idea that the fiesta developed because the Santo Nino was the patron saint is invalid.

The roots of the fiesta are found in the very words that he so ignorantly dismisses: “Hala Bira!” Hala Bira is in fact originally from the Ati-Atihan (ignoring that he seems to favor the Sinulog, a totally made-up fiesta that only began in the 1980s). Since the Dinagyang is supposedly an offshoot of the Ati-Atihan it is perfectly reasonable that the cry of the Ati-Atihan is found in the Dinagyang.

I’m going to defer to Anding Roces from his book Fiesta to describe the true history of the Ati-Atihan:

The Ati-Atihan had its beginnings in a cannoned fort named after the Santo Nino. Cannoning then was a hot and sooty business…To the beating of knobbed gongs and cries of ‘Allah! Allah! Patay! Patay!’ the Moros attacked. Invoking their fort patron, the Santo Nino, the Capiz cannoneers unleashed their thunder. When the smoke of battle cleared, the victorious cannoneers emerged black as Atis. The whole town gathered…shouting “Viva Santo Nino! Viva Santo Nino!” In the celebration that followed, many sooted their faces and bodies to identify themselves with the courageous cannoneers. The Ati-Atihan is an extension of that moment and to this day, the cry of the Ati-Atihan is ‘Hala Bira!’ - to strike a blow.

The history and knowledge of the Ati-Atihan demonstrated in this article is pathetic. By the way, Dinagyang has only a small mention in the Fiesta:

The Dinagyang only started a few years ago. It is not a spontaneous festival like the Ati-Atihan. Tourists remain as spectators and the entire parade is rehearsed to perfection.

Which means it’s role as the Queen of Philippine fiestas is shaky at best. The fact is the Dinagyan was always a secular affair. If they want to get back to its roots (so to speak) they best start by understanding how and why the Ati-Atihan developed (since that is what they modeled it after) and, more importantly, what it means.

(Source: ascottyfollower)

The parol is a Philippine Christmas ornament wholly our own. Other countries do, in their own way, utilize representations of the Star in their celebrations. But, biased or not, I do not think any have the type of care and craftsmanship that go into ours. In concept it is one of the more humble of decorations, yet in our context it is elevated to rarified artistic heights. Anding Roces in his Fiesta describes them:

…the star lanterns are not only gargantuan but dazzling displays that reach a pyrotechnical splendor. Each lantern represents the synergistic endeavor of a barrio; from a design, the men prepare the wooden frame; women assess the cost of materials; children work on the paper patterns…

In our fiestas and celebrations that true spirit of the Filipino, of communal cooperation and artistry, is revealed. To harness that in our everyday lives, in the managing of our country, in the preservation of our natural resources, would be a gift indeed.

For such a prominent symbol of our festive nature, very little is written in the way of poetry and literature centered around the parol. Though, when you think about, for one of the major celebrations on the Philippine calendar, very little in the way of enduring literature has actually been produced. As one writer lamented, we do not have a classic Filipino Christmas story. Art though we do find in abundance.

Our most prominent writer did use the parol in his works. Jose Rizal utilized the absence of the parol to describe the decidedly not festive air of a small town:

It was Christmas Eve but the town was sad. Not one paper lantern hung from the windows…

That was in the 19th century, and the parol endures today.

Father Horacio de la Costa, SJ did though pen a short poem about the parol (courtesy of Fiesta):

I do not think the three Wise Men

Were Persian Kings at all.

I think it much more likely they

Set sail from out Manila Bay

In answer to the call.

And though the great historians

May stare at me, and frown

I still maintain the three Wise Men

Were Kings from my home town

And if you ask why I affirm

That Melchior was King of Tondo,

When Gaspar ruled Sampaloc

And Balthazar Binondo -

We will not argue. We will walk

The streets on Christmas Eve,

An I will show you the poor man’s

rafters,

Where hangs the Star the Kings

sought after,

High above on Christian prayer

and laughter - 

You will see it, and believe!

For when they crossed the sea again

From Bethlehem afar,

They lost their camels in the sea,

And they forgot the Christmas tree,

But they brought back to you and me

The secret of the Star

-The Star

Literary license aside, the parol did travel from the other side of the world to our shores: It is our rendition of the famous Mexican pinata. And much like the belen it originated in Italy before filtering through Mexico. The result after we got our hands on it is a joyously kaleidescopic, almost psychedelic, Christmas tradition.

No Philippine house is complete without a parol in the window come Christmas time.

Picture care of Google Images and 365 Great Pinoy Stuff

Was doing research for something and again came across some lines by Carlos P Romulo, which @ellobofilipino and I had previously discussed. Thought they merited a bit of additional comment.

The term “false nationalist” often gets thrown around. Usually in relation to someone who doesn’t view the Imperial eras (specifically the Spanish) with a certain degree of contempt. And yes, those most contemptuous are (unsurprisingly) a certain ilk of historian and thinker (Constantino et al). There has always been a bit of contradiction in this. On the one hand, these thinkers have exalted pre-Hispanic Philippines, while deriding the three hundred years of Spain, curiously excluding the US era. Yet, they often dismiss the tribesmen as something not worth considering. It is as men like William Henry Scott and Fernando Zialcita have said: They really haven’t opened up a book and studied our pre-Hispanic past, or even truly understood our history. To appropriate one of their favorite phrases; veneration without understanding.

Included in the term ‘false nationalist’ even are (or were, but I suspect the attitude remains among certain groups) those who consider the tribesmen and non-Christian Filipinos as…well…Filipinos. As I’ve demonstrated, the term Filipino was even first applied to them. To claim FIlipino for one, to the exclusion of others is frankly erroneous. Some consider them outside the mainstream, not worthy of consideration. Today, some tribes even feel that way; marginalized in their own country. The fact is, they are Filipino; in every true sense of the word.

One example of this type of colonial mentality is best expressed by the (thankfully) inimitable Carlos P Romulo. A gentleman, who as he was once described to me, couldn’t ride an elevator alone. He always needed someone else to push the buttons, since, you know, he couldn’t reach them.

When MacArthur recounted this battle to his staff, he ended his account with this instruction: “Gentlemen, when you tell that story, stand in tribute to these gallant Igorots.” After the battle, the first one to denigrate the Igorots was Carlos P Romulo, who in his Mother America described them as “primitive black people” and disowned them with this racist remark: “The Igorot is not a Filipino and we are not related, and it hurts our feelings to see him pictured in American newspapers under such captions as ‘Typical Filipino Tribesman.’” (This is the Gunga Din Syndrome).

It relegates the minority groups that have respected and retained the customs and traditions of their ancestors to a national limbo.

- Fiesta by Alejandro Roces

The Gunga Din Syndrome was a reference to the famed Rudyard Kipling and his poems:

‘E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
‘E put me safe inside,
An’ just before ‘e died,
“I ‘ope you liked your drink”, sez Gunga Din.

Gunga Din

A poem yes, that references the goodness of the brown man, of a “blackfaced crew”, who saved the life of the white man. And in showing his fidelity, demonstrated the best virtues of his race. Primarily because it was at the expense of his own life. Yes, the final stanza may have seemed to hint at a sense of conscience, he was “a better man than I” the good Gunga Din. In light of “White Man’s Burden”, well, it does make you wonder.

The “White Man’s Burden,” on the other hand, was a call to arms for Americans. It exhorted the nation on to lift us up out of our uncivilized circumstances and into the shining light of modernity.

Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

White Man’s Burden

The fawning lines and contempt shown by Carlos P Romulo of his own people are examples of that colonial mentality that remains prevalent among some ‘educated’. His is a false nationalism; a nationalism based on being what others decide you should be, and not exalting and admiring what you are. That is not nationalism at all.

Consider what Jose Rizal wrote when battle-scarred Igorots were displayed for Spanish amusement during an Exposition 1887 in Madrid (shades of the St. Louis Exposition twenty years later):

I worked hard against this degradation of my fellow Filipinos that they should not be exhibited among the animals and plants! But I was helpless…I would rather that they all got sick and died so they would suffer no more. Let the Philippines forget that her sons have been treated like this!

Yet, it is the men like Carlos P Romulo who are often held up as nationalists in the ‘truest’ sense. And, at times, the prism through which we view ourselves has been crafted by them.

In popular consciousness do we adhere to Nick Joaquin and Anding Roces? Or do we honor men of Romuloesque stature (not physically though but mentally): Those who came to power through sycophantic means, thus conditioning generations to come to think in that manner.

Do we honor our low culture, rituals and fiestas? Or do we deride them has uncivilized remnants of our past and wish we would “leave it behind”? Or do we respect the culture we have and have developed, and understand it is what makes us unique in the world? There is nothing wrong with our culture, no matter what is said. This I firmly believe.

In other words, choose to be Gunga Din or Filipino?

Addendum: In the understanding of our culture and history we have to think beyond this strictures handed down through the generations. The research and the work is there, it was done in the 50’s and 60’s. Yet has been sadly forgotten. We do not reject the past. But we reject the colonial evaluation of it.

The Pahiyas

I’ve always had a bit of a soft-spot for fiestas (probably because of who started my exploration of Philippine history).

He aptly described them as our “highest community expression”. And this is an remarked truth about fiestas: they are one of the social organizations that binds a Philippine community together. They also are one of the lingering threads that connects modern Philippines to our Spanish past and, ultimately, to our pre-Hispanic history. They are not just the our highest community expression, in their way they express much of what is our soul.

Today is the Pahiyas Festival of Lucban. Lucban is a famed center of pagan and Catholic religiousness: it is one of the unique towns in the Philippines.

The dominant leitmotif of the pahiyas is the kiping (made from rice paste and cast in multiple colors). The pahiyas and Lucban fairly explodes with colors on fiesta day.

The patron saint is San Isidro Labrador, patron saint of farmers. In the Philippines, he represents as much farmers as the introduction of the plow, and the domestication of the carabao. Much like everywhere else, agricultural development, the shift from sustenance to surplus farming, allowed bigger communities. In the Philippine setting, we sometimes point to the Spanish-era policy of grouping under the bell, as what drove town formation. But, without concurrent innovation in agriculture this would not have been sustainable. The pahiyas (and the other carabao fiestas) celebrate the two driving forces behind the formation of the Philippine nation: agriculture and Catholicism.

Pahiyas is roughly translated as “peaceful offering”. And that is what is at the heart of the fiesta: a thanksgiving and veneration of Nature and a reminder (and thanks as well) to San Isidro for a harvest.

Lucban grew in the shadow of Mt. Banahaw (a famed pagan and Catholic pilgrimage site); it was, in the 19th century, the site of the Hermano Pule revolt. The town, in it’s celebration of the pahiyas connects so many threads of Philippine culture and history together.

It is the fiesta at its syncretic best.

Note: Just got the image from Google search. So thanks to the uploader!