Musings on the first month of 2007

New Year, new life! Though you are mired in debt after the Christmas shopping, overweight with all those holiday dinners and parties - the season has not ended. There is still the Feast of Three Kings, celebrated quietly by most but in style by the people of Kalibo with its Ati-atihan, Iloilo, with their Dinagyang and Cebu with their Sinulog.

Over the years, I have caught the festival fever and experienced all these first hand. For many tourists and travelers, the first problem is trying to figure out where Kalibo actually is? Apart from the festival, its main claim to fame is that it’s the alternative airport when all flights to Boracay via nearby Caticlan are fully booked! Of course, come the third weekend in January, all flights to Kalibo are fully booked for the Ati-atihan festival. This festival remains to me, the mother of all Philippine festivals, after all it is more than 800 years old to date.

Kalibo’s Ati-atihan

The folklore behind the Ati-atihan festival dates back to pre-colonial times. One version of the story is that around the 13th century a group of Malay datus arrived from Borneo and in the barter of Panay, traded golf for land from the Atis – the original dark-skinned pagan native of Panay. The Atis departed the hills, leaving the coastal land to the new arrivals. Each year, the new arrivals, blacked up as Atis, and held a festival as a celebration of friendship and thanks. Ati-atihan actually means "imitation natives." Much later, the Spanish came along and somehow added the Sto. Niño figure to Christianize an otherwise Pagan festival. "If you can’t lick them, join them" the Spaniards must have thought, because before you knew it, the Sto. Niño, the Holy Child, became the rallying cry, "Hala Bira, Viva Señor Sto. Niño!" The soot blackening, street-dancing festival became religious in nature, complete with a torch procession. But the beating of the drums in themselves herald of revelry, are but the accompaniment to wild costumes and wild dancing in the streets…which builds up and climaxes into a gigantic frenzy on Saturday and Sunday…and culminates in a huge procession that lasts into the night of Sunday evening.

Such is the heady excitement of the festival that for days building up towards the climax on the third Sunday of January, all the streets of downtown Kalibo naturally swell with revelers, natives and guests, and tourists, shoulder-to-shoulder, and there is no better way around than on foot! Although there are other towns on Panay with an Ati-atihan tradition, Kalibo has established itself as the main event and was even voted Asia’s best tourist attraction in 1983 by the United Nation’s Committee on Tourism.

Iloilo’s Dinagyang

Dinagyang on the other hand, is not nearly as spontaneous or intimate as the Ati-atihan. But it is easier to get to Iloilo for its good air links with plenty of seat capacity and a number of large business hotels.

The main event of Dinagyang is the Sunday parade on the fourth weekend in January. The name Dinagyang came into being in 1977 to distinguish the Iloilo festival from other Ati-atihan celebrations. It is heavily organized and extremely competitive. "Tribes" representing each barangay prepares months in advance, practicing highly choreographed routines in secret, each one hoping to win one of the Dinagyang Awards for best costume; best performance; best in discipline, etc.

Each tribe puts on a spectacular show that follows the same general theme: lots of pagan Atis in colorful costumes whirling around and generally having a macho war-like good time to a cacophony of frenetic drumming, arrival of a group of well-costumed girlies, lots of aerial stunts as various dancers get hoisted into the air on poles and platforms, then eventual presentation of the Sto. Niño’s image to the awestruck pagans who bow down, gladly accept the new faith and leap up shouting "Viva Sto. Niño! Viva Sto. Niño.Viva! Viva!"

The trouble here is that the performances take place in a number of enclosed judging areas on the procession and each of these arenas is packed. As a "drop" in visitor, I found it difficult to find any decent place to watch or get any seats. Not only that, but had I gotten a seat, it would have been quite an ordeal to perch on a hard wooden bench for most of the day to see all the tribes perform. It’s very tempting to sneak back to the hotel room and watch the proceedings on the local cable TV.

Cebu’s Sinulog

Cebu is home to the Sto. Niño legend. Just prior to interfering with local tribal wars and getting killed in the process, Magellan is reputed to have masterminded the conversion to Christianity of Rajah Humabon and Hara Amihan, wife of royal Rajah with the presentation of a wooden image of the Sto. Niño. At that time, not only the rulers were baptized but also about 800 of their subjects.

Forty-five years later, a member of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi’s expedition found the statue in a charred remains of a village with its natives dancing the Sinulog not just to worship their native idol but as a sigh of reverence to the Sto. Niño. Its survival and rediscovery was viewed to be miraculous – a sign from God that the new colonizing ventures was truly blessed.

Sinulog refers to the dance ritual in honor of the miraculous image of the Sto. Niño. The dance is characterize by moving two steps forward and one step backward to the sound of drums and is said to resemble the "sulog" (current) of what was then known as Cebu’s Pahina River. Thus in Cebuano, they say sinulog. But more than the meaning of the word is the dance’s significance. It is said that Sinulog is the link between the country’s pagan past and its Christian present.

Although Sinulog coincides with Atiatihan in Kalibo, there are distinct differences. Sinulog was created in its present form less than 27 years ago and boasts of an extravagant parade of floats, dance troupes and drummers all with lavish, exotic costumes from the fantastic to the "traditional" from Alice in Wonderland to Siam, from crab warriors to scarecrows – each group features a contender for Miss Sinulog who sashays along at the front of the troupe, smiling sweetly and cradling a Sto. Niño doll.

The troupes perform their ritual two or three times but then, understandably, take a rest. Many of the participants just sit down in the street and wait to move on. And so the parade crawls its way around the route, and starts with as much time resting as moving. People from all walks of life dance the Sinulog. The Sto. Niño supposedly, when appeased, will grant a dancer’s of supplicant’s wishes. A closer observation will reveal that the dancers are shouting their petitions and thanksgiving to the Sto. Niño. These pilgrims have to shout, for they want to be sure that the Sto. Niño hears them: "Pit Señor Sto. Niño, please send us rain!"

Visitors like me to these three festivals have been struck by the dancers’ unconcern for the people around them and the intense faith shown on their faces and leaves even the critic in respectful silence and awe.

For the last four centuries, neither war, typhoon, earthquake, nor elections have diminished the faith of these pilgrims to these festivals and will probably remain forever in the pattern of their daily lives — Hala bira!