Badoc celebrates colorful 300 years with festival

By Freddie G. Lazaro

BADOC, Ilocos Norte — This historic southern gateway town of Ilocos Norte has started the celebration of its tri-centennial Easter Sunday as the main highlight of the opening of this year’s “Bado-Badoc Festival” on April 20-28.

As part of Badoc town’s 300th year anniversary, a tower was unveiled after the concelebrated mass attended by the local officials led by Mayor Arlene Torralba with Reverend Father Danny Laeda as officiating priest.

Badoc town is home to the pilgrimage site of the Diocesan Sanctuary of Our Lady Cause of Our Joy or La Virgen Milagrosa church.

For this year’s 8-day Bado-Badoc Festival, the town will showcase its products made out of corn husks and Bado-Bado grass, which is indigenous in its riverbanks.

These raw materials can be fashioned into baskets, table-runners and decorations.

Mayor Torralba said parades, street dancing, pageantry and a trade fair showcasing the town’s beauty, talents and products are the lined- up activities to attract more tourists and visitors this summer season.

To note, Badoc is the birthplace of Filipino painter, Juan Luna. It also houses the Sanctuary of the Miraculous Statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the La Virgen Milagrosa.

History traces the life-sized statue to Nagasaki, Japan. It was sent floating in the sea by missionaries operating in secret in Japan (for fear of persecution during the Tokugawa Regime), along with the Miraculous Statue of the Black Nazarene (Sinait’s Santo Cristo Milagroso).

It was first found by local fishermen in the shores of Barangay Dadalaquiten, the boundary between the towns of Sinait (Ilocos Sur) and Badoc (Ilocos Norte), in the year 1620.

Only fishermen from Sinait were able to move the Statue of the Black Nazarene.

The fishermen from Badoc, unable to move the Black Nazarene, were able to move the La VirgenMilagrosa that came with it—which was, in turn, unable to be moved by the fishermen from Sinait.

They took the statues to their respective towns, hence becoming their patron saints.

Today, the La Virgen Milagrosa is enshrined at the Badoc Church.

It was recalled that the town’s first settlers were people belonging to a tribe known officially asTingguian but whom the Ilocanos commonly called Itneg.