HAPPY
WEEKEND
By Gina
Dizon
SAGADA, MOUNTAIN
PROVINCE- Why not bring back the celebration of the town fiesta to its old
name, Sagada Town Fiesta is the emphatic assertion of Auntie Emilia Cadiogan,
my next door neighbor who manages Yoghurt Haus.
Auntie Emilia
recollects how the town fiesta was then celebrated in the earlier days when the
town’s people play games with rivaling softball players such as Southern
vendors versus Poblacion vendors stressing on the participation of its very own
people during the town’s festive day celebrated every first week of February.
Even foreigners have a taste of how the town fiesta was celebrated with
tourists versus iSagada playing basketball.
Ballgames is a participative
event and the townspeople loved it watching and cheering when a
hefty-built candidate for senior citizen whacks the bat and the ball cascades
to Sayocsoc down the creek. Cheers and more cheers shall resound at the
softball ground of the Mission Compound and from where my house sits, I could
hear festive shouts of homerun or the batter having been declared ‘out’.
The next game is followed by the announcer’s first caaaaaaaaaalll for softball
boys: Ambasing Elementary School versus Antadao Elementary
School….. And so on it goes.
Till the recent years
when this scenario in the olden days was not felt nor heard with obvious
silence at the softball ground where first ‘caaaaalllls…’ were not
blaring anymore and no loud cheering was heard. Whatever happened.
Activity was centered
in the basketball court and this is where the announcers’ table was found.
Whatever happened with the announcers table at the softball ground asks the
question if there is lack of announcers or there is lack of sound system or
both.
Anyway, people wanted
to converge come every fiesta and this is obvious when the
grounds in front of the church is filled with picnickers from northern,
eastern and southern barangays who share their packed food on the first day of
the event and eat lunch together. People automatically and by
community norms of converging together do this ‘collective picnic at the church
grounds’ that I noticed happened the previous fiesta celebrations just after
the happening of ground demonstrations and cultural presentations at the soft
ball grounds.
Now this is what the
Etag Festival Committee of this year wants to do. A gathering of people for
them to enjoy their own town fiesta. And so some amount is shared from the
municipal coffers for each barangay to share with other barangays and
zonal lunches to be done. Some amount is also sourced from barangays as
counterpart. Mayor James Pooten was emphatic about this and so with other
members of the working committees until some amount was able to be budgeted for
aid to barangays.
Barangay Captain of
Tetep-an Sur Kapitan “Alas’ Bagsingit is ardent about people coming together
and enjoy especially among the children and the youth.
The previous fiesta
celebrations saw the conduct of activities to make children and the youth happy
aside from ball games to join, be happy and earn money. For this year’s
celebration, we have contests on musical renditions, poster making and video
production on disaster awareness, essay writing, quiz bee, quiz show, Little Ms
Sagada , Ms Teen Sagada. This apart from cultural presentations, street
dancing, dance competitions; and group contests on ground demonstration, street
dancing, and ball games.
Of course we have the
perennial tug of war that cannot be ignored and done at the last day of the
fiesta in the afternoon of the day. This is a game which always makes my
day and the fiesta fulfilling enough even if I watch this many times
over. How players would pit strength against strength and even use some
tactics to win such as not moving, holding on to the rope and suddenly jerking
the opponents down. Muscles would flex and one can see every nerve of strength
to hold on to the rope, pulling towards one’s collective strength till the
stronger one gets the opponent loosening their grip on their rope and lose.
This festival’s
theme ‘A celebration of an empowered community through faith and culture’
rightfully tells of a people of Sagada who in most instances
asserted their collective opinion and statement on matters they sense is
proper, what should be and what is good for the community.
While there are some
isolated cases of some having slipped off the control of Sagada,
these are instances always cited and used as reference not to happen again.
For one, a demilitarized
town in the late 80s speaks of a people who don’t want their community
suffering again from either the NPA or the AFP so the call for a
demilitarization of the town and eventual declaration of a peace
zone for Sagada in the early 1990s by the national government.
Other instances talk
of a people who don’t want a 5-Star Hotel nor Jollibee, McDonald or Dunking
Donuts operating in their vicinity besides the multinational food chain company
is already a giant firm unimaginable to even allow it to operate in a small
community and shoving people off their livelihood.
And so on. Business in
the town is largely owned by residents themselves though there are isolated
cases of ‘outsiders’ operating in town. Isolated cases which are always being
brought out as examples not to be repeated.
Sagada having been
‘empowered’ keeping on to their culture amidst the
introduction of another Christian faith managed to see their culture in the new
faith introduced by American missionaries in the early 1900s and vice
versa.
This age-old value of
“inayan” closely akin to the Christian value of doing unto others what you
would like others do unto you has time and again kept each Sagadan hold on to
his ears and examine his conscience if something is right or wrong or proper or
improper. And most of the time, community consciousness creeps in and
tells the person how to behave. And such norm is a guiding value and belief for
one to base his actions on. Where some have done another way, it is not
surprising to hear that the someone ‘comes from another place’.
Anyway comes Etag
Festival and when this was made into an ordinance by the Sangguniang
Bayan in 2011 with the first Etag fest celebrated on same year recognized
the importance of ‘etag’ in the cultural life of the iSagada. Etag is used in
almost all cultural rituals – dangtey, begnas, senga, and sabusab - and in
almost any contemporary occasion- baptisms, graduations, and thanksgiving,
family and clan get- together events. And while the olden days made use of
the ‘etag’ as a sacred delicacy mixed with chicken or pork,
now has seen ‘etag’ sold in market costing P180 and to as high as P220
nowadays.
Etag festival while it
has been criticized for a no- show of it for sale during the four to five day
festival has been that way since the festival was celebrated in 2011. Though
there has been some ‘etag; sold during the first day of the event the rest of
the days saw the lack or none of it.
And so comments
of an ‘etagless’ etag festival contrary to how other places portray their
own festival such as a longest line of longganiza and many more longganiza in a
longganiza festival or volumes of bangus for a Bangus festival or flowers
abounding in the much visited Panagbenga festival in Baguio City.
The trend says the Etag
festival beckons people to prepare for the big day and raise pigs and more pigs
so to make more etag and more sales and on. But it doesn’t happen that way.
People either have not been keen in raising a number of pigs and producing
‘etag’ and more ‘etag’ due to whatever reason. I am more inclined to believe
that people in Sagada produce what they can manually handle and not based on a
factory-mind set.
So we see fruit wines
in bottles and cakes sold by what the family can produce and woven materials in
what the family and a few worker-weavers can work on. Boxes and boxes and boxes
of Sagada made jams and jellies and ‘etag’ by the tons is not something or
factory to see in town.
Changing the mind set
of what is Etag festival from a contemporary capitalist setting to a symbolical
and cultural celebration of what it is, and not a celebration based on how
others commercially celebrate it seems to be what should manageably be. We
celebrate the Etag festival to be reminded of a culture that binds us as a
people and keeps community values strong as the value of ‘inayan’, a culture-
based celebration of faith and belief. That is, one shall not be looking
for lines of ‘liniding’ ay etag along the streets or piled in booths. It is
good enough that a visitor was able to buy a kilo of ‘etag’ and gotten a taste
of etag pizza or etag sandwich in one of those booths set up purposely for the
fiesta, and came to imbibe culturally what ‘etag’ means beyond that aromatic
smell and tasty delicacy of salted pork smoked from alnus leaves for a period
of time
While
this is so, let us celebrate the Etag festival in the spirit of a town fiesta.
Unless the town’s legislative body shall think otherwise and officially
recover the old name, Sagada Town fiesta back and the Etag
festival to be held in another date to celebrate culture. Or as some say
another festival to celebrate the bounty of creation to recognize Sagada’s
agricultural and homemade- products one of which is ‘etag’.
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