Mercado: A Sta. Monica Festival

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

TODAY is Mexico’s town fiesta. Mayor Teddy Tumang, Pampanga’s most outstanding mayor for 2010, should take a cue from Santo Tomas Mayor Naguit’s “Sabauga Festival”, as well as the Pakbung Judas gimmick which bombed the “Deadly Sins,” rather than the traditional Judas figure.

Mexico’s patroness, St. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine, the wayward, rebellious and criminal son of a great mother. She never stopped praying for the conversion of her son, taking years to turn Augustine into God’s fold.
A festival of local “Monicas”, garbed in similar Sta. Monica habit and comprising of distraught mothers with known delinquent children or philandering husbands would invest the fiesta celebration with highly relevant and spiritually redeeming value.

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A special procession of the Sta. Monica impersonators will be a spectacle in sight and in substance as well.

I hope Mayor Teddy, parish priest Fr. Larry Sarmiento, the Committee de Festejos led by printer Chris Gomez and his colleagues will meet and formulate this project for next year’s fiesta.

Fr. Larry may justify the SM-Mexico project (Sta. Monica of Mexico) in socio-economic, religious and moral terms. The SM-Mexico procession may include concerned mothers with problem husbands or with delinquent children, mothers with OFWs in strife-torn countries; single mothers with children crying for paternal support; jobless and loveless women wanting fulfillment. Being a single girl, the energetic BM Trina Dizon may lead a section of devotees in that category, while the mayor’s pretty wife Febe may find occasion to pray for a bright political future of her darling Teddy who is on his last term.

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The problem with most politicians-advisers is they get away with the results of a bad advice.

With not a little embarrassment Governor Lilia Pineda, after buying the concept of the failed ID system proposal by certain allies at the provincial board, announced she was dropping the idea.

A Board Member called “The Hitman” was identified as the sponsor of the failed proposal which convinced Nanay Baby to adopt and even certified as an urgent matter for Sanggunian action.

As proposed by the author, the barangay identification system will undertake the registry of residents in all Pampanga villages. In effect the system will require the use of ID cards to identify concerned subjects. The latter has no basis in law, it was discovered.

The botched project was not only ill-planned, badly researched, and haphazardly dispatched. It did not undergo an intensive and comprehensive public hearing.

Gov. Pineda, being passionate about her job, is often swamped with too many unsolicited advices to maximize her performance. The lady’s determination to succeed as a total performer should not be taken advantaged of by people who find in this “weakness” the opportunities to ingratiate themselves by pushing programs which she finds indefensible, if impossible, to achieve.

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In a Radyo Patrol (ABS) newscast, another “hoax” was being perpetrated in Arayat, Pampanga. A reported mountain spring at a Marian grotto at Barrio Baño was featured together with a fanatic crowd of local residents, many of whom testified being cured of an ailment by drinking its water.

Newscaster Gracie Rutao, who reads the news like she was annotating a zarzuela, reported marvelous results from those who had soaked themselves in the spring water.

The grotto stands a short distance from the headquarters of Rizalistas in Baño who worship the hero as god and who put the famous Rep. Dong Gonzales in the same esteem.

Pampangos, while generally educated, are gullible. They go for, or are easily attracted by, sensational things, people, and events.

They find flagellants, with bleeding backs, as spectacles. We find the ersatz crucifixion in Cutud and Pampang highly amusing.

A papier mache Judas that gets blasted after the morning mass in Easter draws huge crowds. The parish priest’s face among all in the audience shows the most delight.

Having participated in the burning of a cut-out Judas, the multitude goes home fulfilled. Not one has thought of their local officials who have been stealing more than thirty pieces of silver from the town coffers under the guise of MOE.

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Should the “miraculous” grotto spring from Arayat acquire a long shelf-life as a cure-for-all, Rev. Fr. Resty Lumanlan should take his street dancing Sinukwan Festival from San Fernando to Arayat.

After all, his unique December festival was conceived as a cultural revival in honor of Sinukwan, the mythical god.

This festival might even serve as a counterpoint to the Rizalistas’ own religious rites to honor Jose Rizal.

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A new religious spectacle is the Tapak Festival of Bacolor. Devotees to San Guillermo would trek the processional streets in bare feet (tapak) as a form of penitence. The event is mass-based with the town’s unshod as eager participants. The society people are known by their feet with newly manicured nails and delicate heels. They add glamour to the tapak event but rushed to foot spas for repair and massage soon after.
This concept of spectacular “tapakan” rubbed on a Mabalacat basketball team which coach, a village politician, ordered the players to remove their rubber shoes and wear flip-flops instead during the parade.

The coach, reported under pressure from a provincial official who wants to embarrass Mayor Boking Morales, conspired and complied with his patron’s advice and paraded the town’s cage players in rubber slippers. It portrayed Mabalacat’s “yagit” status when the soon to be city has an income of over Pl00 million.

The objective was to show that the mayor did not support nor give assistance to the municipal team. The truth is Mayor Boking had already advanced expenses for the players. The cage team wanted shoes of a special (imported) brand which were delayed in delivery by the supplier.

Is someone gearing up to be future City Mayor of Mabalacat? I asked Chairman Deng, the mayor’s spokesman. I never saw Mr. Deng in Intensity 5 anger, his eyes were burning bright, focused in direct contempt of someone whose name he refused to mention.