The Candaba Swamp, locally known as Pinac, is a vast expanse of farmlands during summer and a floodplain during the rainy season, which led many Spaniards in colonial times to misrepresent it as a lake on the map.
Rice fields alternate as fishponds, and farmers turn into fishermen as the seasons change. Their flexibility reflects the land’s ability to regenerate and flow with nature’s cyclical rhythms. Flood replenishes the soil, and then its ebb reveals the snails and fish which attract the migratory birds. The people of Candaba who get the best of both seasons are therefore assured of a year-long livelihood and supply of food.
There is a lesson to be learned here for the rest of the Kapampangans who live outside Candaba. They know the floods will come yet they still allow themselves to be inconvenienced by it. They build their subdivisions on floodplains and then get surprised when the floods come. They live in bungalows instead of houses on stilts. They buy expensive cars and don’t bother to get themselves a boat. They raise their roads which prevent the flood from draining. They erect buildings on the path of rivers and then force those rivers to change course. They spend taxpayers’ money dredging rivers which the silt from mountain slopes will just refill.
Our ancestors were never harassed by the constant floods in Pampanga because they had learned to build their communities around floodplains instead of in the middle of them. They let these natural catch basins to do their role as nature had intended. The Candaba Swamp which alternates as farmlands and fishponds is the perfect example of our ancient wisdom and a constant reminder that we should understand, respect and live with the cyclical floods, or suffer all the inconveniences and even face tragic consequences.
The Candaba Swamp keeps telling us that we are, first and foremost, river people. Our province is named after the pangpang (river banks) and we are called Kapampangans (people from the river banks). It’s about time we live up to that name.