It’s more fun in Binaliw Festival
The bizarre and the religious mixed it up during high tide in Olango Island off Mactan, Cebu yesterday.
Organizers said at least 5,000 people participated in this year’s Binaliw Festival which honors the island’s patron saint, Vicente Ferrer.
Baliw in Cebuano means crazy.
The celebration started with a fluvial procession of about a hundred motorized and paddle boats carrying the image of Saint Vicente Ferrer from barangay Sta. Rosa.
Many of the passengers were cross-dressing men who wore cotton dusters and makeup. They shared the boat ride with little girls in white angel costumes and wings as part of the traditional Flores de Mayo homage to the Virgin Mary.
Some merrymakers were content to frolic in the shore.
Erwin Eyas, event coordinator, said the festival has been celebrated since the 18th century, evolving over time from pagan rites to a local fluvial procession to honor a Catholic saint.
Eyas said festival parti- cipants act out their collective and personal tragedies in strang ways.
But as outlandish as their acts may be, the point is to offer sacrifice and seek the intercession of San Vicente, he said.
Ferlisa Aying, an 87-year-old resident of barangay San Vicente, said she’s witnessed the festival ever since she was a child, every third week of May, depending on the day with the highest tide.
According to Aying’s parents, it was a celebration passed down by their forefathers.
It began as a ritual offering to the gods to prevent plagues and diseases as well as to seek blessings for good weather for a bountiful fish catch.
Bad things are believed to happen if the gods are not appeased by the celebration, according to island elders.
One tradition involves the staging of cat fights where cats are pitted against other kinds of animals like frogs or fighting cocks.
Some men held aloft wooden phallic symbols, an echo of the fertility rites once celebrated on the island.
Other residents said this was a ritual of thanksgiving for the successfully healing of an island dweller’s prostate cancer.
Eyas said that throughout the years there have been attempts to change the festival in accordance with Catholic teaching while maintain island traditions.
“But it’s hard to stop people who have made it their devotion to do these weird things,” Eyas said.
He said Catholic Church authorities tried to discourage the festival but San Vicente residents persisted even if the clergy refused to give their blessing.
Residents Redjel Saton and Dionesia Lanoy said they enjoyed the Binaliw Festival but didn’t forget their religious obligation.
They attended Mass in church in the afternoon and prayed to their patron saint.
