Iriga joins DOT festival bandwagon

IRIGA CITY—Trying to attract tourists to come over for a memorable experience, Iriga City has hitched a ride on the festival bandwagon rolling down in many localities all over the archipelago.

“With 70 percent of our economy agriculture-based, we believe the only way for us to perk up business is through tourism,” Mayor Madelaine Alfelor Gazmen says.

For Iriga to be known, she says, the vehicle is the Tinagba Festival, which the city celebrated on Feb. 11 with a parade of floats, street dances and fireworks. Feb. 11 is  a special “nonworking day” in the city as declared under Presidential Proclamation No. 319.

Iriga, the hometown of movie star Nora Aunor and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, is a third-class city (annual income: P240 million-P320 million) located some 400 kilometers south of Manila, 37 km south of Naga City and 61 km north of Legazpi City. The landlocked city has 36 barangays and a population of 88,893 (2000 census).

Ancient Agta ritual

Its festival is named after the tinagba, a pre-Hispanic ritual practiced by the Agta tribe to appease the spirits for a bountiful harvest.

Akin to the Aeta people of Pampanga, the Agta used to roam Mt. Asog before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers. Today, members of the tribe are occupying resettlement areas in certain parts of Camarines Sur, which are administered by the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples.

Kristian Cordero, a multiawarded poet-fictionist and native of Iriga, says the Tinagba Festival was started by lawyer Jose Calleja Reyes, a book author, writer and historical researcher, more than two decades ago.

“[It] fused animistic and Catholic ritual offering as the event is held on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes every 11th day of February,” Cordero says.

Gazmen says her team has worked hard to revisit the story of the tinagba and design the program it submitted to the Department of Tourism (DOT) regional office.

Her hope is for the Tinagba to be written someday in travel magazines.

Investment

Expenses in mounting the event this year ran to millions of pesos. “We gave P1.5 million worth of prizes to the participants in the street dancing competition,” Gazmen says.

“If you want to make a quality tourism product work, you have to spend for it. It is like business where you have to invest capital in order to have profit,” she says.

She justifies the city government’s financial share to ensure that Iriga is on the tourism map and until such time that the festival is institutionalized and developed into a full-blown tourism product that private investors can cash in by running the show themselves. She cites as an example Cebu’s Sinulog Festival.

Compared to last year’s gross revenues of P60 million from tourism, the city government expected P70 million to P80 million this year. The amount would be shared by restaurants, hotels, peddlers, transportation workers and other service establishments.

Hotel occupancy up

Mary Ann Villar-Borromeo, a hotel manager, notes the surge in demand for hotel rooms on the first and second weeks of February when she had to hire workers to serve in the restaurant and other function areas of the hotel.

Tourists looking for accommodation spilled over to hotels and inns in the neighboring towns of Nabua and Baao during the festival week, she says.

The influx is consistent with what has been observed in the months of June, September and December, when room occupancy rate is at 80 percent, 65-percent and 70-percent, respectively, Borromeo says.

Nini Ravanilla, tourism regional head, says the mayor aggressively promotes the festival to Irigueños in the United States who return as balikbayan and bring along friends and relatives with them, thus increasing tourist arrivals.

Commercialization

Through the years, festivals in other cities in Bicol have lured their own tourists. These included the Tabak in Tabaco City, Ibalong in Legazpi City, and Sunflower in Ligao City, all in Albay; Sosogon in Sorsogon City; Voyadores in Naga City in Camarines Sur; and Lapay Bantigue in Masbate City.

Moreover, there are the Cimarrones in Pili and the Tig-Aw in Tigaon, both in Camarines Sur; the Pinyasan in Daet town and Busig in Labo town, both in Camarines Norte; and the Unod in Castilla town in Sorsogon.

Ravanilla says the provincial festivals include the Bantayog in Camarines Norte, Kaogma in Camarines Sur, Magayon in Albay, Catanduanon in Catanduanes, Kasanggayahan in Sorsogon, and Rodeo in Masbate.

Cordero, however, is wary of the increasing “commercialization” of the Tinagba Festival. He says the real essence of the event as it relates to the indigenous culture of the locality is actually gone in this year’s staging.

The parade of floats adorned with “artificially crafted replica” of agricultural products instead of the real ones has totally changed the tradition of harvest offering, he says.

“Before, real agricultural products in bull carts drawn by carabaos paraded the streets of the city with almost all local institutions here participating. But now, people here are just spectators,” Cordero says.