Lucban’s Pahiyas goes simple, uses actual produce

LUCBAN, Philippines—The Pahiyas Festival here on Thursday remained one of the country’s top  May-time tourist attractions but the participation of some residents in the annual colorful event is decreasing.

Although most residents along the designated roads festooned their houses with farm produce, rice “kiping” or their main sources of livelihood, like hats, bags and “longganisa,” numerous homes were noticeably bare of any ornament while some were just draped with a few token decorations.

Tina Tridente, a member of the Pahiyas executive committee, said this year’s festival route was shorter and the number of houses that participated was also fewer compared to previous years.

“We have only 567 listed participating houses compared to last year’s 640,” Tridente said.

Lucban Catholic church leader Msgr. Antonio Obeña and healing priest Fr. Joey Faller, both Lucban town natives, attributed the diminishing participation of the locals in the annual religious-turned-commercialized event to the hard economic condition of the people.

“Maybe because of poverty,” Faller and Obeña told the Inquirer in separate interviews on Thursday, the day of the Pahiyas Festival held as a thanksgiving to San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers.

One of the locals with token decorations on her house said the owners of fully decorated houses spent a few thousand pesos for the elaborate adornment.

“I don’t have that kind of money, so what I offer to San Isidro is only the produce from my small farm,” the resident told the Inquirer on the sidelines of the procession.

Obeña was all praises for his town mates who used their own harvested crops as decoration. “That’s the true spirit of the celebration—to say thanks to San Isidro for the good harvest,” the monsignor said.

But unlike past celebrations, the displays of different crops, kiping and native delicacies, among many others, were no longer left to be grabbed by residents following the procession.

The decorations will have to stay untouched until Sunday, the end of the festival.

Still, despite hard times, local police placed the number of Pahiyas visitors at two million.

Local officials, headed by Lucban Mayor Olivier Dator, led the afternoon parade that snaked through the narrow streets.

Guyito, the popular carabao mascot of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, also joined the parade like a king aboard a horse-drawn carriage.

The Inquirer sponsored the Bikas-Gayak (or well-adorned) parade, now on its sixth year as a tribute to the farmer and his carabao, the country’s symbol of a hardworking Filipino.

At least 14 carabao, each pulling its own wooden sledge festooned with fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers, joined the Inquirer-sponsored event.