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MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, Philippines – The final time I got here residence for the Sagada city fiesta, the world was nonetheless analog.
It was the late Nineties. I used to be in faculty. The poblacion swelled with individuals and noise. We joined volleyball and softball video games; my youthful siblings ran dashes and sack races. Distributors who moved from fiesta to fiesta lined the streets, promoting toys, kitchenware, halo-halo with marshmallows and macaroni, and towers of cotton sweet that melted into sticky palms. You didn’t want telephones to fulfill anybody. You simply confirmed up. Everybody did.
Then, maturity occurred. The years stretched. The fiesta modified its identify, grew into one thing bigger. And practically three many years later, I returned to Sagada simply because the city opened its thirteenth Etag Pageant — not only a homecoming for me but additionally a reminder of how communities reinvent celebration with out shedding their middle.
From January 30 to February 2, Sagada as soon as once more gathers round its most recognizable cultural image: etag, the smoked and salt-cured pork that’s as a lot ritual as it’s meals. Institutionalized by the Sangguniang Bayan in 2011, the competition promotes a delicacy deeply embedded in Igorot life. It’s served at births, weddings, wakes, and communal feasts whereas additionally serving as a platform to protect tradition and assist livelihoods.
This 12 months’s theme, “Valuing Tradition: Key In the direction of Unity and Progress,” frames the competition as each celebration and assertion.
A competition that remembers
For first-time guests, Sagada is usually launched via its caves, hanging coffins, and mountain air. However through the Etag Pageant, the city tells its story by itself phrases.
The opening parade turned the poblacion right into a transferring show of shade. For the primary time, community-made floats rolled via the streets. They have been crafted from recycled supplies and pure parts, highlighting creativity and environmental consciousness alongside the competition theme. College students marched, elders watched, and the acquainted echo of gongs stitched the procession to older rhythms.
An agro-industrial truthful positioned native producers at middle stage. Etag was the star attraction, however it shared the highlight with Sagada espresso, wild honey, muscovado sugar, and highland greens — a reminder that tradition and economic system in mountain cities are inseparable.
Visitor speaker Cecile Basawil, assistant regional director for operations of the Division of Social Welfare and Growth-Cordillera, who hails from Sagada, framed the competition via an acronym that resonated with the gang: ETAG, as in enduring traditions, togetherness in religion, advancing with function, and grateful hearts.
“Tradition shouldn’t be a relic of the previous; it’s a dwelling basis,” Basawil mentioned. “For us to have unity and progress, we first worth our tradition.”
She described etag not solely as preserved meat however as preserved reminiscence, a logo of group life cycles and shared tales carried via chants and gatherings. Her message blended indigenous philosophy with on a regular basis classes, invoking inayan, Sagada’s ethical compass, and the city’s guiding phrase, “Ipeyas nan gawis” — share what is sweet.
What adjustments and what doesn’t
Mayor Felicito Dula acknowledged that Sagada, like the remainder of the world, has reworked.
“Walang tiyak sa mundo kundi ang pagbabago,” he mentioned. Nothing is for certain besides change.
The place as soon as the fiesta was the one market for uncommon items, at this time, shops, Saturday markets, and on-line platforms fill on a regular basis wants. Households have extra commitments, extra occasions, and extra instructions pulling them aside.
However the mayor pointed to what endures: religion, indigenous values, songs, dances, and a cussed sense of unity that refuses to run out.
“Etag itself is a strong image of this continuity,” he mentioned. From the hearths of ancestors to trendy tables, it carries resilience and group. He urged festival-goers to assist native etag-makers and small companies, “Purchase generously, eat heartily.”
Provincial Administrator John Likigan, delivering Governor Bonifacio Lacwasan Jr.’s message, echoed the theme, calling Sagada “a spot the place the previous shouldn’t be merely remembered however lived, and the place custom serves as a compass for the longer term.”
A homecoming measured in individuals
Past speeches and floats, the competition felt acquainted in quieter methods: youngsters operating between stalls, youngsters pretending to not be excited over pageant candidates, and elders seated in affected person circles. The Seek for Mr. and Ms. Sagada, commerce festivals, youngsters’s video games, and communal feasts stitched generations into the identical weekend.
The fiesta I remembered was louder, smaller, less complicated. The competition I returned to is bigger, extra organized, and consciously protecting of what makes Sagada Sagada. But the emotional structure is unchanged: individuals nonetheless come residence.
In mountain cities, continuity shouldn’t be the absence of change. It’s the choice to hold previous meanings ahead, to smoke meat the way in which ancestors did, to parade via streets the place grandparents as soon as stood, to maintain assembly in the identical middle irrespective of how the perimeters evolve.
The Sagada fiesta, now the Etag Pageant, continues to be what it all the time was: a city rehearsing its reminiscence out loud. – Rappler.com
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