Overseas Irigueños Join Annual Harvest Festival

IRIGA CITY (5 February 2011)—THE ASSOCIATION of overseas Irigueños from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East have arrived in this locality for the annual “Tinagba Festival”, considered the most celebrated harvest festival in the Bikol region in February.

Iriga City Mayor Madelaine Alfelor-Gazmen bared that among the highlights of the festival this year is “Tinagba Magbinaydan 2011” a grand home-coming of overseas Irigueños chaired by Melchor N. Margallo.

The overseas professionals, mostly medical practitioners will render free medical services to poor communities in this city, while a massive tree planting activity involving more than a thousand volunteers and 15, 000 tree seedlings will be planted by the overseas Irigueños in the villages of Perpetual Help,  San Nicholas, and Santiago at the base of Mt. Asog in this city.

Reportedly, the Irigueños came from New Jersey, Virginia  Beach, Hawaii, the East Coast  and Southern California in the U.S.; Austria, London, Germany in Europe; Dubai in the Middle East and Canada.

Since the 2010 “Gayon Bicol – Tinagba Festival” sponsored by the Department of Tourism (DOT) and  the City Government highlighting Bicol  festivals last year, traditional bull-carts carrying harvest- offering were excluded in the festival.

Mayor Gazmen said this year the bull-carts pulled by carabaos will again dominate the “Tinagba caravan” which will carry offerings to the Shrine of the Lady of Lourdes at barangay San Franciso on the festival day on Feb. 11.

Early Pre-Hispanic traditions of the “Tinagba” based on national acrhive research will be also be presented in the festival parade, including traditional dances of Negrito indigenous tribes, “the Rumbang” and “Oyango” tribes in San Nicholas and Sta. Teresita Negrito settlements.

While in the evening of Feb. 11, a parade of lights and floats dubbed as, “Fantillusion Parade” participated by City government agencies and the barangays will be held in Iriga’s main streets.

City Tourism officer, Engr. Nona Vanessa M. Santiago also said that the city’s Rizal Park will also feature attractions during the “Tinagba” such as miniatures of known landmarks in the world like the  Statue of Liberty, London’s “Big Ben,” the Eiffel Tower of Paris, France, and the Great Wall of China.

Local scholars here said the “Tinagba festival,” a harvest offering tradition of Pre-Hispanic communities in Iriga, was revived by lawyer-historian Jose Calleja Reyes with the cooperation of the City Government sometime in 1976; the tradition has been carried over until the current year. (SONNY SALES)