When the Festival Ended in a Riot

The city will wake up on Monday with the streets suddenly quieter. Till the next festival. Till the next fiesta and till the next Traslacion that perhaps will also end in a riot. For that was how GMA-7 presented the land procession that opened this year's nine-day devotion to the Lady of Peñafrancia.

Till the next media bias and dumb reporting.

It was just my fate that while I sat in awe wondering at the strange orderliness achieved in this year's Traslacion the words from Vicky Morales and the visuals merely captured what could be a small percentage of the day's event. But there it was, the man punching (was it intentional?) a priest and there was the man being shoved down (was this revenge or an act to protect the space?), and there he was being mauled and there was again a priest jumping down to where the melee was taking place and trying to save the man who earlier jumped up onto the altar and initiated a brief ruckus.

But the news for that network was clear: the day ended in a riot.

If I were not there in the city, I would have believed that news. Strangely enough, the piece about the riot came in such a time when numerous changes about the observance of the festivities were being done.

There were indeed changes that took place, and these were taking place against the persistence of personal memory.

The weather, for example, seemed to be a problem. My memory of the day was always about the rains. Little boys from the Parochial School, in white pants and white long-sleeved shirt, black shoes, black socks, black tie, were used to the rains. We expected always the rains, the shower. It completed the afternoon. Coming home, I would not take off first

In high school, the blue pants took over the white pants but the rain and the puddles remained as the landscape for our faith.

Were there umbrellas? I do not remember. This year, the umbrellas formed a field of colors. Are the devotees now more aware of the dangers of the weather? In years gone by, the rains were blessings. You looked up and savored the drizzle and think about how the Heaven is materializing itself through elements that humans would understand. Like the rain. Or the lightning. As when we say, "Lintian!"

Nature, however, was not the only contentious issue for this year. The military parade was seen by Catholic schools as ideologically unnecessary.

It is the destiny of the Peñafrancia celebration that it would always historically share the month when martial rule was declared, and lasted for some 20 years. Give and take the de-facto martial rule atmosphere during the time of a general gone president.

It was under Martial Law that the military started taking part in the procession. The pretext of their being part of the voyadores stemmed from the complaint that the lack of discipline on the part of the civilian was unduly delaying the procession. That period saw the militarization of many institutions, even those that are part of the civil service. That practice stayed on, with the present administration and even the past filling up the diplomacy and government corporations with retired officers. This is not particular to the Philippines. In Japan, this practice is called "Amakudari," which literally means "coming down from heaven." In that country, those who have served in various bureaucratic positions and have retired are offered new higher posts.

Soon, this practice in government service will become a tradition, lost in the active practice, its gross provenance unnoticed.

In the procession, the first time the practice of soldiers participating as soldiers was also criticized. But with martial law hanging higher than the heavens then, the grumblings were checked by the discourse of peace and order. No one could complaint.

One reading of the Peñafrancia festivities was that people become equal before faith. As of this writing, that equality has yet to be achieved. Women are still peripheralized and the soldiers - dominant in the sphere of the civilian life because of their institutionalized physical power - occupy a central position intermediate between the male devotees and the priests.

Would the changes happening now eventually look at this faith that puts women on the side, under umbrellas and protected from the Heavens?

In the meantime, there are the media highlighting what for them is the fun part of any procession, the ruckus and the disorder, the unpleasant and the gross, for those things sell. In the meantime, memory and its persistence are our companions to rethinking the cognitive map of this faith and this devotion leaping over histories and beliefs.