The Naga I Know

Or
Apologia Pro Fiesta Sua
Carlos Ojeda Aureus

ITY OF NAGA, heart of Bicol, thy son greets thee.

When Bicol Critic Doods Santos asked me if I would like to write on the Naga I know for
Anvil, I said, would I! at once. I was born in Naga, I grew up and studied in Naga, my mother
was born in Naga, my grandfather was born in Naga. Until the age of 21, I knew no other place
on earth except Naga.
But when I sat down to begin writing my impressions, I realized that I was not in
possession of the occasion. It has been a good many years ever since I had left my hometown,
and my portrait of Naga, for sure, would be immensely different from the quotidian city that it is
today. Other writersNaga-based and not self-styled exiles like myselfare certainly more
equal to the task.
Nevertheless, I earnestly wish you would indulge an old man the pleasure of a portrait of
the city he loves, albeit a city of the past. I can only hope you could fish out something you may
find useful (if there be any) or discard whats useless.
Begging your indulgence, therefore, here goes nothing . . .
The Naga I know is a city of calesas, votive candles, and evening processions. It is the
double program movies at Cine Bichara, the toasted siopao and pancit guisado at Naga
Restaurant, Didoy en Napi in Hagyanan sa Kabitoonan, and Lolo Biloy in Darigold Jamboree.
The Naga I know is like the Mass in Latin with the priest facing the altar. It is Calamay, the local
Socrates, in the centro; and in the afternoons, it is Eddie Alanis over radio station DZRB, the
only radio station in Bicol then, in the program, Dear Eddie.
Has Naga changed much? I hope not. But if it has, because everything else must change,
I hope it is along the vein of continuities, like the change from Ateneo de Naga College to
Ateneo de Naga University. Then the past which I pretend to represent could perhaps not only be
useful but also true, good and beautiful.
Admittedly, not everything about the past is pleasant. Not everything before Vatican II
was pleasant. For example, I didnt like it when outsiders started cutting the trees into logs in my
neighborhood. I have been an advocate of total log ban since birth, because I believe that all
logging is immoral, just as all mining is immoral.
I also didnt like it when the local kanto boys would make fun of Arabia, a local woman
in our neighborhood who perhaps because of poverty had lost her mind. I could not understand
why, instead of pitying her, the kanto boys would make fun of her
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Kakak, Kakak!
Arabia Kakak!
and I would cry each time theyd do that, and then the kanto boys would call me bakla, when
that word meant mamas boy, sissy boy, or too sensitive.
Because my maternal grandmother came from Spain, Ive had my share of reverse
discrimination:
Kastilang bagla
Nag odo sa bala!
Once, in school during recess time, I was suddenly punched from behind by an angry
bully who blamed me for killing Rizal.
Although these experiences gave me years of insecurities and Kafkaesque feelings of
guilt, they were rare and far between. The pleasant memories overtake the ugly ones.
One experience stands out that to this day made me proud to be a Bicolano. In 1961, the
Spanish Ambassador came to the Holy Rosary Seminary upon invitation of Archbishop Pedro P.
Santos. Archbishop Santos, the first Archbishop of Nueva Cceres, was a man known for his
kindness, humility, saintlinessand mastery of the Spanish language. How we loved to hear his
homilies in the Naga Cathedral delivered entirely in Spanish and in the almost poetic diction of
Cervantes and Rizal.
Anyway, in the seminary, during the program, after Archbishop Santos had delivered his
extemporaneous speech, the Ambassador, breaking protocol, stood up and declared: Your
Archbishop speaks Spanish better than 80% of my countrymen.
Each and every one of us seminarians stood ten feet tall, proud to be a Filipino, proud to
be a Bicolano.
Yes, I love Spanishnot because my maternal grandmother came from Spain but
because it is, like Bicol, the language of the angels.
Bah, I have never hidden my love for Spain and its imprint on Naga, let the anti- and/or
post-colonial eggheads go hang. Pedro de Chavez came, renamed our river town after Cceres in
Spain, and brought in the Roman Catholic Faithwhats so problematic about that?
One of the few things I want to see before I draw the curtain downapart from my wish
that my seminary classmate, now Archbishop, Tito Yllana become Cardinalis the return of the
teaching of Spanish in the classrooms. And Latin, too, for good measure, why not?1
The Spain that I love, however, is not postmodern Spain but Francos Spain, the old
Spain, especially the old Madrid of my youth, the city I want to describe a little bit more in this
essay because of its striking cultural and geographical resemblance to Naga. Once again, with
your indulgence . . .
An old Madrid saying boasts that there is only one place on earth better than Madrid
and that is heaven.
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And when my life is over, may Our Lady pull me by my Brown Scapular and bring me to
God Who knows all things to answer the one burning question I want to put to rest once and
for all: WHO REALLY WROTE SHAKESPEARE?

De Madrid al cielo
But heaven itselfour proverbial Madrileo would hasten to addheaven itself can be
improved a bit only if it had a little window overlooking Madrid.
Y desde el cielo, un agujerito
Para sequir vindolo.
I must admit that Madrids boast is well-deserved. Like Naga, Madrid lies at the very
heart of Spain. Unlike Naga, however, Madrid became capital of Spain more by geographical
accident than as a result of any intrinsic virtues. It had no natural advantages, and it had never
compared in terms of cultural or historic interest with the great cities of Sevilla, Granada, or
Toledo. King Felipe II moved the capital from Valladolid to Madrid in 1561 because, if you look
at the map of Spain, Madrid is located right smack in the center of the map. So, argued the king
in characteristic Spanish logic, the seat of government must be established here. Besides, the
climate was good for the kings gout.
The Philippines, by the way, is named after Felipe II.
Be that as it may, Madrid has grown from a relatively unknown village in 1561 to
become one of the most pleasant cities to visit in Europe. Madrid, with its Puerta del Sol, its
Plaza Mayor, its taverns and cafs, and its parks filled with flowers, truly, like Naga, is a happy
place:
Madrid, Madrid, Madrid
pedazo de la Espaa en que nac
por eso te hizo Dios
la cuna del requiebro y el chotis
Madrid, Madrid, Madrid
en Mxico se piensa mucho en ti
por el sabor que tienen tus verbenas
por tantas cosas buenas que soamos desde aqu.
Y vas a ver lo que es canela fina
y armar la tremolina cuando llegues a Madrid.
If Naga by day was the centro, Naga by night was the harana. I remember how as a boy
Id accompany my uncles, as we negotiated the Bicol River by banca from Tinago to
Dayangdang, armed with a guitar and a bass instrument made from an empty gasoline drum.
Because I was the only dummy among blokes who could pluck the right strings, I would hide in
the shadows and wait for their signal for me to begin: Maestro, pasakalye. The queen of
haranas was of course Sarung Banggui:
Sarung banggi sa higdaan
Nakadangog ako hinuni nin sarung gamgam

Sa luba ko katorogan
Bako kundi simong boses iyo palan
Dagos ako bangon si sakuyang mata binuklat,
Kadtong kadikloman ako nangalagkalag
Si sakong pagheling pasiring sa itaas
Naheling ko simong lawog maliwanag

HE OTHER TOPIC Doods wanted me to write about is Nagas devotion to Ina, as observed

in the Peafrancia fiesta, which is celebrated every third week of September.

Naga in September is different from Naga outside September. In September Naga City
awakens to become the temporal seat of noise and celebrations in honor of Nuesta Seora de
Peafrancia, Patroness of Bicolandia. September is the month of the Traslacin and the Fluvial
Procession.
Heres a vignette of what happens during the Fluvial Procession.
About the middle of the afternoon, a long procession led by priests and seminarians
leaves the Naga Cathedral ringing with bells. The Virgin rides high on the shoulders of beeryeyed males. A swarm of humanity, ignoring mud and rain, stirs Naga to a tumult of exploding
Vivas. The street procession ends in Tabuco Bridge where a Pagoda awaits. As the image
arrives, the skies sparkle with water-bursts, as paddles slap hard the surface of the river and
splash upwards so that water flies in all directions. All hands are clapping and cheering the
image.
Those who join the Pagoda include the band, some priests and seminarians, some
policemen, and the chosen few. Those not allowed embarking cling to the sides of the raft.
Their weight pulls down the raft that nearly ends up half-sunk in the water.
Meanwhile, along the banks of the river, thousands await the holy cruise. It is almost
twilight when the Virgin drifts from up the river, and the hillsides are now dotted with votive
candles, and the riverbanks teem, sardine-packed, with devotees.
Suddenly fireworks swish and explode. The Virgin is arriving! Hoarse shouts of Vivas
roar across the Bicol River. Up the river now drifts the luminous Pagoda bearing the Virgin and
the Divino Rostro. The band is playing a religious march, while the loudspeaker leads the faithful
in singing Resuene Vibrante. In the distance the church is ringing with bells, as voyadores bob
and weave in the waters booming Viva la Virgen!
Until recently, it was easy for me to explain to non-Bicolanos the manner in which we
venerate the Virgin: the drinking, the screaming, the scrimmages towards the image, the clinging
to the Pagoda like desperate men. . . .
We Nagueos have often been asked why we behave like this at all. What are voyadores,
beery-eyed swigs, and gluttons doing in a religious event like this?
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Its a long story that goes way back to primitive times. When the Spaniards came to this
river town and introduced Christianity, many of us did not accept the new religion. We already
believed in God. Only we called Him/Her by a different name. We also believed in Ina. We still
call her Ina.
We expressed this belief in God through dance and loud declarations of love. Why
change our ways? So the Spaniards called us cimarrones or montesinos.
Thanks to the Catholic talent for adaptabilitywith a little persuasion, Spanish stylewe
embraced Christianity, dressed our Ina (and ourselves) in urban clothes, and behaved like
urbanites eleven months of the year.
In September, however, we preferred to express our devotion the way we felt was most
natural to usthe way of the cimarrones, resulting in a cultural umlaut that is the Peafrancia, a
fiesta uniquely Nagueo, grounded in our native history, with full appurtenance to the Christian
heritage.
I have subtitled this essay Apologia Pro Fiesta Sua because of an incident that happened
last September, when a group of foreign and local Evangelicals Christians trooped the streets of
Naga to heckle our religious tradition.
I could have taken it on the chin in the spirit of hospitality, until the bible-bangers started
accusing us of idolatry, and, worse, judging us guilty as hell for worshipping Mary.
Worshipping?
In this my apologia, I shall use the rubric Evangelical in its broadest generic sense to
identify a mindset rather than a denomination of Biblicists and born-again Christianseven as
my description may apply to as sundry reformed churches such as praise-the-lord charismatics
and protestants in general.
The issue is not Marian worship but analogy. The Catholic imagination is analogical
(David Tracy)2 as distinguished from dialectical (Protestant Christianity, Islam, Judaism). By
dialectical is meant God is up there, we are down here. God is the Other, the Holy. In order for us
to become holy, we must aspire to be one with the Other.
To the Catholic imagination, however, this world is an analogue of God, not only because
God created it but also because God is actually in the world. Doubtless, God transcends the
world, but God is nonetheless accessible to us in the world.
This tension becomes crucial when it comes to Marian devotion. We Roman Catholics
see no risk to Gods otherness in seeing Nuestra Senora as an analogue of Gods nurturing,
maternal love. Evangelicals, on the other hand, would see it as not maintaining a sharp enough
distinction between God and the world. Evangelicals teach that God is hidden everywhere and
found only in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus alone is Gods Word. Nuestra Seora is clearly
not Gods Word. To compare her to Gods Motherhood is not only inappropriate but also
dangerous. Havent we learned our lessons from Old Testament conflicts between Yahwehism
and pagan fertility rites?

David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination. New York: Crossroad, 1981.

The Catholic imagination emphasizes similarities between God and the world;
Evangelicalism emphasizes the differences, stressing opposition, between God and the world.
A Catholic has little fear of a God that is too down here. An Evangelical would be
horrified if we identified God too closely to nature. The Evangelical says only the worthy ones
will be saved. The Catholic imagination, like Finnegans Wake, proclaims Here Comes
Everybody. To the Evangelical, this world is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. A Catholic would be bound to say, with Father Teilhard de Chardin, that
something is afoot in the universe.
This is so, because while the Evangelical sees the world as a dangerous place where evil
lurks everywhere, the Catholic sees the world, as Hopkins does, charged with the grandeur of
God.
And I may add, Gods Beauty charges the world. For how can there be a beautiful
creation without a beautiful Creator? A Catholic is bound to think of God, not of the devil, each
time he sees a beautiful creature. For Gods Beauty lurks in every beautiful creature, in every
beautiful girl: in Mariang Makiling, in Venus de Milo, in Kwan Yin, in the stripteaser of Naga
Cabaret, in Ikapati, in my beautiful female student in Latin, in my mischievous granddaughter
nicknamed Typhoon, in the Blessed Virgin Mary.
For how can I relate to a God who resides beyond all human experience? How can God
be a compelling presence in my life unless He/She is immanent?
If your sensibility is Evangelical/dialectical, you wont approve of the drinking and the
shouting that accompany the Traslacin and the Fluvial Parade. That sounds more like pagan
bacchanalia. If your sensibility is Catholic, however, you would see it as a baptism of the good
customs and practices of the cimarrones, as they have been absorbed into the Christian Faith.
If your sensibility is Evangelical/dialectical, youd frown at beer houses, weteng, and
sexy dancers. These practices are occasions to sinif not outright sinfuland sin, real or
imagined, is always lurking in the world of the Evangelical imagination. But if you are Roman
Catholic, you may be inclined to tolerate themeven as you are aware of their dangers
because they are not evil per se, because weteng is a part of life, and because Nagueos are going
to drink and gamble and watch sexy dancers, anyway.
Admittedly, the analogical imagination lies in danger of opening the floodgates of
superstition, idolatry, Mariolatry, or, worst of all, consumerism. We concede that Catholicism has
been vulnerable to appropriation by nature religions and materialism, while Evangelicalism has
been able to avoid such corruption. We have not heard of folk-Evangelicalism, but folkCatholicism is nothing new to us.
I think Evangelicalisms positive contribution is its negative dialectics. By not allowing
any meeting point between God and the world, Evangelicalism has acted as ombudsman to
prevent us from going off track and from letting our imagination run amuck.
What is not welcome is the siege mentality of those who claim that they alone possess the
truth, and the outright oppression they inflict upon those who do not share their univocal
ideologies.
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What is welcome is a willingness to listen, to engage in dialogue, or, better, conversation,

if dialogue can lead to argument. In a pluralistic community, we all need to articulate the
particularities of our own journeys. Conversation allows us to see what similarities may be
discovered amid our differences, what continuities for future harmony may yet be disclosed.
In the dizzying celebrations of the Peafrancia fiesta, we run the risk of sliding into the
precipice of so-called pagan contamination. There is always the clear and present danger that if
we permit the world unlimited access, we may find ourselves stuck with altogether too much of
human nature.
On the other hand, we also know that if we exclude human nature too much by throwing
away our statues and miraculous medals and scapulars and rosaries and images of every kind; if
we strip our churches of everything but a solitary cross and bible, if we celebrate the fiesta
without the drinking and the shouting and the feasting, we run the risk of celebrating a religious
tradition that is denatureddecaffeinated, if you willand not very appealing to those of us who
possess human nature.
Why throw the baby with the bathwater?
The origins of our devotion are honest, as are its operations in the Roman Catholic
Church. Why must we be put off by the misuse of the symbol? Why cant we rediscover that
original representation and reinterpret that for the present day?
I have talked with some Bicolano students about the fiesta. From what I gather, I can see
that the image of Nuestra Seora among the young generation is warm, powerful, and influential
in their lives, even though many of them may have never heard of Simon Vela or prayed the
novena or said the Rosary.
What matter. I think the Peafrancia fiesta will prevail because the power of its Referent,
which is Gods nurturing, life-giving, caring nature, is the urgent need for our times. There is so
much hatred, too much greed and envy in the world. The challenge is not to eschew the feminine
side of God but rather to rediscover, to rearticulate, to reinterpret it to the 21st century.
I do not see how even the Evangelicals can even prevent this from happening. I think the
question is not whether but how soon? The Evangelicals may dislike it, as they dislike
scapulars or miraculous medals; yet Nuestra Seora is alive and well in Roman Catholic Naga,
and the sooner She is rediscovered, the sooner everything good, true, and beautiful about Naga
will be rediscovered.
You may dismiss my Apologia Pro Fiesta Sua as self-deceptive, too celebratory, too
hopeful. My only point here is that it is Roman Catholic. I think no religion in the world in the
last 2500 years has emerged with a story line as openly and blatantly hopeful as the Roman
Catholic story linea history of renewals, of reconciliations, of second chances, of prodigal sons
returning home.
Yes, there is sin and suffering and death. But in the end, life is stronger than death, love is
stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, good is stronger than evil. In the Catholic
imagination, Calvary is not the last word. The last word is Easter.
I believe that this hope and celebration of the Catholic imagination has not been
communicated explicitly to enough Catholics. But its imprint is stamped in the blood and bones
of every Nagueo. If you studied at Monsignor Bellezas Naga Parochial School, the Holy
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Rosary Seminary, the Colegio de Santa Isabel, and the Ateneo de Naga, the odds are
overwhelming that your sensibility will be Roman Catholic no matter what else happens. You
may be a lapsed Catholic, an agnostic, or what not, but you will never be, no matter how hard
you try, a non-Catholic.
Some time ago, inside a fastfood restaurant in Quezon City, two strangers approached me
and introduced themselves as fellow Bicolanostaga Naga. When Naguenos meet outside Naga,
our conversation will almost necessarily begin with ma puli kamo?are you going home?
especially when its September. And it was September.
Because none of us could go home again, we shared our life stories, which necessarily
included how the Peafrancia fiesta had shaped our livesfrom the grand family reunions where
everyone would gather around the piano to the moonlight nights of haranas along the banks of
the Bicol River.
And because it was fiesta back home, we ended up singing Resuene Vibrante. In the
middle of the song, however, none of us could continue, not because we did not know the words
(which we learned by heart since kindergarten), but because we all had lumps in our throats, and
there was not a dry eye among us, mature men.
It happens all the time, and I just shake my head in amazement.
This is the Naga I know, the people and the city I love, An Maogmang Lugar, la Naga de
la Nuestra Seora de Peafrancia: Viva la Virgen.
//Resuene vibrante, el himno de amor
Que entona tu pueblo con grata emocin(2x)//
//Patrona del Bcol, gran Madre de Dios
Se siempre la reina de nuestra regin(2x)//

For a full video version of The Naga I Know, please go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_utnVQ8QBGc
Or email your request to: coaureus@yahoo.com