Happy Dinagyang

Two years after doing it virtually because of the pandemic and fifty five years since it started, Dinagyang Festival is back with all the superlatives being used just to highlight its physical return.

Perhaps, a lot may have changed since 1968 when Fr. Sulpicio Enderes, OSA brought a replica of the image of Sto. Niño de Cebu in the city and took the image to San Jose Parish Church but the fact remains Dinagyang is a cultural and religious festival that almost everybody from around the country and in some parts of the world await to see and take part with.

This year, as COVID-19 restrictions are almost rested and life is beginning to return to its normal pace, Dinagyang will be seeing an evening tribes presentation called Ilomination to provide night people a chance to appreciate the character of the festival in the dark. Of course, there is still the Kasadyahan Festival and the Dinagyang Tribes competition that will highlight the week-long celebration. Several side events are also in place for people to experience and enjoy.

Dinagyang is not just a festival though to generate income, tourism receipts, and to chant hala bira! while doing the merrymaking or sadsad. The yearly festival is and must be an opportunity for Ilonggos to look back, appreciate and re-introduce especially among the new generation the cultural and religious value of the celebration.

The storyline of every Dinagyang Festival always starts with the life of Aetas, the early settlers of Iloilo and the devotion to Sr. Sto. Niño.

Unfortunately, though, the initiative to preserve the culture of the Aetas through Dinagyang has stayed and remained a bluff and a lip-service. While there lives are immortalized in the award-winning scripts of every tribe, efforts are small to nothing in initiating programs that could help conserve and protect the lives of the remaining Aetas except that in some parts of the province of Iloilo they are being used as political materials.

The devotion to the Child Jesus is ironic.

Devotees led by the city officials and Dinagyang organizers flock the church and the processions to honor Sr. Sto. Niño and ends their prayers and rituals chanting Viva Sr. Sto. Niño! Devotions and prayers are supposedly acts that one has to live with but for them it’s merely a requirement to complete the celebration and show. ‘Banal na aso, santong kabayo’ and we don’t even need to enumerate the examples.