Folk Tradition and the Tacloban City Fiesta

Our lovely city is gearing up for the annual Feast of the Sto. Nino. In the 1800s, the fiesta was celebrated in January, but some fortuitous event made the celebration be in June.

The image of the Holy Child in Leyte has two ranks in this folk traditional militia-sounding position: The "Capitan" and the "Teniente". The Capitan was that image sent to Manila in 1888 by the town officials to be spruced up in time for the coming fiesta of January 1889, unfortunately, the boat carrying the image back to Tacloban (called sitio Kankabatok then) caught fire at sea between Mindoro and Romblon.

To save the ship, the crew threw out some cargoes, including the crate containing the image. Without the image, the fiesta for 1889 was not celebrated as scheduled. Instead, a proxy was assigned to "hold post" coming from the municipal town of Basey to sitio Kankabatok. The stand-in was called the "Teniente", and the exchange was made by the Basey clerical and goverment officials who crossed the Bay in a fluvial procession to deliver the image to sitio Kankabatok. That event is noted in our history as the "Balyu-an" (Exchange).

But what is a religious feast if it is not seeded in miracles--in early 1889, a crate was fished out from the sea by Mindoro fishermen and eventually shipped to Tacloban. Its arrival on June 30, 1889 was met with much jubilation and was claimed to have miraculously controlled a raging cholera epidemic then. Thereafter, the people of Tacloban reset to June 30 the date for them to pay homage to the Sto. Niño.

Now, for the shocking idolatry part: There may be an absence of dichotomal worship between the Capitan and Teniente for both are enshrined in our parish Church. Taclobanons do worship the Holy Images in talismanic fervor..The former First Lady of the land, herself being a true-blue Leytena, erected a Shrine (amidst baubles and vestibules of other lands, and appropriately a life-size image of the pirate Lima-Hong in the second story) for the Capitan. The higher ranked image had the privilege to travel along with her to the US and all around the globe with whoever was a jet-trotting "Hermano Mayor" of the year..while the working "Teniente" kept home berth..