Kinabayo Festival

Festival with the horses

By Earl D.C. Bracamonte

Dapitan draws its fame and renown as temporary home to an exiled José Rizal. Though the main drawer is our national hero, the city offers a lot more in terms of history, culture, and tourism. “Rizal and Josephine Bracken lived here for four years and watched the same sunset we are enjoying now, said Apple Marie Agolong, Dapitan’s tourism head, with much pride in her voice. “if you are a romantic with a love for history, then this city is for you."

Deep devotions and deeper friendships define Dapitan’s religious festival that’s celebrated annually towards the end of July. Festivals are dime a dozen, but the Kinabayo Festival is more than just an ostentatious display of costumes and frivolous street dancing. Despite the Covid-19 global pandemic, this year’s celebration is no different.

To the Dapitanons, it is a profound reenactment of their patron saint’s – Sr. Santiago or St. James the Greater – miraculous defense of the city, seen typically atop a horse and known to have mystically led defending soldiers to victory over Muslim invaders. After the nine-day novena, the praying homage to the relic statue of St. James the Greater by faithful Dapiteños took place for four hours. Exactly at 12 noon of July 25th, the statue is paraded around the plaza in a rite known as Snug.

As patron saint of Spain and several towns of the Philippines including Dapitan, his bravery and staunch defense of the faith is seen as a good example of religious piety. For close to a month, starting July 16^th, several cultural, historical, and religious activities that included a sportsfest, live musical programs, horse racing, car shows, a beauty pageant, as well as street dancing competitions took place and drew in thousands of residents and visitors from as far as Cebu and Manila.

Snug is the local term for the human ripple made by the multitude of pilgrims and devotees flocking to the church to attend Sr. Santiago’s procession while holding colorful leaves of the San Francisco plant. The chants of the revelers who join the Snug, especially when they shout ‘Viva Senor Santiago’ brings the cacophony to fever pitch. Onlookers simply join the revelry and dance to the rhythm of the drumbeats.

Agalang said that those who experience the Sinug will truly understand the word ‘rapture’ in the truest sense of the word, once they take part of it. “As a child, I did not understand. It was only when I grew up that I realized I lived half my life not experiencing it. It’s quite a hair-raiser.”

The festival was also the perfect excuse to hold reunions with relatives and friends living in faraway places. Families prepare a feast, invite neighbors and strangers to come into their homes and partake, not only of the food, but also of the hospitable and generous nature of the Dapitanons. The Kinabayo Festival reminds everyone that faith and festivity go well together.