NEWSFLASH

PLARIDEL'S 400-YEAR-OLD HORSE FESTIVAL

Plaridel, Bulacan, Jan. 17, 2001 - A fiesta for horse lovers is the popular two-day celebration called “Pintakasi ng mga Caballero” held before New Year’s Eve in Plaridel, Bulacan. Its main attraction, however, is held on Dec. 29a colorful parade of cocheros, jockeys and other equine aficionados, followed by a tilbury race (horse-drawn chariots for two), whose participants include movie stars (particularly members of the clan of the late former Bulacan Governor Jose Padilla, I), luminaries of the province and government officials.

This annual celebrationa delight to both local and foreign touriststurned 400 years old last December. It is actually the traditional feast of San Tiago Mata Moros in Plaridel town, about 47 kilometers north of Manila.

Multitudes of devotees, who are joined by tourists, flock to Plaridel every year either to witness or participate in this colorful ritual in honor of San Tiago, or St. James the Apostle, who has been depicted as a horse rider. San Tiago is considered the unofficial patron of cocheros and jockeys.

St. James the Apostle is the cousin of Christ. His image, portrayed riding on a white horse trampling upon pagan figures, is brought in a procession from its “home” in Barangay Sipat and transferred to the Plaridel Parish Church. This is just a kilometer away from the historic site of the Battle of Quinghwa, where two soldierswho were natives of this townof Gen. Gregorio Del Pilar killed the American leader of the white colonizers, Gen. John Stotsenberg.

Fiesta organizers dub the ritualpreceded by an early morning mass on Dec. 29 at the chapel of Barangay Sipat as, “the traditional salubong.” Featured are race studs and the patient horses of caritelas and tilburies with their owners seeking blessing during the translacion or transfer of their patron saint.

Pastor C. Reyes, son of former Plaridel Mayor Alfonso Reyes and one the organizers of last year’s Plaridel “Pistang Bayan 2000,” says the procession is called salubong because San Tiago’s imagetailed by groups of faithful including elderly women wearing kimona’t saya and buntal hats performing a ritual danceis met by the patron’s other devotees half way from Sipat to Plaridel Parish Church, in the town’s poblacion.

Local officials and national figures often join the devotees’ seven-kilometer trek to the parish church. In the last celebration, Tourism Secretary Gemma Cruz Araneta; DOTC Sec. Vicente Rivera Jr., who hails from Plaridel; Bulacan Governor Josie Dela Cruz; and former Bulacan Vice Governor Willie Villarama, this town’s “adopted son”, led the procession.

The image stays inside the parish to give time for the faithful to pay their respects until the following day, Dec. 30, when the image is again carried in a procession around the poblacion. After 14 days, when the fiesta celebration is over, the image, in another simple procession accompanied by fiesta organizers and town officials, will be returned to the Sipat Chapel.

A town councilor, Mauricio Camua Angeles Sr. who has always been a perennial “horse rider” in the fiesta celebrations over the years, says the Plaridel ritual dates back to the time of Spanish friars who established the town’s parish church in 1580, making St. James patron saint of the town. Angeles says, according to a local book of the town’s history, the original image of St. James on a white horse brought to Plaridel (then Quinghwa) by the Spaniards in the 1800s was left in the care of the family of Bernardo Sampanaa rebel heathen of Sepoy ancestry who became a Christian convert. The image was housed in their home at Barrio Tabang. Then the Sanpanas were ordered by the friars to turn over the said image to the possession of the owners of the Bahay na Bato in Barrio Sipat (which was renamed Santiago), because of the townsfolk’s claim that the family was allegedly practicing sorcery.

When the owners of Bahay na Bato died, the image became the possession of Tandang Sitang whose house was eventually turned into a barrio chapel, present home to San Tiago’s image in Sipat.

San Tiago, or St. James the Apostle, was a Galilean and brother of St. John the Evangelist. He was ordered killed by Herod Agrippa, King of Judea in 41 A.D. A history book of Philip Van Ness says the tomb of St. James was found in Northern Spain in 718 A.D. Thirty years after that, a war between the Spaniards and the Moors broke out. When the Spaniards were in near defeat, an apparition of St. James, armed with a sword and riding a white horse, appeared “as bright as a star” in the thick of the battle.

The apparition gave life to the demoralized Spanish soldiers and led them to victory over the Moors, who in turn were bedazzled by the blinding image of St. James. This “miracle” probably explains why St. James became patron saint of those who have affinity with horses, like the devotees flocking every year to the colorful Plaridel ritual. (By Art Sampana, MANILA TIMES)