Fiesta and prudence — San Carlos’ unique festival

Today marks the celebration of the colorful Pinta Flores Festival in San Carlos City, a sugar-producing island of Negros Occidental. The festival depicts the tradition of welcoming visitors through dancing as in the "Pintados" during the coming of the Spanish navigators in the Visayas in 1565. Tribes are dressed in colorful ethnic-inspired costumes, their bodies painted with flower designs reminiscent of the tattooed Visayans at the pre-Spanish Negros. The rhythmic dances portray life and death, the triumph of good against evil and thanksgiving for the year’s blessings and victories. The flowers painted on the faces, arms, bodies and legs of the dancers express men’s gratitude to the environment. The Pinta Flores street dancing and ritual competition culminates on November 5, Negros Day.

The Pinta Flores Festival also honors San Carlos City’s patron saint, San Carlos Borromeo. Like in any local Filipino town fiesta, the townsfolk celebrate the festive occasion with reunions of families and friends, elaborate trimmings and display in the houses and the streets, music and dancing, rich banquets of local palatable dishes, merrymaking and revelry. Ironically, the patron saint, San Carlos Borromeo, epitomized humility, simplicity and hard work. His name, San Carlos, in fact means "prudent man", and, as if, to live up to his name, San Carlos took for his life verse as a man of God, the words of Jesus, who said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it". The unexpected death of his older brother, who accidentally fell off a horse, saddened him and caused him to think deeply that this was a warning from God and made him realize what misery is vis-à-vis the true happiness of eternal glory.

Born to a wealthy family in Arjona, Italy in 1538, San Carlos Borromeo obtained his doctorate at the University of Milan at the young age of 21. During this time, his uncle, Medicis Cardinal, was named Pope Juan Angel of Medicis or Pio IV, who admired him for his clear judgment, tenacity and acute talent, thus appointing him Secretary of State. San Carlos resigned his wealth and became a priest and later, a bishop. He completely dedicated himself to the work of savings souls for God. He lived like a poor man, walking on foot, like Christ did going to the city. He said his work and penance were to him healthful, but in fact, the hardships debilitated him, thus dying at the young age of 46. He was canonized 26 years later by Paulo V.