Por San Clemente alza la mano de semiente

No fiesta in the Philippines has been so artistically immortalized as Angono’s San Clemente, held every November 23. Angono was the hometown of National Artist Carlos V. Francisco, or “Botong”, as he was known to his friends. He did murals, watercolors, and black and white drawings of Angono’s amphibious fiesta. He was unique in his love of Philippine fiestas: Other major painters - Juan Luna y Novicio, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo and Fernando Amorsolo - found no inspiration in the fiesta and instead looked eternally for inspiration. They probably thought it too trite a subject, a clear case of not seeing the forest on account of the trees. So much of our colorful fiesta customs and culture were never immortalized in art. The visual memory is gone and only in the pages of history are they found.

The fiesta tradition in art began with Botong Francisco. As an artist, he was inspired by the feast of San Clemente; as a townsman, he was the person most responsible for keeping San Clemente’s fluvial fiesta alive. When seine (a type of net that floats vertically in the water) fishing ceased in Angono, the San Clemente lake celebration became an endangered tradition. Angono no longer had boats big enough to sustain the pagoda. Botong organized the Samahan ni San Clemente, an association that undertook the building of five big dugouts to be used exclusively for the San Clemente pagoda.

The feast of San Isidro (despite being a secondary patron of Angono) was once celebrated more sumptuously than its chief patron, San Clemente. This was an expression of Angono’s early existence as an agricultural community; farmers readily identified themselves with San Isidro Labrador, whose emblems were the plow and its concomitant draught animal. It was the plow conjoined with the carabao that made all Angono fiestas possible.

As Angono evolved from a farming to a fishing community, so too did the feast of San Clemente gain precedence over San Isidros’. Angono learned to seine from Salinas, Cavite; the more systematic fishing technique did for the fisher what the plow did for the farmer: produce a surplus. Angono fishermen prospered and annually expressed their thanksgiving in the feast of their patron, San Clemente. Angono though is unique in its patron: It is the only Philippine town to have him as its patron.

Amphibian fiestas are not uncommon in the Philippines, amphibian in the sense that the procession is partly on land and partly on the river, lake or sea. As a general rule, the participants in the processionals embark on bancas when they reach the waterway and the procession proceeds on boats. Not so in the feast of San Clemente. From land, those in the processionals, like migrating lemmings, wade right into the lake and pull the pagoda around the lakeside. While towing, some of the processioners fortuitously step on mudfish, which they skillfully catch with their bare hands and hang on the left hand of the image of San Clemente aboard the pagoda. The catch on San Clemente’s hand is supposed to augur the future of the fishing industry for the coming year.

The fiesta is the highest community expression in the Philippines: It is the window into the Philippine soul. Unfortunately, with few exceptions the Philippine soul has never been captured artistically. Botong loved and understood the fiesta; his town’s fiesta was closest to his heart. In his work, every facet of the San Clemente celebration is presented as an act of devotion to the patron saint; the pervading spirit is not pleasure but joy. This is the great joy announced by the angel on Christmas night; you not only see, but feel how the Filipinos have striven to live by it. There is beauty to be found here.