HIDDEN in plain sight along one of Iloilo City Proper’s major thoroughfares is a line of tiny street-side shops that carry on a rich local culture that’s in peril of fading away.
Nanay Analyn has been selling local charms and traditional medicine near the corner of Rizal and Iznart, for nearly 30 years now – all the knowledge she has, she learned as a teenager from her grandmother, an Aeta healer.
Analyn shares that just last month a woman struggling to repair her relationship with a distant boyfriend approached her for help. She called on her grandmother, who traveled from the hinterlands of Antique to Iloilo City, to perform the ritual for a lumay, a love spell that could bring the couple – drifting apart – back together. In the shadow of the Jaro Cathedral, a handful of Aeta women unfold banig on the ground, a makeshift stall for their wares, also carry on the indigenous tradition.
Lumay and our other unique customs run through our gentle rivers and vibrant seas like threads – as colorful as those meticulously intertwined by our hablon weavers – linking one generation to another.
Ours is a culture inspired by our seas and the ebb of tides, early communities building settlements along bodies of water, with epics that tell of demigods conquering currents – the Hinilawod, the oldest in our oral history translating to Tales from the Mouth of the Halawod River.
Yet we also remain rooted in the pious teachings of the church – age-old cathedrals and ornate edifice towering over plazas in each municipality of the province. Panay – especially Iloilo – has always been shrouded in mysticism and legend. Shaped by a deep history of folklore and hundreds of years of Spanish colonization, Ilonggos have grown into an upbringing that is both deeply religious and superstitious. It’s no mystery how Iloilo has come to enchant many a traveler.
Though traditionally an outpost for trade and a seafaring hub because of its sprawling shoreline, Iloilo has never been bound to just the ocean. A remnant of this truth remains in our local dialect, ilaya and ilawud – the former meaning “of the mountains”, the latter “of the river” – still the name for a few far-off sitios.
The Panay Bukidnon, or Suludnon and Tumandok, reign over the high peaks of Panay, with their vivid and distinctive traditions. Panay was once also believed to be named Madjaas, after the highest mount in the island. At the heart of Panay, is a mountain range home to a handful of summits, beaconing bold explorers with the promise of breathtaking vistas and cool climates. It’s these perilous and often seldom-traversed localities that have cultivated stories of slumbering gods and hidden treasures.
In danger of fading away, this rich tapestry of culture and history is beginning to captivate a new line of Ilonggos. A few young inheritors of Panay’s traditions – promising artists and emerging writers – are gradually embracing the manifold beliefsand unique customs of our region.
Iloilo is fast becoming one of the top up-and-coming art hubs of the country, fostering a tight-knit community that sees the value in preserving the local culture. However, the vast pool of tradition remains in peril. Nanay Analyn herself attests that fewer and fewer people are ascribing to the indigenous medicine they live by – which has been passed on from matriarch to matriarch in their family.
More than our heritage sites and natural landmarks, it’s our diverse culture and warm people that have enthralled many to visit and often return, again and again, to Iloilo. Spellbound by the region’s history and folklore travelers and tourists acknowledge that Panay has largely maintained the mysticism of millennia past despite becoming a growing metropolis.
It’s this eclectic marriage of the modern and the traditional that’s Iloilo’s secret lumay. And it’s this new generation’s responsibility and obligation to preserve and treasure the storied history of Ilonggo culture and identity – the Visayan charm that has drawn unexpecting guests to fall in love with Iloilo. (maverhick.blogspot.com)
