BY HERBERT VEGO
DURING the annual Tatusan Festival, the isolated island municipality of Caluya, Antique literally suspends its isolation in the three days it takes to gather together local and foreign tourists to its white-sand shoreline.
This year’s three-day Tatusan Festival of tribal dancing and merrymaking – akin to Ati-Atihan of Kalibo and Dinagyang of Iloilo City – will kick off tomorrow and climax on Sunday.
The name of the festival stems from its indigenous crab known as “tatus” – a unique blue-streaked crab that thrives mainly on coconut meat. It sells locally at P500 per kilo but may cost thrice as much when sold outside the island.
This elusive burrowing creature can only be caught at night with the help of a flashlight and grilled coconut as bait. It can grow up to 40 centimeters and weigh up to four kilograms.
It is in gratefulness for the bounty of tatus that Caluya celebrates the Tatusan Festival through a parade of colorful crab-shaped floats, street-dancing and booth-display of various sizes of tatus, among other highlights of the festival.
The sprightly young mayor of Antique’s only island municipality, Genevive Gumban Lim-Reyes, thinks of Tatusan as not just a festival but as a generator of opportunities for prosperity of their people.
There was a time when native farmers and fishermen could hardly survive on copra making, seaweed farming and fishing due to depressed prices. But when they got in contact with visitors from the “outside world” willing to pay higher prices for their harvest, their lives changed for the better.
Caluya is now the fifth largest seaweed producer in the country. Needing no fertilizer, it takes only about three to four weeks to harvest the seaweed. Compradors buy it at more or less P200 per kilo and send it to Cebu where it is processed into carrageenan, a gum that is used as stabilizer or thickener in jellies and dairy products, processed meat, toothpaste and pharmaceutical products.
The island is a potential tourist haven that could replace the now congested Boracay. It is a getaway for nature trippers escaping from the cacophonous city life. There, they can go snorkeling, diving, boating or swimming alongside playful dolphins.
A dot in the map in the northernmost tip of the province of Antique, Caluya has a population of 30,000 spread out in the cluster of eight islands. Apart from Caluya Proper, it has seven more islands: Sibay, Sibato, Sibolo, Liwagao, Nagubat, Panagatan and Semirara.
If Semirara rings a bell, it is because it is where Semirara Mining Corp. sits and mines coal. As coal supplier to coal-fired power plants in the Philippines and abroad, the firm has jacked up Caluya from fourth-class to first-class municipality by providing jobs with complete employee benefits, paying its taxes to source the municipality’s fund and assisting in various building projects.
Mayor Reyes takes pride of its stately municipal hall that mirrors the town’s success.
A port in Brgy. Masanag, still under reconstruction for expansion, links Caluya to its 18 barangays.
The previous town mayor, the late Reynante J. Lim Sr. (father of the incumbent mayor) had intended to construct a 1,200-meter landing strip. His daughter would do it.
The island now enjoys electricity from 8 a.m. to midnight from a diesel-powered generating plant operated by the Antique Electric Cooperative, Inc. (ANTECO).
The island has a health center with a physician, nurses and midwives.
To get to the island from Iloilo City, take a four-hour bus ride to the port of Libertad, Antique. Then take a ferry boat at 4 a.m. for a three-hour sailing to Caluya./PN
