Adapted by the author from his earlier writings on the occasion of the district’s fiesta, a three-day celebration that begins on the official day of the Immaculate Conception, December 8.
The district of Concepcion had an economy that rivaled that of the town proper itself. If not for the fortuity of geography, which cast it out on the northeast fringes of our hometown, Malabon, it would have been much better-placed in the general consciousness. Anyway, to us adolescent townies of the Fifties, Concepcion beckoned romantically around the first decade of the time of our lives.
The jeepney fare was ten centavos—it also bought a Coke; the river crossing, by canoe, cost half. Concepcion had three cinemas; in one, a neighbor happened to work in the ticket booth, and if we were lucky to catch her in a good mood, we got in free. Otherwise, we took our chances with the cake-house madam often generous with samples of her biko, a rice cake topped with latik, the versatile syrup from a long-simmered mix of coconut milk and sugar.
Even if only to be observed, Concepcion was lustily illustrative. Around back, the river flowed into the main grid of the town’s milkfish farms, a sight of grassy-bordered squares of water, green from algae, that stretched out into the horizon. The streets reflected a life of style and convenience particularly in the architectures and the private-owned motorcars, of which there seemed more per square kilometer of road than elsewhere. The most popular type was the “owner.”
Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, in his homily, speaks of the plight of the fisherfolk, of the Filipino, and ends it on a note of faith: ‘Hindi sumusuko ang Diyos sa atin (God hasn’t given up on us)’
The owner was the same Willys Jeep used by the U.S. military as staff car during the war and transformed in peacetime into commuter jeepney through Filipino ingenuity. In Concepcion’s motor shops, it was further fashioned into an open-sided, canvas-roofed, stainless-steel chariot and deployed in gleaming defiance of the damp, salty air that rusted up poorly protected undercarriages into Chantilly lace.
Caption: Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David leads concelebrated Mass during the fiesta celebration of Concepcion, Malabon, last December 9, in the Rufina Patis riverside compound, before the 400-year-old image of the Immaculate Conception from the Shrine and Parish of the Immaculate Conception in Malabon. After the Mass, the image sets out for the traditional fluvial procession. (Photo by Thelma Sioson San Juan)
But Concepcion reserved its ultimate fervor for the Immaculate Conception, the seminal Catholic miracle, to which the parish was consecrated and for which, in a rare and, to all appearances, happy civil concession to a faith, the district itself was named. It celebrated the occasion with three days of feasting, fairgrounds fun, and church rituals. Each day—from December 8, the official day, to 10—built up to a procession carrying an image of the Virgin with a different look each night. The first appeared in more or less its everyday look in church—simply clothed. The second, an all-wooden sculpture, with everything carved in—clothes, accessories, everything—was intended to make a comparison between the Catholics and the breakaway Aglipayans of how they revered the Virgin; allegedly, the Aglipayan image was all head, hands, and feet, its disembowelment concealed under clothes—to be sure, it was plain and economical. The third and last image was a Virgin all dressed up and jeweled and paraded amid copious fireworks not only on the street but also on the river.
The comparison was definitely superficial. No wonder the Aglipayans, who felt they had been able to marry their sense of nationalism to their faith, didn’t seem to object then; and they don’t now.
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