Buntal Hats Off to Baliuag
The parade had started when we arrived in Baliuag, one of the northwestern towns of Bulacan 52 kilometers north of Manila. We stopped at a street leading to the church and watched the parade, a modest one involving town and barangay officials and little girls dolled up, waving like beauty queens. The day was thankfully not scorching although the sky wore a gunmetal color. On the radio, announcers reported how the storm Caloy was raging through the Visayas and southern Luzon. Onlookers came in trickles. This was only the second year of the Buntal Hat Festival, celebrated on May 13, and the event seemed to need more time and effort to gain popularity. But the buntal hat, a sort of cultural icon for which the town is famous, is a well-known item, now being exported to countries like Australia and the United States. Hand-woven from fine fibers extracted from the buli palm, the buntal hat has found few patrons in the country, regarded no doubt as a piece of nostalgia and provincial fashion.
There was much more activity within and around the old church of Baliuag, dedicated to its patron saint, St. Augustine. The plaza across, called the Glorietta, held a trade fair aside from the numerous vendors milling around the church, selling suman and sweets, newspapers, rubber slippers, toys and spoons and forks in a cart, glinting in the sun.
First built between 1769 and 1774 in the baroque style, the Baliuag Church seemed larger than the church of Plaridel, Baliuag’s mother town. An amusing story was told about why the church was built and how the town came to be known as Baliuag.
When Baliuag was still a cabecceria or barangay of Plaridel (then known as Quingua), people of Baliuag would go to church in Plaridel, a walk and a boat ride of some nine kilometers. The churchgoers from Baliuag often arrived late for the mass. Before long, they became the butt of jokes, with some remarking, “Heto na ang maliliwag (Here come the slow ones),” when they arrived. Even the priest would refer to them as “maliwag.” After some time, the Baliuag people requested a church built in their place, and their petition was granted. But the name stuck, and their place came to be known as Baliuag.
The Baliuag Church is the most prominent structure in the town center, a hulking affair of stone and brick with a canopy at the entrance. It recently underwent a series of renovations. A large relief of Moses holding the tablets with the Ten Commandments was placed at the right side. Inside, the ceiling was skillfully painted with clouds and the azure of sky, giving a momentary illusion of roofless-ness. Even the convent beside the church, which was built following the design of the houses at that time, was renovated.
The church museum, Museo ng San Agustin, is actually a room near the lecture and function rooms and priests’ quarters. Old church records are stored there — a 1733 registry of baptism as the oldest book. One can also find a 1734 registry of confirmation and a 1733 wedding registry, next to cabinets holding old chalices, censers and stoles.
The 1845 capa magna or grand cape, the original cape embroidered with silver threads plated in gold for the image of the town’s patron saint, is displayed. In a glass encasement, the image of the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary is the most valuable item in the museum. Dressed in glimmering raiment and about three foot tall, the statue of unknown age has head and hands made of ivory.
Baliuag has its own town museum, though, and a more accesible one. A short walk from the church, along Gonzales Street, across the Iglesia ni Kristo church, the museum is formerly the municipal hall. Before that it was the house of the Gonzales family, a prominent socio-political family in Baliuag (from which Bro. Andrew Gonzales of the De La Salle University came). The house was turned into a municipal hall at the turn of the 20th century. In 1970, the municipal hall built a new structure and moved to its present location, leaving a few offices. In 1998, most of the house was transformed into a museum.
The town’s culture vulture Alberto de Leon, medical doctor at the University of Santo Tomas, spearheaded the filling of the museum, lending many pieces of furniture and antiques. He also displayed his paintings here, mostly acrylic flowers on buri mats, a hobby of his. The museum showcases bedroom arrangements, dining arrangements with table setting, and living room set up to approximate the olden days. Most of the furniture are with woven rattan parts (called solihiya) and bone inlays, one of Baliuag’s esteemed products.
In the barangay of Santo Cristo, bone inlaid furniture is still being made. One knows one is in Santo Cristo when one notices newly varnished chairs and tables being left to dry in the front yards of many households. On 714 Cunanan Street, one can find the pioneering furniture maker, the Reyes family. Twenty-six-year-old Rochelle Reyes was tending the store, Marinelia’s Furniture, while workers were embedding wedges of carabao bones into a jewelry box. In existence for more than 20 years, Marinelia’s Furniture was started by her father, an off-shoot of the pioneering Soledad’s Furniture, named after her grandmother, Soledad Reyes.
Joel Pascual, former church administrator now with the local tourism office, disclosed that the Reyeses started it all until furniture making spread to other families within the barangay. “Puro gawaan dati dito,” he said, “kumalat mula sa lahi nila.”
Employing about 20 workers usually with four bone-inlayers, Marinelia’s Furniture now produces furniture of sleek modern design and has branched out into interior design, spearheaded by Rochelle. Traditional furniture with bone inlays and solihiya though remains a mainstay. Carabao bones are used in diamond-shaped cuts and strips, making vine and flower designs on wood, usually Philippine mahogany and marine plywood. Using a chisel and a hammer, a worker carved out a penciled design and hammered in the bone pieces.
This is less time-consuming than making buntal hat, Rochelle’s brother jested.
Indeed, there is much effort involved in making buntal hat, though it earns less.
One is not likely to find buntal hats in the local market; one has to go the municipal office, where the two-year-old Baliuag Multi-purpose Cooperative temporarily holds office, to order buntal hats. Fifty-year-old Rosario Bautista is the president of the cooperative and the buntal hat weaving’s prime mover. Learning to weave at eight years old and starting her own business in 1982, Bautista claimed to come from a line of weavers including pioneers Dolores Maniquis and Joaquin Villones.
It is said that the hat weaving industry started in the pre-war years. Since then, the buntal fibers, the uway of the buli palm, came from the Quezon towns of Sariaya and Tayabas.
Like many folk crafts in the country, buntal hat weaving is experiencing a decline and likely even a slow death. Weavers are usually old women like 65-year-old Epifania Mariano, who learned the craft from her mother. It would take her about two days to finish a hat. Usual hat designs are the fedora and the cowboy hats. She said many weavers are concentrated in the barangays of Makinabang and Santa Barbara. Buntal hat weaving though is not limited to these areas or to the town. Nearby towns of Bulacan and even of Pampanga, which form the northern border of Baliuag, have weavers. Bautista said she has about 500 weavers from Baliuag and from other towns.
Bautista would supply all the materials for the weavers and pay them P150 per finished hat. Usually, she has a capital of about P250 for each hat, which she sells for about P300 to P500. Buntal hats are not cheap, which could be why there was a dearth of buntal hats during the festival parade.
The Buntal Hat Festival is the brainchild of Mayor Romeo Estrella to promote the buntal hat in particular and Baliuag industries in general. Aside from that, he is also responsible for putting up the cooperative. He dreams that one day the buntal hat will gain esteem and of putting up a one-stop shop of Baliuag products along the national highway. Definitely, it will be more colorful, substantial and interesting than a parade.
The Bulacan provincial government offers the Experience Bulacan tours touching on the historical/cultural, the ecological, the educational, the industrial/agricultural and the culinary. One can get in touch with the provincial tourism office located at the Hiyas ng Bulacan Convention Center in Malolos City through telephone number (044) 791-7335, telefax number (044) 662-7635, or e-mail bulacan_tourism@yahoo.com. Log on to website www.bulacan.gov.ph.
(Published in The Daily Tribune, 05/21/2006)
