It’s a hot time in cool Baguio today (Sunday), with the grand float parade providing the colorful climax to the city’s annual flower festival.
Formerly a lean month, February is now a period of major importance in the Philippines’ summer capital. What was founded in 1996 by the John Hay Poro Point Development Corp. board of directors as a celebration of Panagbenga (“a season of blooming” in the native Kankanaey) has evolved into a monthlong affair serving as magnet for tourists foreign and local. The Panagbenga has thus become a significant reason to journey to Baguio beyond the usual occasions of the yearend holidays and Holy Week; the Department of Tourism estimates that over a million visitors arrive for the festival. “The symbol of the rise of Baguio” was how Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez described it in 2012.
Today’s parade of floats (large, ornate productions in an orgy of color) comes on the heels of yesterday’s street dancing (schoolchildren in tribal dress performing the traditional Cordillera dances). A weeklong street bazaar on Session Road follows. It’s an extravaganza participated in and witnessed by a crush of humanity—quite a departure from Baguio of fond memory (green, quiet, sharply cold, pungent with pine) before large-scale commerce came to roost.
The question is periodically asked: Is the yearly flower festival a boon or a bane for the city of everyone’s affections? It cannot be denied that all that traffic (motorized and human) also generates good business. Everyone from hotel and inn owners to flower vendors, public utility drivers and souvenir peddlers rake it in during the Panagbenga, pumping what is estimated to be more than P170 million into the city. But think also of the horrific strain on the infrastructure and water resources as well as the additional stress and pollution, the tons of garbage (2,745 more tons during the festival) piled on the once-pristine City of Pines.
It has been acknowledged that the Panagbenga may be getting too big for comfort. In 2013, festival chair Frederico Alquiros said there was no intention to further increase the number of tourist arrivals that would considerably swell the city’s daytime population of more than 400,000. “Baguio would explode from the tourist overflow,” he said. Also last year, Dr. Mary Anne
Alabanza-Akers of Baltimore University in the United States suggested that tickets be sold. “Let’s bear in mind [the city’s] carrying capacity. We have to be careful it does not become overly crowded because it destroys the ambience and nature of the city. You have these beautiful floats and you’re all crowded, jostling with other people. If they miss it this year, they can return next year.” Baguio conservationist Katherine Arvisu-dela Rosa said she was sure that the size of the crowd “compromised the safety and comfort” of all involved. The Baguio Citizens No Waste Initiative said it was important that everyone clean up afterward. “We Baguio residents take part in Panagbenga whether we like it or not,” it said wryly.
And those are “just” the environmental concerns.
According to Damaso Bangaoet Jr.—known as “the father of the Panagbenga,” for it was he who came up with the original idea—the festival continues to be “a work in progress.” He observed that it was “not nice” for the community to be witnessing the city government and the private sector at odds and in loud disagreement over the proceeds from the festival. They will have to learn to work together, Bangaoet was quoted as saying. “Much more can be done with less politics.” (And speaking of another aspect of politics, it’s said that there has been an improvement: Politicians are no longer allowed to use the festival for campaign purposes—for example, when floats carried candidates’ names and photographs during an election year.)
How to effectively sustain a flower festival that is now a tradition in the beloved mountain city? The Panagbenga has become one of the Philippines’ most attractive and distinctive celebrations. It must be protected, in the same manner that Baguio must be safeguarded from further, fatal, degradation. Put another way, the city does not have to kill a goose that lays golden eggs, but it should also strive to keep the flowers blooming in more ways than one.