San Fernando, my birth place

A Past Revisited, Connecting the Dots, part 9

To mark the May 30th Feast of San Fernando in Pampanga, Philippines, I am sharing an essay that was originally published in the Supplement Magazine for the Inaugural Parol Lantern Festival in San Francisco in 2003.

Parol Festival and a Tale of Two Cities

I work and live in South of Market, a downtown neighborhood in San Francisco. I was born and raised in San Fernando, the provincial capital of Pampanga, which is now a newly chartered city strategically located in the central part of Luzon Island in the Philippines. Both cities are my two bayan, my old and new hometowns; the deep spring of inspiration, passion and pride in my life, work and vision.

The barrio Del Pilar where I grew up was a walking distance away from the poblacion or town plaza; to go to the market I had to cross a hanging bridge, we call “tete duyan.” Living closer to the central district of the town has its advantage; even at younger age, I was so much abreast of what’s happening in our town, province and in the nation; I knew many people, or shall I say many people knows me, in the plaza. Many of my relatives and folks from our barrio work in the town proper as vendors, shoe shiners, firemen, town clerks, receptionists, teachers and restaurant staff. My family name Canlas is common.

The South of Market district in San Francisco has been a home of Filipinos since the 1920s and became a popular destination among newcomers and recent immigrants because of its proximity to downtown jobs, affordable and very cheap housing rents, (I mean then, before the dotcom boom, in the nineties.), easy access to public transportation and major terminal going to and from the Bay Area counties, central to commerce and trade, available child care center, grade school and newcomers center, and St. Patrick’s Church on Mission and 4th is the center of gravity of Roman Catholics and religious services.

In many ways, I found my old town San Fernando’s poblacion in South of Market (SoMa) in San Francisco. Although there are only 3000 Filipinos in South of Market, representing a small 6 percent of the entire Filipino population in the City and County of San Francisco, not even close to the 32,720 Filipinos in Daly City or the 24,215 in Vallejo, and yet SoMa Filipinos is indisputably the Filipinotown in the Bay Area.

The old Filipino town, which for many years has functioned as a center of gravity and a gathering place for Filipinos, and a place they’ve claimed their own home, was gone now. It was the Manilatown in Kearny Street, a five blocks neighborhood adjacent to Chinatown in San Francisco. The last building, the famous International Hotel, was demolished in 1977 and its tenants, mostly seniors and Manongs, were all evicted. The memory of the old Manilatown is very much alive even today because of its lasting legacy – the struggle that brought together a broad coalition of people for the I-hotel that continues to inspire community activists to act and fight for affordable housing, jobs, well-being and dignity.

For many years, I have searched for our Filipinotown. At first, I thought, it was Daly City where I used to live and work for many years. I organized homeowners, parish council leaders, youth and their families through the Daly City Filipino Organizing Project. I was instrumental in founding service agency (Pilipino Bayanihan Resource Center), theater group (Teatro ng Tanan), coalition of service providers (KAPAG), and cultural event (Fiesta Filipina). I was rewarded in my community work and effort of building and naming a Filipinotown in Daly City; in 1999, I was a recipient of the Koshland’s Civic Unity Award of San Francisco Foundation.

I was approached in 1999 by Dr. Hanmin Liu, the President and CEO of the Wildflowers Institute, a non-profit agency that helps communities uncover and utilize the strengths of the cultures within the community. It was only through the Wildflowers Institute Studies 2000, which gave me a new but powerful lens of seeing communities that made me aware and fully grasped and uncovered the San Fernando character – the plaza and its neighboring barrios – of South of Market in San Francisco.

Eureka, “I found it; “my rediscovery of SoMa has inspired me more to work and fully immerse in the community. I have written many essays, columns, PowerPoint presentation, and lectures. I even had a book entitled “SoMa Pilipinas Studies 2000 in Two Languages” published by a South of Market based book store Arkipelago. In my book I mentioned:

“Amidst gentrification in South of Market, there is metamorphosis going in our community - consolidation and integration of the Filipino community into a SoMa Pilipinas. SoMa Pilipinas is a community work in progress. A vertical integration is taking deeper roots, connecting our current generation Filipinos and contemporary history in the making with our past and rich heritage, both here and in the Philippines. At the same time we are horizontally linking Filipino families, organizations and communities into webs of plaza - barangay, of hometowns and new found lands, in SoMa, in the Bay Area, in America and in the Philippines.” (Epilogue, SoMa Pilipinas)

The more I immerse in the life ways of San Francisco the more I feel at home; SoMa has perhaps the largest concentration of Kapampangan; St. Patrick’s Church has reciprocity with the Archdiocese of San Fernando, Fr. Elmer Magat and Fr. Ray Reyes hail from the seminary in San Fernando; the celebration of Flores de Mayo that falls on every last Friday of May is concurrently with San Fernando town fiesta, and Santacrusan was part of growing up; and now, I am very much involved in the Parol Festival in San Francisco is a long held tradition and claim-to-fame of San Fernando. San Fernando is dubbed as the “Christmas Capital of the Philippines.” It is not remote San Francisco will earn the title “Christmas Lantern Parol Capital of America.” I strongly believe it will happen.

A year ago, I was broaching the idea of holding a Parol Festival to my friends. Many were enthused and supportive of the project but they had doubts if it would ever be feasible. Many Filipino immigrants have memories of making parols when they were in grade school in the Philippines. Every body is familiar of hanging parols in the house windows, offices, street posts and churches.

Only very few, those who have witnessed the “Ligligan Parul” in San Fernando or have participated in the UP Lantern Parade, are acquainted of lantern festival. How can one start a supposed to be an annual Parol Festival if most of the people in the community are not familiar with the tradition?

Parol is a sign of hope. The opportunity first knocked in July when Bernadette Borja-Sy, the Executive Director of the Filipino American Development Foundation, was looking for an alternative ground-breaking-type-of-event for Bayanihan Community Center since its opening has been moved farther and farther the targeted date because of the delay of the completion of the Bayanihan House. A lighting ceremony in December was considered. I suggested expanding the event into a Parol Festival in the neighborhood along Mission Street that will culminate in St. Patrick’s on the night before the fist day of the nine-day early morning mass or Misa de Gallo.

The second opportunity came about when I met my old buddy in San Fernando, Robert David, now a Provincial Board Member and successful business man, during the July visit of Archbishop Paciano Aniceto of the San Fernando at St. Patrick’s Church. We both belong to a barkada (peer group) of knights of the altar. The friendly exchanges of stories and reminiscing of our childhood days led to a negotiation for a Parol Festival.

Robert David holds the distinction of coming from a family of giant lantern makers; his grandpa innovated a safer way of placing candle in Parol made of bamboo and rice-based paper. This was in the 1920s. He also tried using oil lamps and gas-powered lights. Later on his father who used to work as electrician in the now defunct La Mallorca Pambusco, a Pampanga bus company whose depot was located near their house, concocted old busses light-bulbs, cables and wires into a complicated circuit complementing the intricate designs of giant parols that gave birth of the “Ligligan Parul” which brought prestige to San Fernando, Pampanga.

“Ligligan” in Kapampangan has two meanings; “making noise” just like the kuliglig or crickets and “shaken down” as in kinilig or trembled. The term Ligligan has captured the dynamic interplay of multitude of lights, intricate designs and colors that are ingeniously crafted to dance with the rhythm of a brass band. Seeing the parul and hearing the band in unison is brilliantly spectacular, comparable if not better to Disney’s Electrical Parade. Unlike Disney’s, whose magic is computer-created lighting that is carefully choreographed to work in sync with the soundtracks, “Ligligan Parul” predated computer, electronics, multimedia graphics.

Robert David is gracious of producing and bringing two giant lanterns in San Francisco for the Parol Festival; the first time ever done outside the Philippines. According to him, “it is not ligligan if there is only one parul, it takes two to tango, and it is not giant lantern if the parul is below ten feet in diameter.”

Parols brighten our homes and neighborhoods. The Parol Festival in San Francisco will radiate the virtue of bayanihan or people working together. Considering its humble beginning, the “Ligligan Parul”and Parol Festival in Yerba Buena Gardens, it is my hope and vision, will forever link San Francisco and San Fernando, my two cherished hometowns, culturally and spectacularly.

Kasanting, Abe. It means “Isn’t that beautiful!”

To be continued… Abangan ang susunod na kabanata…

May 29,2025 FB