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Article Contributor: Jen Magtibay of First Asia Institute of Technology
When you talk about festival, you would instantly quip about banderitas. And in Calaca, where the Ala Eh! Festival 2011 happened,
they spelled F-E-S-T-I-V-A-L with a different fiesta banner.
If you are to experience creating banderitas, you know it will take you a lot of cutting and sewing on a very long string. It’s definitely hard work. It might take you a lot of time doing it and it will also take a lot of people to finish it.
When we reached Calaca for the festival, they wowed us with their fiesta banners. They have variety of colors such as blue, green, yellow, orange, and red and they have A LOT OF IT lined on the roadsides and after a long run to the Municipal Hall grounds, you will still see a lot of these banners.
What’s good with seeing these banners is the feeling of anticipating something grandiose coming up. They make you feel that something big awaits you inside the place and something good is worthy the wait.
Seeing the banderitas, you can hear tambourines, drum rolls and festive music playing at the back of your head. It’s amazing how they made the guests feel the merriment.
But people who attended the festival didn’t know that the local government unit employees of Calaca did these banderitas for almost a month.
According to some employees I interviewed, they did these fiesta banners just before November began. It took them a lot of hours to do the banners and they even devoted after work hours to finish the uniquely-patterned fiesta banners. They said they come home past 9pm at times to finish a day’s banner work.
Teamwork is essential, according to them. The employees maintained a lot of teamwork as they took turns doing the banners. If one department of the municipal government has finished their part, they will fold, cut, and line the banners. After so, another group will do the same.
For others, it might seem to be simple. But for these people, with a lot of other things to finish during office hours, the after work banderitas commitment was not that simple. And to create almost 5 kilometers of banderitas, it was a real big deal.
In the end, their hard work all paid off. To all the Calaca government employees who spent their time and effort in creating the Ala Eh! Festival 2011 banderitas, thank you for adding colors and festive vibe to the celebration.
See how these banderitas differ from the usual triangular-shaped ones. Take note, these are made of colored fabric, not plastic. 😉
Here’s a closer look of the fabric banderitas:
But there’s still the usual triangle ones.
