Where it still survives: Most barangays in Macabebe but particularly Brgy. Dalayap, which is one of those villages in the Pampanga River Delta that can now be reached only by boat after farmlands were converted into fishponds in the 1970s; also Brgy. Sapang Kuayan in Masantol and Brgy. Sto. Niño in San Simon town

When it occurs: May 22, which is the barrio fiesta of Dalayap (feast of St. Rita), although it is a moveable feast depending on how soon the annual floods come; last Sunday of April in barrio Sta. Maria, Macabebe; in Sapang Kuayan, it is held on the last Saturday of February; in Sto. Niño, on January 25

What it is: Batalla may just be a variation of kuraldal, since both involve dancing and use the same music, but batalla seems to be a reenactment rather than devotional. After the 4 p.m. Mass officiated by a visiting Catholic priest in the predominantly Methodist village of Dalayap, the procession begins at the chapel and heads for a footbridge to the east. Then it makes a U-turn just before reaching the bridge, and that’s the signal for the start of batalla: the brass band starts playing the familiar kuraldal tune, and devotees begin to dance the batalla, which is different from the steps of kuraldal.

Batalla is mostly hopping, which intensifies as the band plays faster, with intervals of swaying when the music slows down. All participants, from ciriales-bearing acolytes to barefoot children and old wives and fishermen, jump and dance as they negotiate their way through narrow streets and around fishponds and riverbanks, until after sunset. Those who carry the undas, bearing the tiny image of their patron saint, rock it from side to side, at times really violently, as they chant “Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy!” Devotees form two lines behind the undas by holding the shoulders of the person in front of them: adults right behind the saint, where the dancing is most violent, teenagers in the middle, and small children, some barely above the ground, at the tail-end.

When the procession finally returns to the chapel, the participants, including the undas bearers, start running around and shouting like banshees, similar to what the Chinese do in their dragon dance. Afterwards, they position the image in front of the church door and then perform a ritualized tug-o’-war; the intensity and the violence of the dancing and shouting indicate that the batalla has reached its climax. It then resolves itself with the saint being allowed inside the chapel. The band plays a few more tunes before the crowd’s excitement subsides.

How it began: The oldest villagers in Dalayap say batalla was already practiced by their parents and grandparents. Batalla, which means “battle,” is quite obviously a ritual based on moro-moro, popular during the colonial days, depicting the battle between the Crusaders and the heathens, or perhaps between the Christian conquistadores and the Muslims who were the inhabitants of Pampanga at the time of the Spanish Conquest in 1571. Like kuraldal, batalla may have been a pre-Hispanic tribal dance that was merely Christianized when the missionaries came. There are no references to this unique Kapampangan ritual in extant Spanish documents.

What it means: The folks who practice batalla probably do not realize that they are reliving the struggle between the Muslim Kapampangans and the Christian Spaniards. The eventual entry of the saint’s image through the chapel’s door and the subsiding of emotions immediately thereafter may be seen to symbolize the successful Christianization of Kapampangans and the pacification of their land. But one small point should not be missed: the saint succeeds in entering the door only because the people have allowed it, and not as a result of a defeat in battle.

In history, outside of Tarik Soliman’s defeat in battle which occurred in Manila and not on Kapampangan soil, there is no known resistance put up by Kapampangans when the Spaniards penetrated the land for the first time by way of the river. In the metaphor of the batalla, the saint’s entry may be interpreted as Kapampangans having lost the battle but won the war, i.e., while Christianity transformed them, they also transformed Christianity through the folksification of religion.

Common folk create their own rituals like makeshift ladders so they can reach an unreachable God; priests who decide these folk rituals have outlived their usefulness sometimes cruelly terminate them and replace them with alien ways of worship, leaving the people to wander about listlessly. This obscure festival called batalla in this obsure fishing village in Masantol probably holds the clue to the ultimate destiny of the Church in this part of the world: the revelers, towards the end of batalla, boisterously seizing the chapel with no priest in sight recalls the image of a revolution and hints at the uncontrollable, untamable power of folk and its eventual victory.

What the future holds: Tourists, media people and researchers have largely ignored batalla owing to the distance and scarcity of the places where it occurs. In the case of Dalayap, the obstacles include the frequent ebb and flow of the river which floods the village around the time of its fiesta, and the brownouts (electricity is out longer than it’s on). The batalla there ends early in the evening because the entire place is thrown in total darkness.

Although the residents have mostly converted to Methodist and other Protestant denominations, many of them continue to join the batalla; fiesta visitors from other barrios also swell the number of revelers. Still, the tiny community can hardly afford the requisite brass band, much less a generator to light up the batalla venue. The practice is also threatened by intoxicated participants who become violent and vulgar when the image of St. Rita enters the chapel and the band starts playing popular ditties. Concerned parish pastoral councils, instead of barangay officials, should take charge of the event to preserve its religious content and prevent it from deteriorating into a mere tourist attraction or worse, a political vehicle. .

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