THEATER IN SOCIETY, SOCIETY IN THEATER SOCIAL HISTORY OF A CEBUANO VILLAGE 1840 - 1940 BY RESIL B. MOJARES
About the Book The book is a result of a study and an analysis of how changes in the society affect its traditions and how the traditions reflect the changes in society. The time frame the book covers is 1840-1940. The study focused specifically on the Linambay tradition and how it flourished in the village of Valladolid in Cebu. Linambay is also known as komedya, which was introduced by the Spaniards in the Philippines. It became a tradition in the society of Valladolid because it is the main act in their annual festivals. The tradition is dependent on the economy of the village, and other internal and external factors such as trade, market, and societal relations. As there were developments and changes that the village underwent, so the Linambay tradition evolved until it died out.
Summary of the Book The book is divided to three (3) major parts. The first part sketches the historical development of the village. The second part analyzes in detail the dynamics of the Valladolid theatre tradition, or the Linambay. The third part of the study treats in more detail the social and economic conditions of the village in the Linambay years (1890-1920).
Part1 – History of Valladolid
Pre-Hispanic Before Before the the arriva arrivall of the Spania Spaniards rds,, Vallad Valladoli olid, d, known known then then as Sialo, Sialo, was alread already y heavil heavily y populated. Trade existed due to its links to the large port settlement of Cebu. The pre-Spanish village was called ginsacopan which was a cluster of houses without the order of a village or the division of streets. Their social structure is as the early Visayan class system of datu, timawa and olipon. Exchange of goods and services holds this structure together. A huge part of this system of exchange is the ceremonial activities activities.. They redistribute redistribute wealth; wealth; validate validate existing existing structures structures and moderate moderate social social tensions. tensions. These activities can be seen as (1) symbolic acts aimed at preserving the community against the threats and pressures of the other world, and as (2) activities that validate and cement social relations. Through these ceremonial activities, the village preserved, sustained and celebrated itself. Based on these inferences, we can assume that protohistoric Sialo was already a community with a high degree of social integration most expressed in ceremonial life. The society has found ways to relieve tension and help assure its continuing reproduction.
The Transition In 1565, Legazpi arrived in the port of Cebu. For a moment, there was peace between his men and the natives. Cebuano chiefs worked out a truce with the Spaniards and trades began to be carried out between the Spaniards and the natives but due to deprivation of food and supplies, Legazpi and his men moved their headquarters to Panay. Legazpi returned in 1570 to formalize the colonization of Cebu. In 1571, he assigned groups of natives to the Spanish inhabitants of Cebu but the lack of personnel prevented the encomiendas from functioning fully as a system which led to much social disorientation. This was the situation so there began uprisings in Cebu against the Spanish which led the deprivation of properties and execution of the leaders who were of the native elite. Sialo was one of the first places in Cebu to be visited by missionaries. It was a visita of San Nicolas parish which meant it was visited by a religious from the mission station of San Nicolas. These visits are assumed to have been infrequent because Christians had regressed to paganism because of lack of missionaries. In the late 16th century, the Spanish had begun to intrude into Sialo and by the end of the century, a convent had been established, and with it a church which indicated that the Spaniards had achieved a measure of influence in the Sialo area. Early in the 17 th century, the church and convent of Sialo were destroyed in the course of a Moro attack which happens periodically to the coastal towns. This raid is said to have caused the villagers to move inland. The new settlement was called Kabkad or Kabkab from a species of fern that was abundant in the place. Kabkad later became Carcar. Carcar grew to be the focal settlement of the area and one of the most important towns of the province. The Sialo-Carcar area came closer to the Spanish orbit. To a certain extent, Spanish presence was just an overlay on native society and this society functioned in the same way as the past. In many cases, however, Spanish presence was also disruptive which pointed to a series of changes in the relations governing society. The Moro raids and the Spanish intrusion combined to create a demographic and economic disturbance. Cebuanos, described as brave warriors, were forced to join the Spanish forces to fight rebels in Bohol and Samar. Spanish exactions of tribute through the encomenderos also added to the pressure on the locals. The Spaniards did not change the mechanisms of the village entirely and instead used them to support the new system. The datu maintained his position as gobernadorcillo or cabeza de barangay of the new political units. An added strain was put on the village for it now had to support not only its own subsistence and moral needs but the functioning of an alien structure as well. Before, encomienda tributes took the form
of goods and agricultural products but with the different system, individual tributes were given fixed currency values of eight or ten reales which made exchange impersonal and legalistic. The Spanish officials exposed the natives to the imbalances of an emerging cash economy by collecting products and reselling them later at higher prices; hoarding; irregularities in the cost of tributes; and monopolies on trade. Many natives died of hunger as a result of food supply shortages. Ecological and social imbalance marked the 17 th century, with numerous reports of famine and epidemics in 1634, 1651, 1652, 1668, and 1675. Such crises were signs of the disturbed quality of life during the time. Such open antagonisms, were to be dissipated in the wake of active missionary work. The transition to a new faith was also helped by the fact that the villagers saw much in Catholicism that satisfied existing beliefs and needs. New rituals were introduced in 1599 with the establishment of the church in Sialo: the mass, Lenten observance and possibly, the fiesta complex itself. By the mid-17 th century, an elaborate complex of church ritual had already evolved. It developed so much that it already had a tight association with local culture and social organization. Native dances and songs, and the whole style of native feasting were incorporated into church celebrations. As early as the 18 th century, Carcar already experienced the first stirrings of a movement that was to alter the village by the mid-19 th century
Peasantization In the 16 th century, only three towns were established—Cebu, San Nicolas and Sialo. Four and six were added in the 17 th and 18th centuries. The establishment of towns or pueblos showed the changes as the pre-Hispanic settlements ceased to be independent political units. Governmental influence then spread in the countryside. Regulations were imposed on the province. In the 19 th century, Carcar evolved into one of the leading towns of Cebu. Chinese mestizos already begun to move into Carcar as early as 1818. By 1851, Carcar already had 50 tributantes who were Chinese mestizos. In 1858, there were 66. Valladolid itself was already well-settled. The name Valladolid first appeared in 1859 but the name only applied to the place called Daang Lungsod or Inayagan. By the 1880’s, the whole area was already called in some official records as Valladolid, one of the ten barrios constituting Carcar Private ownership of land was introduced by the Spaniards. This change in landownership accompanied the shift from subsistence agriculture to a cash-crop economy. Cebu was one of the first provinces to respond to the demand for sugar in the world market in the early 19th century. By mid-1840’s, Cebu was the third largest sugar producer in the Philippines. The expansion of sugar cultivation caused the landholding patterns in the Carcar area to be modified. The prominent buyers of land were merchant families f rom the Chinese mestizo district. After the opening of Cebu to world trade in 1860, the province witnessed the emergence of sugar haciendas, ranging in size from 50 to 600 hectares, producing sugar for such markets as Great Britain, Australia, and the United States. After 1860, the importance of Carcar as a sugar producer was eclipsed by the newly developed northern towns.
With changes in the world sugar market, the industry hit a period of depression from 1886-1891. At the close of the 19 th century, Valladolid had become a peasant village. The end of 19th century saw political changes. On April5 1898, two days after the anti-Spanish uprising, the “lower classes” of Carcar and surrounding areas occupied the poblacion and held the priests found there captive. Participated largely by the village poor (timawa) of Villadolid and surrounding areas. The Villadolid elite also played a prominent role in this uprising. The Spanish withdrawal from Cebu in December 1898 left Carcar under the domain of the Philippine Republic, inaugurated in Cebu on December 31 1898. In Carcar, the Republic was organized with the election of local officials and the formation of a local militia on 15 th and 16th of January 1899. The Republic was a brief interlude. The Americans arrived in Cebu on February 21 1899, and in June and July 1899, American control was extended throughout the southern towns with little military resistance. Several towns did not file a formal protest. Carcar was one of these towns. The Americans didn’t want to create an image of forcible occupation but the situation was fraught with tension. Fighting soon erupted. In Carcar, tension was moderated by the existence of a relatively better resource base and of homogenous elite steeped in compromise.
The Village Celebrated From 1899 to 1906 there was civil unrest in several parts of the province because of the war against Spain, and then the United States. The first decade of the century was also marked by ecological disturbances. Epidemics of cholera, smallpox, rinderpest and other diseases exacted a heavy toll on human and animal populations, particularly from 1902 to 1904.Destructive plagues of locusts ruined crops in 1901, 1903, 1906, and 1908. Similar damage was caused by long spells of drought in 1903 and 1904. As a result, famine stalked the towns throughout most of the decade, particularly from 1902-1905. As a response to the crisis, Cebu entreated the Manila government to send shipments of rice and expand public works to accommodate the jobless and hungry. It is apparent that Valladolid felt the depression at the turn of the century. In the early 20th century, the most vigorous years of the Linambay, Valladolid was a peasant society. The two most prominent families- Regis and Gantuangco- were 19 th century in-migrants from the Chinese mestizo district of Parian. These families, already linked by affinal ties started to acquire lands in the Valladolid area in the 1840’s. Both Regises and Gantuangcos blended in the local community. This they did through taking up residence in the barrio, active participation in the work in the fields, contributions of goods and services and the paternalistic patron-client ties they established with tenants and villagers. As the 20th century began, Valladolid society manifested a special sense of village cohesion, an integration characteristic of a well-functioning peasant community. This kind of society created the Valladolid linambay tradition. The tradition, in turn, helped recreate and reproduce this kind of society. Its linambay tradition spoke of a village with a fairly strong sense of corporatism. It was a sense that the tradition itself fostered.
The Village Eroded. In 1919, a tension that may already have simmered below the surface in the years past came to the surface with a public quarrel between two prominent Valladolid residents over the value of the linambay. For the fiesta of 1919, Valladolid residents had their usual elaborate celebration. On the occasion, Magno Regis, a wealthy resident of the village, launched an attack in an article published in the Cebu City newspaper, The Freeman, saying that the staging of the linambay is wasteful in a time of crisis and hunger. According to him, money is better spent on schools, wells and road repairs. Porfirio Gantuangco wrote an article in another Cebu City newspaper, Nueva Fuerza. He said Regis exaggerated in suggesting that the linambay was staged in the midst of an epidemic of cholera and dysentery. He also attacked Regis in his “miserly” preparations at home and contributions to the fiesta. They fired attacks back and forth in public newspapers. Despite all the crisis and years of depression, the village held fairly well. First, Valladolid was relatively one of the more prosperous barrios of Carcar. Second, one may deduce that, at least over a period of time, the social relations in the village were such that families could adequately “redistribute” pain to counter stress. Electoral politics also affected village moral life in another way. It provided a channel for village leaders to legitimate their status and increase their power. In many ways, however, the new politics was not only to alienate villagers from each other but, more importantly, redirect the loyalties of local leaders away from the village to external centers of power. From the 1920’s on, there was a decline in the unity and distinctiveness of the rural society of Valladolid as it came to be more closely tied to the outside world; and as it became more vulnerable to the tensions generated by the economy and politics of this world. We deal here with a converging complex of changes, ecological as well as social. Such changes do not only coincide with the decline of the linambay tradition itself. They occasion such a decline at the same time that internal shifts in the drama tradition dialectically aided changes in the social field until that point when the aims and processes of linambay production became unrelated to the actual existence of the community itself.
Part 2 – The Linambay Tradition
The Linambay is normally part of an annual complex of community-focused activities called the fiesta. The fiesta in Valladolid or the feast day of the patron saint of the barrio, San Roque, is celebrated every 16th of August. The celebration ranges through the traditional 9 nights of prayers (novenario) and climaxes with the feast day itself. The focal points are the church complex and the public plaza but each home is expected to prepare a feast (hikay), in which all of the comers are welcome.
The fiesta in Valladolid coincided with the harvest of the year’s first and best corn crop. If there was a drought so people were unable to plant by May, thus delaying the August harvest, the fiesta was postponed. The fiesta also coincided with an agriculturally slacked season. In Valladolid, the fiesta was the one symbolic event of the year during which the village acted as a distinct collectivity. It had various attractions: a mass at the barrio chapel, a religious procession, the festive fair in the houses, and the Linambay production itself. The houses of the elite were centers of lavish feasting. The linambay was the main attraction of the feasts. Without it, the fiesta was not considered complete. The village became famous for it, even beyond the borders of Carcar and neighboring towns. It was a practice that the performers had a parade with a village string band to announce the first night of the presentation to the whole barrio. The poblacion fiesta itself frequently featured a Valladolid linambay. The linambay is central to the community because it is in this form that the community celebrates itself. Through the linambay, too, the community reveals its structure. The komedya, or moro-moro (linambay in Cebu), is a dramatic form known to a large part of lowland Christian Philippines. It is a highly patterned play that can run for 9 nights in a row, or longer. It can involve a cast as large as 100 people using plot materials drawn from, or freely modelled after, European metrical romances. Rendered in a formal vernacular heavily mixed with Spanish, it unfolds a highl elaborated story of war, love, and supernatural enchantments against the abstracted background of sistant foreign kingdoms. The linambay must have started to settle as a tradition in Valladolid toward the close of the nineteenth century. In the decades that followed, it was the most important vehicle of the country’s ritual life. It is probable that the Linambay Tradition developed first in the poblacion in the 1860s. Its center gravitated toward the barrio of Valladolid in the 1880s and 1890s. From that time until 1940, the linambay came to be an important institution in the village where it was staged almost every year. Some of the Linambay plays in Valladolid are as follows: the Alimpatar (1903), Gonzalo de Cordoba (1904), Genoveva Estrobillo (1905), Doce Pares (1907) and Coloriana (1910). It was during the period 19001940 where the linambay plays were dtaged “almost every year.” The linambay appealed to the people for a host of interrelated reasons. For one, it satisfied their basic need for entertainment, as diversion from the rarely changing routine of village activities. It was a vehicle for transmission of such values as religious faith, familial devotion, and decorous conduct. Others said it was educational, that it introduced the villagers to the history and manners of Europe and other places. Since the play offered a point of access to “knowledge in books,” it appealed to the villagers’ aspirations for urbanity, which will later lead to conflict. Spanish culture was the prestige culture and simple villagers symbolically participated in this culture. The linambay also satisfied the villagers’ love for spectacle or their sense of aesthetic pleasure. On another level of abstraction, Valladolid informants regard the linambay as an offering (halad) to the patron saint, San Roque; thus, the practice of opening a linambay presentation with an invocation to
God and to the patron saint. It was said that San Roque himself, the “patron of the sick,” was fond of linambay. Divergent interpretations of the functions of linambay stem from differences in the aspect of the tradition considered and the level of abstraction in which the analysis is carried out. It has the capacity to encapsulate many meanings. However, it is evident that there is a distinct social dimension to the institution of linambay. The linambay as social ritual is most revealing not only of the society in which it thrives but of its own internal structure as well. Through symbolic constructions and arrangements, these cultural performances define the essential features of of social existence and, at the same time, shape the consciousness of actors and witnesses. The principal thesis for the study is that the linambay created a symbolic and affective world that reproduced the dominant social values and relations obtaining in the peasant village. In creating such a “world,” the linambay performs a healing and integrating function for the community. It domesticates social conflict in the service of social order. The structure that the linambay creates is the structure of the village itself, determined by difference in social positions, where the elite’s interest is largely served yet the common villagers actively participate and see it as their own.
Producers and Directors The linambay production requires months of weekend rehearsals for its nine nights of staging and it involved from 50-100 people in the cast. The linambay, then, calls upon the resources of a significant portion of the whole community. The decisions on the fiesta program and the staging of linambay were made by the Kapunongan ni San Roque (Association of St. Roch), which was made up of the more prominent landowners of Valladolid. The members of the kapunongan were called diputados and they numbered from 20-80. The kapunongan was headed by a presidente and, in the prewar period, the post was filled by the most prominent residents of the Barrio, such as Macario Gantuangco, Salvador Gantuangco, Rafael Regis, and Constancio Gantuangco. The diputados were not necessarily the most prosperous residents of the village, but it was necessary for a diputado to be a man with independent means and to be a person of civic spirit. The kapunongan decided through a consensus. If the association decided to stage a linambay, then a new play was written or an old one revived. Elite families themselves were usually the processors of script. The leading Valladolid playwrights were Cipriano Regis, Rafael Regis, and Constancio Gantuangco. These people are also the overseers during rehearsals (ensayo) which are done twice a week (Saturday and Sunday) for as long as three months before the fiesta; and the ensayos were also held at the host’s house or yard. General practices include: the angkon-angkon or sponsorship, where the elite mobilizes labor, sponsors lavish costumes (expensive enough to feed a family for five to six years), and provides food; the mobilizing of food supply by the village patriarch by assigning “contributions” to various families or persons; and the diputado’s providing two meals for the entire cast during the ensayo and one meal during the performance. The building of the stage also involves cooperative labor under the direction of the diputados. The stage is set on coconut trunks with wooden planks for flooring and woven coconut palms for roof and
walls. Village children are conscripted to weave the matting of coconut leaves for roofing the stage. There is also an open-air stage. A full stage is usually a two-level affair with the main acting area and a raised platform. During the ensayo, the villagers themselves played on a violin, two guitars, a bass instrument, and a banjo. For the presentation itself, a band was hired, a fifteen-man band from the Carcar poblacion and a band from the barrio of Calidngan.
Actors and Audience The actors in the Valladolid linambay are generally conscripted from the community itself. They do not form a fixed group. There is a clear symmetry to the cast: the King with his royal court, a complement of counsellors, princesses with their maids-in-waiting, the prince and his clown servant, a general with his troop of “six and not more than twelve” soldiers. Hierarchy can be observed in the fictional title of the player, prominence in the plot, or number of speaking lines. The roles in linambay can be divided into three categories: the leading/primary roles, the supporting/secondary roles, and all the rest featuring soldiers and servants. Primary and secondary roles are assigned to the prominent, landowning families, and the r est of the cast are from tenant families. The size of the linambay audience can range from 1,000 to 3,000 people. The most prominent familes of the barrio and their guests are seated in a sibay or palco at the side of, or close to, the stage.
The Play itself Resil Mojares used Marxism in explaining the dependence of representation on systems of economic and social organization. Studies of actual performances are then important, for system of symbols succeeds not just through the support lent to it by the social context, but through the efficiency of the play-in-itself, the effective internetworking of the devices or elements of any given performance. Alimpatar is one of the best-known of Valladolid plays. It is a verse play in quatrains, in lines of from eight to ten syllables each, usually rhyming aabb. Its structural nit is the scene, and it consists of 157 scene shifts. These, however, can be reduced to three or four basic scenes: the king in council in his court, characters in the forest, mountain, or on the road; the princess in the garden or the balcony; and the battle scene. There are 77 characters. There are also nonhuman characters in the story like lions and giants. The characters are grouped into four kingdoms (Colchida, Natolio, Tracia, and Turquia). In the play, reallife brothers play the role of brothers, with their uncle as father king, which proves that the play symbolically expressed not only class solidarity but also family cohesion. While there is a hierarchical ordering in the characters of the play, there is also a measure of fairness in the distribution of roles among the tenants. Scenes are created out of conventional motifs: boasting speeches, wooing declamations, stylized battles, the king seeking counsel, the hero soliloquizing. Music and stage movements are highly conventionalized, making for a flow of the play that is discontinuous and segmented. Convention also rules the delivery of lines and facial expressions of actors.
Delivery is characterized by a stilted recitative manner which allows for limited tonal variations for such situations as boasting and lamentation. Verses are also delivered segmentally, line by line, to the rhythm of the dictation of the prompter in his makeshift cubicle at the foot of the stage. The actors’ face are generally immobile and expressionless. They do not develop the expressive potential of their personalities, faces, or voices. It is the play which is important. The verbal style is also formulaic, marked by conventional similes, analogies, heroic epithets and hyperbole. The language is replete with Spanish words and occasionally with localisms. The play aspires to heighten its material through the use of a formal, abstracted idiom. The Alimpatar deals with a limited set of topoi: love and obedience to parents, loyalty to the king, love between the sexes, the value of chastity and honor, martial courage and daring unto death. Other themes were developed such as the superiority of Christian religion and the value of nobleza or nobility. The non-human and supernatural characters in the story, like the monsters and tramoyas, do not just serve as spectacle, surprise, and color for the play, they have specific functions. The monsters replicate the character and function of the clown whose good-natured irreverence is a valve for the release of the linambay. Another important character in the story is the gracioso, the prince’s sidekick and his foil. Through him, the linambay directly makes contact with local experience.
Structure of the Linambay At the center of the linambay is an image of a given society, an image of how things are and how they should be. On the level of symbolization, we see that the society dramatized in the linambay play is a hierarchical, feudal society peopled by kings, dukes, princesses, pretty generals and ambassadors, common servants, and soldiers. The play celebrates the conservative values of custom and ceremony in a world that revolves around the axis of obedience to divine and secular authority. Through the ceremonialization and sanctification of existing power relations in society, the linambay expresses an elite vision of the world. Such ideological superstructure has its basis in a two-level substructure: (1) the organization of the linambay production and (2) the social organization of the village itself. On the first level, we see what role the elite families play in the production of the linambay – they conpose the script, assign the roles, get the lead roles and the longest lines, direct the whole play, pay for costumes, supply the food, host the ensayo, and occupy the specially constructed sheds (palcos) close to the stage. This is reflective of the social organization of the village. There was a structure of a peasant village where the inhabitants could be classified according to their relations to the land: big landlords, medium-sized farm owners, smallholders, and petty tenants. The linambay, then, may be viewed as a sanctification of social inequality. It is a feudal form both in its system of production as well as its order of symbolic values. It celebrates and perpetuates the existence of an elite and its vision of the world. It was a true village tradition. Key problem: Why did the lower peasantry take the elite vision of the linambay as their own?
Part 3 – Integration
The Linambay is a symbolic representation of peasant society. During the linambay years, Valladolid was a peasant society. It can be best described by the so-called vertical solidarity model (VSM). As James Scott defines it, the VSM is characterized by a substantial degreeof reciprocity and provides a wide range of economic and social protection of dependents in return for their labor and support. The status of the elite is more willingly granted and the attitude of subordinates more closely approaches the genuine deference (respect). The patron-client relations work this way: The client provides agricultural labor and various supplementary services. The patron, on the other hand, provides land or employment, subsistence crisis insurance, physical security, and collective patron services. In the first two decades of the century, the most vigorous years of the linambay, there was a fairly high degree of reciprocity in patron-client relations in Valladolid. During this time, the Regises and the Gantuangcos had taken the lead in the barrio – in fiesta organization, in land acquisition, and in the production of the linambay. It is reported that these families are cruel during the linambay ensayo, but there are also reports that these families plow their land themselves and hired people only when in need. These familes were also leaders in communal projects: in the building of the barrio chapel, in the financing and management of the fiesta and the linambay, in hosting of visiting dignitaries, and in sponsoring of formal education in the barrio. One must also look at the horizontal, polyadic ties that mesh together persons and households. Cross-cutting kinship create a situation wherein “everybody is everybody else’s relative.” It is also common practice to choose a ritual kin (padrino or madrino at a baptism or wedding) from one’s relations, usually someone of either equal or higher status. During the 1930s, there was a growing erosion of patron-client relations. Such erosion is a drawnout historical process, involving as it does the combined action of many forces. At the heart of this process were the advance of a cash economy and the rise of the state. By this time, the village patrons experienced a decline in status and power, because of their entanglement in a wider financial network that made its own demands on them. What took place in the early twentieth century was a structural change, which is expressed in the history of the Valladolid linambay. From the standpoint of patrons, the linambay is a form of “subsistence insurance,” where they have to redistribute their wealth to cultivate the goodwill of social and economic clients. From the standpoint of clients, the linambay is part of the “redistributive mechanisms” of the village. It advances the norm of reciprocity essential to the “moral economy” of peasants, which involves certain time honoured notions about the duties and obligations of good tenants and good landlords. The linambay, undoubtedly, is a problematic system. There is the element of “falseconsciousness” involved in the peasants’ participation in the tradition. In it, social exploitation is mystified as peasants take the linambay’s elite vision of the world as their own. To this extent, the linambay conforms to Maurice Blotch’s description of ritual as “the system by which we hide the world.”
Dialectics of an Order Some supportive material and economic conditions of the linambay tradition as well as its transformations in the wake of changes in these conditions have to be considered. First is the physical profile of the village. The center of the village has shifted twice in the present century. It is determined by the location of the barrio chapel and the houses of the elites. Valladolid was not a single congregation of houses but a network of dispersed house clusters and satellite sitios, a diffused settlement with no clear center. Such a situation provides part of the ground and rationale for the integrative role of the linambay. Through the setup, the two leading families (Regis and Gantuangcos) as well as the other prominent families were able to expand their territories and elite power through vertical and horizontal relations. Of the larger village itself, the cadastral data for 1915 shows that the situation was not one of the landlords Regis and Gantuangco against “the rest of the village.” While these families owned a large part of the village, their holdings did not constitute one large estate or hacienda but were divided into many units operated by several nuclear families or households. The village had a number of non-resident landlords, a large number of middle-sized landowners, and an even larger number of operators of miniscule but independent farms. The Regises and Gantuangcos owned 28% of the barrio land, an outer elite 16%, village population 25%, non-resident landlords 20%, and public land 11%. A number of conclusions can be drawn from the 1950 cadastral data for Valladolid. The economic dominance of the Regises and Gantuangcos was not absolute and there was room for a certain measure of fairness to thrive in the barrio. First, the holdings of the two families were a loose collection of scattered parcels. Second, a large number of villagers have claims to their own land. Third, a sizeable portion of barrio land was owned by non-resident landlords. Valladolid was basically agricultural, with three main crops – sugar, corn, and coconut. Secondary crops were maguey, root crops, legumes, fruits and vegetables. The landlord-tenant relationship and the form of tenancy varied according to the crop produced. For example, there was a 50:50 sharing of the tenant and the landlord in corn cultivation, 50:50 sharing between the owner and the tapper in palmwine production, and 75:25 sharing in coconut farming. Landlord-tenant relations were fine and smooth. Tenants can just borrow from the landlord the amount of corn that he desires without charging interest. There was a potential for dispersion and contradiction. Yet it remained largely thus, a potential.
Collapse of Context The decade before the Pacific war witnessed qualitative changes in the life of the village. Village society came to be buffeted more frequently by the vagaries of a market economy: price fluctuations, chronic shortages, pressures of economic competition, and declining standards of living.. There was a drop in the earnings for agricultural products. The depression of the 1930s was evident in the other areas of the local economy. There were reports of mass layoff and closure of businesses in Cebu, and there were increasing rate of Cebuano
migrations to Mindanao. Even village landlords found the going rough. They had to contend with thye competition posed by big hacienda owners. The Hacienda Osmena illustrates a new phase in the Philippine agriculture that began to emerge in the 1920s. There were a lot of improvements in the agricultural system, thus affecting the previous system where the village landlords had a control on. Unlike Don Tomas Osmena, the Regises and the Gantuangcos lived in Valladolid and blended into the community through residence, social contacts and marital ties. They were active participants in that life and demonstrated this in the roles they played in the linambay tradition. The new Regises were no longer exclusively dependent on land but were actively engaged in trading, specifically, the contracting, buying, and selling of tuba. Though these people contributed to the annual fiesta fund, they were passive supporters of the linambay tradition. By the 1930s, the resources of the Regises and Gantuangcos and of Valladolid itself, had been eroded. With this the symbolic order of the linambay came to lose much of the meaning imaparted to it by the larger context. The tradition begun to die.
Deformations of Tradition Changes in the order of village life led not only to a decline in the frequency of linambay productions, but changes in the character of the linambay itself. By the late 1920s, the elder linambay producers and directors had begun to be inactive. The responsibility of carrying on the tradition fell non young Constancio Gantuangco. With him, the linambay underwent a change. He took it in a different manner, used it for political, non-traditional reasons, as self advertisement and a way of shoring up popular support in his own barrio, which was his electoral bailiwick. He also took sole leadership of the production, and he subsidized the whole play and the food for the performers. Resources to support the old lavish spectacles were not available. His productions were also shorter. He cut Alimpatar from nine to seven nights of performance. His own plays lasted three or four nights, or shorter and there were spectacles no more. Stage movements were o longer stylized, the traditional music cues were gone, and the swordplay is now “realistic”. At this point in time there was a thin line between linambay and zarzuela. The rise of zarzuela gave linambay a loss of popularity. Another phenomenon that symptomized the decline of a center village tradition was the appearance of little drama traditions in the sitios. It may be taken as a sign of fragmentation of the village that in later years, sitio chapels proliferated as centers around which neighbourhood clusters or sitios revolved.
A Tradition Ends In the 1930s, Valladolid had begun to lose much of its distinctiveness and cohesion as a village. There was the gravitational pull of the poblacion with its proto-urban culture of American-style sports, new dances, and movies. In theatre, the favoured form was the zarzuela, a compact 2 hour musical play in the realistic manner that dealt with themes of domestic life, romantic love, and contemporary manners. By 1930s, zarzuelas began to be presented in the Valladolid fiesta, competing for attention with the
linambay. In these years too, Valladolid started to have such modern entertainment as softball games and beauty contests. The mode of transportation also improved, thus, creating one of the conditions for the breakdown of unity and distinctiveness of the village. A lot of changes happened to the barrio of Valladolid, in line with the events that happened like the Pacific War. There cam economic struggles in the town, as well as a decline in the economic state. After the war, the linambay came to be staged few times before it finally disappeared. The barrio fiesta celebration declined in fervor, marked by assorted entertainment: American sports, native games, public dance, and from time to time, a zarzuela or domestic melodrama in Cebuano. Poverty became a more pressing reality. With the decline of the linambay, Valladolid “fragmented and fell asleep.” There was the postpeasant phenomenon in social history. It refers to a large society, which, in a process, prevents the peasantry from developing or maintaining “locally based moral, political, or economic situations of any real vigor.”
Conclusion
The analysis of culture involves a searching out of significant symbols, clusters of significant symbols and clusters of clusters of significant symbols. Rural dwellers can’t commit their lives to written records. So much of the rural past lies masked although there are points of access that provide one with a hazard-filled yet invaluable tool in the study of rural history. This study attempts to use a theatre tradition as “control” in analyzing the social history of a rural community in Cebu. The linambay flourished in Valladolid in the early years of the present century because the need for it existed and there existed as well the means for the satisfaction of this need. In explaining the linambay, there are two conditions to its power that are operative. These are (1) an environment of conflict which provides the conscious or subconscious rationale for ritual, and (2) the presence of the means, institutions or conditions which facilitate the ritualistic domestication of such conflict. Both conditions were present in Valladolid as an environment of tension was created by several factors yet both the economy and social structure of the village were such that Valladolid had both the material and moral means to sustain the linambay tradition and render it persuasive. From 1900 to approximately 1925, the linambay tradition of Valladolid was vigorous. In 1925 until 1940, the history saw the decline and disintegration of the tradition. We witness here not just the end of the linambay but the death a village or its dying.
