What Angeles is celebrating

LET'S give a toast to Angeles City which celebrates its fiesta this second Sunday of October.

This city of illustrious families, visionary entrepreneurs and resilient, deeply religious citizens is the first town in the entire Kapampangan Region to become a city, back in 1964, or 37 years before another town achieved the same feat (San Fernando in 2001).


The difference between the two is that Angeles is a chartered city, which gives it autonomy from Pampanga (which is why Angeleños don’t vote for governor), while San Fernando is a component city, which still makes it administratively part of the province.

How this former barrio of San Fernando rose to prominence and eclipsed its own mother-town is a success story that should serve as a model to other progressive barrios dreaming of independence from their respective matrixes, like Sta. Cruz from Lubao, Dau from Mabalacat, Betis from Guagua, San Matias from Sto. Tomas, Manibaug from Porac and Balibago from Angeles.

San Fernando itself used to be part of two towns, Mexico and Bacolor, which were two very large towns right next to each other, until 1754 when the Spaniards carved out a new town right between them.

This is the reason old families from Bacolor and Mexico like the Lazatins, the Panlilios, the Ocampos, the Singians, the Dayrits and the Hensons can also be found in San Fernando.

Later, when it was the turn of Angeles to secede from San Fernando, the same families moved to the new town as well—which is why you see families here carrying these surnames.
They also own some of the big subdivisions in this city: L & S (which stands for Lazatin and Singian), Essel (or SL, Singian Lazatin), Hensonville, Josefaville (after Josefa Henson), Carmenville (after Carmen Dayrit) and Villa Gloria, Villa Angela and Villa Angelina (all Lazatin ladies).

The founder of Angeles town, Don Angel Pantaleon de Miranda, was the mayor of San Fernando in 1795. As soon as he stepped down, he moved north to retire in a barrio called Saguin, from where he and wife Rosalia conducted daily clearing operations in a forested area called Kuliat. There he built his new hacienda, his house (“on the northwest corner of the intersection of Sapang Balen creek and the road to Porac,” or the present Robin Theatre) and a chapel (the present Chowking Restaurant). (The house owned by the Naguiats is Don Angel’s second.)

He also invited friends in his old town to resettle, which irked the parish priest of San Fernando, Fray Jose Pometa, OSA, who probably feared a reduction in Sunday Mass collections. Fray Pometa and his coadjutor used the pulpit to convince Kuliat residents to return to San Fernando, sometimes publicly humiliating them. The priests reportedly even put a curse on Kuliat, which would never become a town “tuling la man ding tagac, muti la ding sablang auac!”

After Don Angel formally applied for secession, two developments worked in his favor: (a) the marriage of his only daughter to a brilliant Kuliat-born lawyer, Mariano Paras Henson, the first Filipino layman to become a Doctor of Laws, and (b) the appointment of a Kuliat-born secular priest, Padre Macario Paras, who was Dr. Henson’s relative.

On December 8, 1829, after Don Angel complied with the final requirement (he personally paid the colonial government the equivalent amount of taxes collectible from the 160 pioneer settlers), barrio Kuliat officially became a town.

The court decision, signed October 16, 1829 (a copy of which was given to the Center for Kapampangan Studies by historian Dr. Luciano Santiago), stated, among others, the petitioner’s assurance of the parish priest’s income, his principal reason for the separation (the great distance between Kuliat and San Fernando “which makes it difficult and almost impossible to administer the sacraments during the rainy days”), and the warning that it was “illegal for the parish priest of San Fernando to prevent (the new parish priest of Kuliat) from freely exercising his pastoral ministry.”

The new town’s first barrios were Sto. Rosario, San Jose, Cutcut, Pampang, Amsic and Santol. (Balibago and Malabanias still belonged to Mabalacat, Cutud to Mexico and Pandan, Pulungbulo, Mining, and Capaya to San Fernando.)

Kuliat was renamed Angeles in honor of its founder, Don Angel. It was dedicated to the Los Santos Angeles Custodios (The Holy Guardian Angels), whose feast day is Oct. 2. (The US city of Los Angeles, on the other hand, got its name from the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles, or Our Lady of the Angels).

Eventually the town adopted Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary as patron saint (whose iconic image is venerated as the Virgen de La Naval because it was the same image used by the victorious Spanish fleet in a naval battle against the Protestant Dutch invaders in 1646). This makes Angeles one of only three places in the country celebrating the La Naval (the other two are Manila and Bacolor). It is said that the founder’s wife, Rosalia, was also personally devoted to this Marian icon.

On Sunday, the feast that Angeles will celebrate is that of La Naval (Manila and Bacolor celebrate their versions in November). Later, on the last Friday of this month, Angeles will celebrate another fiesta, the Fiestang Apu, in honor of the Apung Mamacalulu (Lord of Mercy, whose icon is the Interred Christ, or Santo Entierro).

Devotion to this icon started in 1897 when the town was spared from Revolution-related skirmishes, which residents credited to the quinario (five-day novena) they held right after the La Naval fiesta in honor of the five wounds of the Interred Christ. Local legend has it that a local Katipunero named Roman Payumo miraculously escaped execution during the quinario. Devotion has since reached cult proportions.

As the city celebrates its fiesta, let’s appreciate the role it played in the nation’s history: This is where Aguinaldo moved his revolutionary government’s capital (before Tarlac) and celebrated the first anniversary of Philippine Independence on June 12, 1899. This is also the town that hosted the largest American military base outside the United States, which spun off a PX industry that redefined Kapampangan tastes.

After being dealt two near-fatal blows in 1991 (the Pinatubo eruption and the Clark Air Base pullout), it defied all odds and rose back to its feet. You should have seen how this town looked like the day after the eruption to really appreciate the heights it has reached since then.

Cheers to the City of Angels!


Published in the Sun.Star Pampanga newspaper on October 6, 2009.
Robby Tantingco