Viva Vigan Binatbatan Festival Streetdance and Showdown Competition 2018 CHAMPION | UNP

VIVA VIGAN BINATBATAN FESTIVAL

University of Northern Philippines emerged as this year's Champion.

The festival depicts the Ilocanos colorful view on life amidst painstaking labor and difficulties of living.

Go back to where the festival came from, and understand the miracle that saved the residents in December 1882.

Viva Vigan Binatbatan Festival of the Arts celebrated from the last week of April to the first week of May was originally the Feast of the Natives that began on May 3, 1883, according to the writings of Damaso King, a well-known Vigan historian.

The festival began when an epidemic killed 934 residents in a month in 1882. The epidemic started November 12 and ended December 15. This happened 30 years after a chapel was built in 1852 in the cemetery of Vigan.

The huge number of death in such short time alarmed the ‘naturales’ or native inhabitants and ‘mestizos’ or residents with Spanish blood that they asked Dr. Evaristo Abaya, then the parish priest, to request for the visit to Vigan of the Santo Cristo Milagroso of Sinait town.

The Santo Milagroso was venerated by the people with a nine-day novena. When the novena progressed for days, the number of death decreased, and on the last day, the epidemic stopped.

The people glorified God for the miracle. Almost all residents attended the Holy Mass in honor of Santo Cristo. In gratitude, the naturales of Vigan chose the third day of May as thanksgiving day for Santo Cristo whom they call ‘Apo Lakay’. This is the feast day of the Holy Cross and the Santo Cristo of Sinait town.

Since then on Fridays and third day of May, people have been going to the cemetery chapel called Simbaan a Bassit to hear Holy Mass, and continue their devotion to Apo Lakay.

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