ORMOC CITY — The merriment of the street dancers was pulsating, palpitating, so that even if it literally rained on their parade, the revelry continued as they performed on the streets of the city to give their best shot at the Piña Festival 2023. The culmination of their performances was electrifying as eight contingents of energetic performers slugged it out at the festival showdown at the Ormoc City Sports Complex. The beads of sweat on their faces were washed away by the rain. Everybody was joyful, in a frenzy as the street dancers — in their kaleidoscopic ensembles — were in it to give the greatest performance of their lives. And what a show and a show of talent it was!
The grand winner of the festival showdown was STI College Ormoc with a P500,000 cash prize. Winning the second prize was Western Leyte College, with a P450,000 cash prize. The third prize went to Eastern Visayas State University-Ormoc, with a P400,000 cash prize. Each of the five non-winning groups received P300,000.
The Piña Festival street dancing competition was won by STI College Ormoc (first place), Linao National High School (second place) and New Ormoc City National High School (third place.)
Amidst the merrymaking, reverence was also felt. The Piña Festival, according to Ormoc City Mayor Lucy Torres Gomez, who, with her husband Leyte Rep. Richard Gomez, was without a complaint even if she herself was rained on, is about honoring the patron saints of the city, Saint Peter and Paul. When the Ormoc Piña Samba, the theme song of the festival, was blasted in the air, revelry married reverence as the Piña Festival celebrated a bountiful harvest of the city’s primary product — Queen Pineapple — and heralded Ormoc’s fiesta honoring the two saints. This year is the 426th fiesta celebration in honor of the city’s patron saints.
“My dear Ormocanons, this festival is our form of gratitude for the many blessings we have received throughout the years. Just like our very own Queen Pineapple, we have nurtured our city from its grassroots to bring it to its full potential — to taste the city’s sweet success,” Lucy said.
She told The STAR: “The Piña Festival is important because it showcases our trademark. Every place should have a star product. The Queen Piña is our star product. Because we are an agricultural district and agricultural city, we take pride in our star product. In a world where there are so many fruits, we can at least take pride that the sweetest pineapples come from this part of the world.”
“The Queen Pineapple variety is not grown all over the country. The people of Ormoc really relate to it,” added Richard. “The festival is an homage to the farmers who need to wait for 16 months before they can harvest the city’s celebrated fruit. It’s very painstaking. A hectare only of pineapple is harvested every month. It’s part of our culture already. In our cultural mapping, it was really proven that the trademark of Ormoc is our pineapple.”
The Piña Festival was the brainchild of Richard Gomez when he started his term as mayor of the city in 2016.
The Queen Pineapple variety is smaller compared to other pineapple varieties. Its sweetness leaves a syrupy aftertaste in the mouth.
Ormoc, which is as big as Metro Manila, according to Richard, has 500 hectares of agricultural land devoted solely to pineapple farming. Scheduled planting is employed so the farmers are assured of a harvest every day for 365 days.
“We have created many programs to capacitate our citizens so that we Ormocanons can become the best versions of ourselves. We have invested so much in education by providing scholarship grants and soon, we will open our very own City College of Ormoc. We have also developed programs in agriculture to equip our farmers with necessary skills, equipment and support so that the fruits of their labor will be bountiful,” Lucy said.
She added, “Our athletes continue to excel in their respective sports because of our sports development programs. We are investing in long-term infrastructure so that we can march forward to our city’s socio-economic success. These are just among the many brilliant programs designed to make the dreams of every Ormocanon come true.”
Aside from pomp and pageantry, the Piña Festival is also about the resilience of the Ormocanons. The heart and soul of the festival lies in the resilient characteristic of the people of Ormoc as the merrymakers included in their acts the devastation they experienced: the wrath of nature. Though each act had the theme of love and perseverance, they also bore the significance of social dimension like how they survived and evolved after the city experienced the deadly Ormoc flashflood on Nov. 5, 1991 and super typhoon Yolanda on Nov. 8, 2013.
Revelry, reverence and resilience — these and more are wahat make this year’s Piña Festival more memorable. *