PERFORMING GENDER AND DEVOTION IN THE PEÑAFRANCIA FESTIVAL IN THE PHILIPPINES

The festival of our lady of peñafrancia is celebrated on a sunday after the octave of 8 september. housed at the peñafrancia basilica minore, the image of the peñafrancia is considered the patroness of the entire philippine region of bicol. in the essay, the peñafrancia is described as a theatricalised devotion where devotees are transformed into a frenzied ensemble that normalises masculinity as a privileged norm. however, digging deeper into the festival’s peculiarity, the normalisation of masculinity is only incidental because the gendering, in fact, idealises and celebrates a figure of a woman. the idealisation and celebration of the woman-figure is asserted to have a precolonial root. in the end, it is argued that the peñafrancia is a manifestation of a cultural community in which the pre-colonial lifeways of its members are recuperated through expressive bodily movements. at the same time, the legacy of hispanic catholicism is decolonised through rearticulating an indigenous past.