The Sacred Images, Patronages and Rituals of Obando Church, Bulacan, Philippines: A Historical Investigation

Abstract

: Obando, Bulacan is famous for its fertility dance ritual that is celebrated in the middle of May in front the sacred images of Saint Paschal Baylón, Our Lady of Salambao , and Saint Clare of Assisi. Following a postcolonial trend of scholarship, many assume that this dance ritual existed prior to the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, and was merely subsumed under Catholic discourse to facilitate the conversion of the natives to Christianity. Using mostly 19 th century Spanish publications, and 20 th century American and Filipino publications, and viewing the sacred images, their patronages and rituals as a Deleuze-Guattarian assemblage, this paper challenges this rather naïve postcolonial line of thinking by arguing that the Obando assemblage that we more or less know today took more than three centuries to configure. This research paper does not only proffer a more textually grounded historical account of the configuration and reconfigurations of this popular religious assemblage, but also the first journal publication on the history of Obando Church’s sacred images, patronages, and rituals. This paper therefore is an attempt to initiate