BARANGAY CATURAY (GERONA) LAND OF CHRISTMAS LANTERN MAKERS

For nearly 50 years now, residents of Barangay Caturay in this town have survived on manufacturing Christmas lanterns, which they themselves display for sale in 20-square-meter stalls along a short stretch of the McArthur Highway here.

The lanterns, lit by small bulbs and usually sold to motorists passing through Tarlac province on their way to either Northern Luzon or Metro Manila, have evolved over the years in both design and makeup.

The old star-shaped bamboo lanterns, for example, are now gone. Multicolored plastic lanterns shaped like fruits, insects and flowers have replaced them.

Capiz lanterns, to cite another example, have remained in vogue, but capiz shells are slowly giving way to other materials like fiberglass and plastic as buyers opt for durability and affordability in making their choices.

Nieves Duldulao, 62, president of the Caturay Lantern Makers Cooperative, relates that at the time she and her husband Mamerto went into the lantern-making business in the 1970s, Barangay Caturay had already been well known as a producer of lanterns.

But these lanterns, she explains, were of the “traditional kind,” made of bamboo sticks tied together to form star-shaped shells, which were then covered with grasses, leaves or papel de japon (Japanese paper) and decorated with dried fruits and flowers.

The making of bamboo lanterns, she says, had been the traditional livelihood of Caturay families for decades.

It also has a curious history.

According to Caturay residents, a blind man settled in the nearby village of Magaspac during the latter part of the 1900s. A skilled bamboo craftsman, he taught the villagers the art of making bamboo lanterns. Unfortunately, very few were interested.

Unfazed, he moved to Caturay. Here, to the blind man’s pleasant surprise, his eagerness to teach was matched by the residents’ enthusiasm to learn. And thus was born the bamboo lantern industry in the barangay.

When the Duldulaos ventured into the lantern business, they mixed their traditional lantern products with those bought from San Fernando, Pampanga.

Very much unlike the original Caturay lanterns, the San Fernando lanterns are framed by corrugated iron wires instead of bamboo sticks and covered with plastics of different colors.

Capiz lanterns with religious paintings in the middle are a variation of the San Fernando lanterns.

Duldulao says that in the beginning they bought finished products from San Fernando. But later on, as part of their effort to learn the craft, they began to buy partially finished ones from Cavite and Novaliches. The electrical installation for the bulbs they did themselves.

Then they procured only the shells, which they covered, decorated and fitted with bulbs. Ultimately, they learned to make the frames themselves—and to conceptualize new designs.

She believes that lantern makers in Caturay now have more than mastered the skills necessary for the industry to grow.

In fact, she says, entrepreneurs from San Fernando have started getting their supplies of plastic lanterns from her village.

“There is now a reversal of roles,” she beams.

[Versions of this article, written by Tarlac State University faculty member and journalist Russell S. Arador, came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and in Balayan magazine of the TSU Center for Tarlaqueño Studies.]