Yee-haw!: Participants at the Rodeo Festival in Masbate City, the Philippines, dancing to the beat. — The Straits Times/ANN
A honky-tonk twang echoes across a fairground as cowhands wrangle cattle inside a dirt-floored stadium. The scene would be typical in Texas, but this rodeo is happening about 12,900km away, on an island in the Philippines.
Nearly every spring for 30 years, the best wranglers in the country have travelled to the island province of Masbate to test their skills at the Rodeo Festival in Masbate City. It is both a sporting event and a celebration of Philippine cowboy and cowgirl culture.
“Where there’s cattle, there’s rodeo,” said Leo Gozum, 51, a livestock farmer who directs the festival’s rodeo events. “It is not necessarily American.”
In the juego de toro event, or bull game, people chase about 30 cattle through cordoned-off streets, as those in Spain chase bulls through Pamplona. The rules say you can keep any cow you catch – as long as it is with your bare hands.
Some travel to the Masbate rodeo, usually by boat, from other islands in the Philippine archipelago. Others work on ranches in Masbate province, one of the country’s poorest regions.
The contestants, mostly farmers and students, compete for US$23,000 (RM107,255) in prize money, an average of US$250 (RM1,165) for each of the 90 or so winners. Many of the skills on display have been practised in the Philippines for centuries – long before the country won its independence from Spain in 1898, and then from the United States in 1946.
One of the toughest events is the carambola, in which teams of men or women restrain an unruly cow in the rodeo ring. By hand, of course.
Women can do too: Bulan holding her trophy during the closing ceremonies of the annual rodeo in Masbate City. — The Straits Times/ANN
Masbate province, like other places in the Philippines, has a violent history and a lingering communist insurgency. “Here, you will be bribed, then intimidated,” said Manuel Sese, a retired judge who owns a ranch outside Masbate City.
Sese said Masbate’s rugged culture and rolling grasslands helped produce legions of capable cowboys, some of whom work on his ranch.
One of them is Justin Bareng, 26, who rises at 4am most days to feed his diminutive mare before saddling up. With the US$100 (RM466) he earns a month, he feeds his six children and sends his 19-year-old brother to high school.
The rodeo’s total prize pot is an incentive for the contestants, who sometimes call themselves koboys, the Filipino slang for cowboy.
But money is not their only motivation.
“Rodeo, for me, is a game of strength, and only for the brave,” said Kenneth Ramonar, 50, a businessman and evangelical preacher who captains a rodeo team from the southern province of Mindanao.
Ramonar said he used to be a drunkard and a drug addict. Then he started a family, found the Bible and came up with a new use for his ranching skills: rodeoing. Now he runs a ranch resort where tourists can learn the way of koboys during their visit.
Masbate City is a former colonial port that had cattle stockyards near its docks until the 1970s. Its rodeo arena sits next to a fairground where fans mill around in denim, flannel and cowboy hats.
Vendors barbecue beef and pork over smoky grills under colourful tents. There is line dancing, too, and a honky-tonk number written for the occasion.
“Row-dee-oh Masbateno,” the singer croons.
On a recent morning, one cowhand lounged in dusty jeans. Another shook off the torpid humidity by dousing himself with water.
At a stockyard beneath the bleachers, some cowhands cooked fish for breakfast just after sunrise.
When the rodeo began a few hours later, they would be busy feeding cows, choosing the right ones for specific events and herding them in and out of the ring.
The rodeo includes seven cattle-centric events, including bull riding, lassoing and “casting down”, in which teams of four try to subdue a particularly large specimen with lassos.
The event organisers are seasoned farmers, agriculturists, veterinarians and animal husbandry practitioners, who are experts in the handling of animals, said Gozum, the event’s director.
He said the key to a good competition was selecting animals that were spirited enough to make the action interesting, but not too dangerous.
“What I’m looking for is the borderland between the playable and non-playable,” he said.
In 2023’s event, the first after a three-year hiatus because of the pandemic, more than 300 contestants competed either as professionals or students. Many in the second category were women.
“A woman can do what a man can do,” said Rosario Bulan, 25. She was part of a team that won first place in two all-women carambola events.
Bulan, who has a degree in crop science and is studying for a master’s, added that while she was happy to win, her primary goal was to avoid injury.
The Masbate event is the highest-profile rodeo festival in the Philippines, an important military ally of the US and one of several former Spanish colonies, where settlers established ranches with imported cattle and horses.
Religious land owners had established ranches around Manila by the 17th century, said Greg Bankoff, a historian in the city. By the 19th century, horses were being used across the country to transport sugar, coconuts and other raw materials.
In Masbate, cowboys drove cattle into the stockyards around the port. From there, the cows were exported to ranches around the country.
Gozum said that while Philippine cowboy culture is rooted in Spanish traditions and was heavily influenced by American ranching techniques, it now embodies the Filipino virtues of patience and perseverance. — The Straits Times/ANN
