Tumba Festival: A Cultural Platform in Understanding the Intersections Between Heritage, Identity, and Tourism, Among the Ilocanos

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the intersections between heritage, identity, and tourism, among the Ilocanos as manifested in the performative culture of the Tumba Festival in Paoay, Ilocos Norte. Tumba is the direct appropriation of the Spanish word for “tomb” and is similar to the Dio de Los Muertos by the Mexican-American celebrated every 1^st day of November. In recent years, as cultural tourism has flourished, the Tumba from a purely household and community ritual for remembering and honoring the dead, was staged in the town’s plaza, became a competition and a popular cultural tourist attraction. Guided by the constructivist paradigm, the researcher employed Ethnographic methodologies such as ethnographic interviewing and social epistemological theory to explore this unique heritage and cultural identity as greatly expressed through tourism. The findings revealed that tumba is a tawid (heritage) and the cultural practices manifested in the performance of Tumba reflect the saripatpat-lubong (worldview) of the Ilocanos particularly the interconnections and relationships of the sibibiag (living) and di-katataoan (dead/spirits). It is noteworthy that the processes of globalization, such as tourism and migration altered and reconstructed the process and performance of Ilocano practices. However, the motivation for continuing the heritage is the sense of individual and collective pride in identity and translocalities. Despite the social, cultural, and economic benefits that it provides, the added “attractions” to the festival are also creating a gap between the old and the young, between the profane and the sacred. Thus, it has become an arena of contestations and negotiations among the social actors regarding culture and tradition particularly preservation over aesthetics and cosmopolitanism. This study adds a positive contribution to make local cultural heritage tourism such as Tumba, becomes more visible in the local and global academic discourse and literature.