More than pork: Sagada marks identity and community at Etag Festival

MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, Philippines – The last time I came home for the Sagada town fiesta, the world was still analog.

It was the late 1990s. I was in college. The poblacion swelled with people and noise. We joined volleyball and softball games; my younger siblings ran dashes and sack races. Vendors who moved from fiesta to fiesta lined the streets, selling toys, kitchenware, halo-halo with marshmallows and macaroni, and towers of cotton candy that melted into sticky hands. You didn’t need phones to meet anyone. You just showed up. Everyone did.

Then, adulthood happened. The years stretched. The fiesta changed its name, grew into something larger. And nearly three decades later, I returned to Sagada just as the town opened its 13th Etag Festival — not just a homecoming for me but also a reminder of how communities reinvent celebration without losing their center.

From January 30 to February 2, Sagada once again gathers around its most recognizable cultural symbol: etag, the smoked and salt-cured pork that is as much ritual as it is food. Institutionalized by the Sangguniang Bayan in 2011, the festival promotes a delicacy deeply embedded in Igorot life. It is served at births, weddings, wakes, and communal feasts while also serving as a platform to preserve culture and support livelihoods.

This year’s theme, “Valuing Culture: Key Towards Unity and Progress,” frames the festival as both celebration and statement.

A festival that remembers

For first-time visitors, Sagada is often introduced through its caves, hanging coffins, and mountain air. But during the Etag Festival, the town tells its story on its own terms.

The opening parade turned the poblacion into a moving display of color. For the first time, community-made floats rolled through the streets. They were crafted from recycled materials and natural elements, highlighting creativity and environmental awareness alongside the festival theme. Students marched, elders watched, and the familiar echo of gongs stitched the procession to older rhythms.

An agro-industrial fair placed local producers at center stage. Etag was the star attraction, but it shared the spotlight with Sagada coffee, wild honey, muscovado sugar, and highland vegetables — a reminder that culture and economy in mountain towns are inseparable.

Guest speaker Cecile Basawil, assistant regional director for operations of the Department of Social Welfare and Development-Cordillera, who hails from Sagada, framed the festival through an acronym that resonated with the crowd: ETAG, as in enduring traditions, togetherness in faith, advancing with purpose, and grateful hearts.

“Culture is not a relic of the past; it is a living foundation,” Basawil said. “For us to have unity and progress, we first value our culture.”

She described etag not only as preserved meat but as preserved memory, a symbol of community life cycles and shared stories carried through chants and gatherings. Her message blended indigenous philosophy with everyday lessons, invoking inayan, Sagada’s moral compass, and the town’s guiding phrase, “Ipeyas nan gawis” — share what is good.

What changes and what doesn’t

Mayor Felicito Dula acknowledged that Sagada, like the rest of the world, has transformed.

“Walang tiyak sa mundo kundi ang pagbabago,” he said. Nothing is certain except change.

Where once the fiesta was the only marketplace for rare goods, today, stores, Saturday markets, and online platforms fill everyday needs. Families have more commitments, more events, and more directions pulling them apart.

But the mayor pointed to what endures: faith, indigenous values, songs, dances, and a stubborn sense of unity that refuses to expire.

“Etag itself is a powerful symbol of this continuity,” he said. From the hearths of ancestors to modern tables, it carries resilience and community. He urged festival-goers to support local etag-makers and small businesses, “Buy generously, eat heartily.”

Provincial Administrator John Likigan, delivering Governor Bonifacio Lacwasan Jr.’s message, echoed the theme, calling Sagada “a place where the past is not merely remembered but lived, and where tradition serves as a compass for the future.”

A homecoming measured in people

Beyond speeches and floats, the festival felt familiar in quieter ways: children running between stalls, teenagers pretending not to be excited over pageant candidates, and elders seated in patient circles. The Search for Mr. and Ms. Sagada, trade fairs, children’s games, and communal feasts stitched generations into the same weekend.

The fiesta I remembered was louder, smaller, simpler. The festival I returned to is larger, more organized, and consciously protective of what makes Sagada Sagada. Yet the emotional architecture is unchanged: people still come home.

In mountain towns, continuity is not the absence of change. It is the decision to carry old meanings forward, to smoke meat the way ancestors did, to parade through streets where grandparents once stood, to keep meeting in the same center no matter how the edges evolve.

The Sagada fiesta, now the Etag Festival, is still what it always was: a town rehearsing its memory out loud. – Rappler.com