The municipality of Tuy (pronounced “too-wee”) may be the only town in Batangas without a beach, but it is the only place in the archipelago that hosts the one of a kind Salagubang Pestebal or Festival of June Beetles.

Just like most festivals in the Philippines, the Salagubang Pestebal is a thanksgiving feast for a bountiful harvest. But unlike other festivals, this unique fiesta also celebrates the successful harvest of the pest on its crops. The sand colored, thumb-sized winged insect more commonly known as the native salagubang is actually the archenemy of sugarcane farmers of Tuy and other municipalities in Western Batangas. In droves, the larvae of these beetles would suck on the roots of sugar crops and cost farmers in the area more than P200 million in losses.


Meet the beetles

Now instead of using harmful pesticides which have proven ineffective in the past, the farmers use an environment-friendly and cost-effective strategy to control the infestation. The communities set aside a single day in June for the large-scale manual collection of beetles. The men use their brute force to shake the trees, while the women and children gather the fallen beetles and collect them in large sacks. On the first year, they stockpiled truckloads of beetles.

To discard these pests, Batangueños don’t burn them. Instead, some of them end up as stars of the thanksgiving celebrations.

Like many town fiestas, the Salagubang Pestebal features regular attractions of games, contests and a showcase of talents. It opens with a lively dance number of Batangueño youth clad in creative salagubang costumes. Then, young and old bring out their personally-trained beetles to engage in a salagubang race, wrestling and flying.

One enthusiastic grandmother’s pet salagubang enthralled everybody for its flying prowess. Unfortunately, imports are not allowed in this event and old granny had to be disqualified because her pet turned out to be a salaguinto (similar to the salagubang but with a hint of metallic green).

For the brave

Adding to the spectators’ excitement was the Salagubang Fear Factor Challenge, a local rendition of the popular foreign television show. But this is for the brave and brave alone – those daring enough to crunch down a live salagubang or withstand having to lie in a bed of those tickly, crawling creatures.
That’s not the end of it because the festival’s most eagerly awaited event is the Langhap Sarap Cooking Contest. The main ingredient? Why the salagubang, of course! The tastiest, most affordable and most creatively presented salagubang dish wins the grand prize.

Everyone is invited to partake of the wide array of salagubang dishes from pochero to ginatan, rebosado to adobo and the easy-to-prepare crispy fried salagubang.

Scrumptious!

While the salagubang has long been considered a native delicacy in northern and central Luzon, using the insect as a substitute for beef, pork or chicken meat is relatively new to the Batangueños.

The salagubang is known to be rich in protein, as well as other vitamins and minerals found in sugarcane, the host crop fed on by the stubby, slow-moving beetles. The Salagubang Pestebal has not only promoted the collection of beetles to lower infestation levels, but has also proven to be an effective vehicle to popularize the use of the insect as a food substitute to the locals.

Tourism for Tuy

“This (Salagubang Pestebal) is a direct way of easing the local folk’s level of poverty,” says Ralph Vallesteros, Program Officer of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), which organizes the festival. “We also wanted to give the municipality of Tuy a tourism aspect.”

With the Department of Tourism’s adoption of the festival’s yearly celebration, the spotlight now shines on a small sugarcane town with an insect problem that’s been turned into a celebration and a feast.

by Anselmo V. Talagtag

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In the year 1603, in a small barrio of Caysasay, in the town of Taal, a fisherman by the name of Juan Maningcad went out fishing and instead of casting his net on the sea, threw it into the nearby river, and instead of catching fish, caught a little statue of the Blessed Virgin of the Immaculate Conception about six inches high. Although it was soaked in water, it had a heavenly lustre and her face twinkled like a star. Upon seeing this marvel, the startled Juan, being a pious and virtuous man prostrated himself before the image and began to pray. He picked it up and brought it home. "No one knew how the image got to the river, and according to the old folks, perhaps the image was thrown by one of the Spaniards to pacify the ravages of the ocean during one of those expeditions and somehow the waves pushed it to the river. Another opinion was that perhaps someone exploring the river must have inadvertently dropped it. (Some believe it came from China.)

The news began to spread like lightning until it reached the priest in town, and the judge that represented the King of Spain at that time. Without notice they immediately went to Juan Maningcad's house and there they saw the beautiful image of the Mother of God. They knelt down to venerate it, and took the image to Taal where a town fiesta was celebrated.

The widow of the Justice of the Peace by the name of Madam Maria Espiritu, was given the task of caring for the image. She ordered a precious urn to be made for the image and kept it in her home. Every evening she noticed that the urn turned empty and the image gone, but then in the morning it would be back in its usual place.

Worried about these disappearances, the widow told the story to the priest. He accompanied her back to her house and indeed saw that the urn was empty, but soon the urn opened and there appeared Mary's image before them. For several times, in spite of the watch made by the priest, the same events would happen that made the priest and others perplexed, not knowing what the desire of the Virgin was. After sometime, the priest decided to take the image to the Church for safekeeping but it was in vain. The image continued to leave the church until one day it completely disappeared and was nowhere to be found.

Years later, in 1611, two women gathering firewood saw the image reflected in the spring water, near the place where it was originally found. They looked up, and saw the image on top of a tall sampaguita bush. The women reported what they saw to the parish priest. The people and the priest concluded that it was the Virgin’s wish to stay in Caysasay. So they built a chapel on the very spot where the image was found.

In the early seventeenth Century, a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary were reported at the rocky hillside of Caysasay, a barrio of Taal. According to a church inquiry, a vision first appeared to a native slave girl, Catalina Talayn, who had gone up the hillside with a companion to gather firewood and fetch some water. The unexpected vision of something small in stature but radiating extraordinary brilliance from a hollow in the rocky landscape so bewildered the girl that she ran to tell her companion, and both fled terrified back to the town of Taal, by the shore of the Lake. Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, S.J., in his Historia de Filipinas, and other 18th Century Spanish chroniclers put the year at 1611, when natives began reporting strange visions on the hillside. This was also the year, according to Fr. Pedro G. Galende, currently Director of the San Agustin Museum in Intramuros, that the first makeshift church was reportedly built there. Historian Jose M. Cruz, S.J., currently dean of the School of Social Sciences of the Ateneo de Manila University, reviewed original microfilm documents of the inquiry into the apparitions (his date, 1619). He reports that Church officials interrogated Catalina but she told them she could not clearly identify what she saw.

The sparseness of her report, however, seems to convince Fr. Cruz that she "was not fabricating the story." In 17th Century Philippines, an alipin like Catalina had "much to gain from associating herself to the divinity or to the saints," notes Cruz in his study on the Caysasay apparitions. At any rate, when word got around, many people flocked to the area. Stories later included in the Tagalog novena say that two girls had seen the image of the Lady in the spring, and when they looked up, they saw her perched on a branch of a Sampaga tree, two lighted candles by her side, and guarded by kingfishers or casay-casay birds that abound in the area. The village was by the Pansipit River, which was then a wide salt-water channel that connected Balayan (then Balangon) Bay to Taal (then Bombon ) Lake. Even without official church sanction, native devotion to the reported Lady of Caysasay was quick and spontaneous. Miraculous healing powers were attributed to the waters from the spring. And in a cave near the spring was found the image of the Blessed Virgin—the same image that was fished out of the river almost a decade earlier and mysteriously disappeared! More than 30 people declared they saw visions of the Lady at Caysasay.

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Monte Maria Shrine is 45 minutes drive from Batangas City. A billion peso project of Father Fernando Suarez which becomes a center of criticism among priesthood because of the financial crisis that we have today. The statue of the shrine will be 117 metres high - higher than the statue of liberty (96 meters high) and the statue of Jesus at Rio de Janeiro (100 meters high).

The shrine will include a centre for healing and spiritual rejuvenation, St. Joseph Chapel, Divine Mercy Chapel, House of Mary, Eucharistic Adoration Chapel, a rosary garden, a way of the cross and Infant Jesus Chapel.


With the ground-breaking celebration held at Pinamukan, Batangas City on January 7, 2007, the Feast of the Epiphany, and with support coming from all over the world, Fr. Fernando Suarez’ vision is slowly coming to reality. In all his talks while here in Winnipeg, Fr. Fernando emphasized that God, through the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin is using him as an instrument of healing. Monte Maria, he said, is a place being set aside from all eternity for the Blessed Mother so that the nation will be healed and that the poor will be raised up to the dignity and respect they deserve as the children of God.

All the chapels that are going to be built at Montemaria are donated by families from Canada and the Philippines.

MONTEMARIA is a project of Mary Mother of the Poor Foundation (MMPF), an apostolic initiative being led by Fr. Fernando Suarez Healing Ministry. MMPF is an apostolic initiative whose aim is to ‘seek holiness in evangelizing and working with the poor through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’

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In the place where I grew up, Brgy. Bulacnin Lipa City, honey bee farming is a known business. I guess we have a very good location for cultivating bees. Along the road going to Balete Batangas you will frequently see sign of a Honey Bee Farm. Some even have stalls outside for you to buy their honey. A bottle of ketchup size honey bee costs me around Php 120. I bought 2 bottles as my vitamins here in Singapore.

Honey is a treat, and is man's oldest sweetener. It is an excellent substitute for sugar in our drinks and food. It is also good for many medicinal uses and treating certain conditions. Reliance on commercialized medicines which contain too many chemicals can become hazardous to our health. Use honey instead of sugar in cooking to get all the benefits of its healing properties.



Honey is composed of sugars like glucose and fructose and minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium chlorine, sulphur, iron and phosphate.

It contains vitamins B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3 all of which change according to the qualities of the nectar and pollen. Besides the above, copper, iodine, and zinc exist in it in small quantities. Several kinds of hormones are also present in it. Approximately one half of the human diet is derived directly or indirectly from crops pollinated by bees. Today honeybees are an essential part of a healthy agriculture economy.

If you have allergies, honey can be beneficial. If you eat honey that is local to your area, it may help prevent your seasonal allergies. Bees use the pollen from local plants and eventually it ends up in your honey.

Honey may also be good for your skin. It has the ability to attract water. It is also safe for sensitive skin. You can use it as a moisturizing mask for your skin as well as your hair. To use it as a conditioner, mix the honey with olive oil. Be sure to wash your hair thoroughly before you go outside.

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2010 election battle for Governor position in the province of Batangas is between the incumbent Gov. Vilma Santos and former Gov. Armando Sanchez. It gives all batanggenyo the best option to choose which one served the province most. I am living outside Batangas for several years already, and I must admit I haven't tracked their performances and public service.

Between the two candidates, who do you think is deserving for a second term in our governatorial post? Can you share us some accomplishments made by both candidates?

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