Santa Rita, Pampanga

The Local Government Unit LGU of Santa Rita, Pampanga's Elected officials for the term of 2016-2019 are:

• Mayor: Ferdinand "Dagi" Lansang Salalila
• Vice mayor: Homobono Cunanan Guanlao
• Sangguniang Bayan Members
  • Mercedita Bonaobra Carreon
  • Romeo Lapid Valencia
  • Rebecca Diamzon Magcalas
  • Arthur Salalila Jr.
  • Alex Lusung Hurtado
  • Edison Santos Cubacub
  • Renato Quiambao Gopez
  • Orlando Carlos Santos

• Liga ng mga Barangay Municipal Chapter President: Punong Barangay San Matias: Jay Cruz

• Pederasyon ng Sangguniang Kabataan Municipal Chapter President: SK Chairwoman Anna Veronica K. Salas

(San Basilio)

Dúman (Susie's of Tarlac).

Ocampo Lansang Delicacies (Turones de Casuy, Sansrival, Uraro).

Santa Rita is the home of Dúman and Ocampo-Lansang Delicacies (Turones de Casuy, Sansrival, Uraro and other sweets that sell in SM City Malls nationwide).

Dúman is made of malagkit rice (lacatan malútû) that is beaten from its husks and toasted in a clay oven. To the rest of the country, it may just be plain green rice or even un-popped pinipig. But it is a prized seasonal food that can be found during the Christmas season, after the rice harvest in November. The younger kernels of rice that don’t fall off the husks are colored green. These husks are beaten against a hard surface until they fall off. They are then soaked in water, cooked for 30 minutes and then pounded. This rigorous process helps release the sweet oils and nuttiness of the rice.[10]

Families who produce duman rice are called Mágdurúman. They pass their methods from generation to generation and have kept to the manual production process. Throughout Pampanga, street vendors selling green rice in bilaos or flat baskets are seen. These vendors often sell dúman near churches or marketplaces. It can be eaten plain and munched on like popcorn. It can also be snacked on in spoonfuls with sugar, or made into rice cakes. Kapampangans also like adding dúman to other dishes like fresh carabao’s milk or hot chocolate as a breakfast cereal, or even ice cream.

Santa Rita is known as a producer of dúman. The region holds a yearly festival dedicated to this simple-looking treat. The festival started when the community found themselves gathered in the streets, pounding away the dúman with their large wood mortars at two o’clock in the morning. To the local folk, dúman can be bought at PhP 40 by the glass. However, it is also exported to other parts of the country and the world at around $35 a kilo.

Harvested and processed through the end of December, dúman is usually eaten with fresh carabao milk (gátas damúlag) for breakfast or stirred into sucláti (drinking chocolate made with Philippine cacao). In Santa Rita, a Pampangan municipality and the epicenter of dúman production, the eagerly awaited specialty is honored annually with its own festival.

Years ago, during dúman season, Santa Rita’s streets rang daily with the “tok-tok” of baseball bat-sized wooden pestles hitting meter-high mortars as lacatan malútû, a red-husked variety of glutinous rice, was transformed into dúman. Nowadays, only a few barangays engage in the laborious and time-consuming production process.

The Dúman Festival started in 2002, which originated from the long-standing tradition of pounding and winnowing unripe glutinous rice (lacatan). The festival features alfresco dining in front of the Santa Rita Church patio were rows and rows of delicacy stalls would sell various pastries and native dishes of the town with duman being the major highlight. The food sold during the festival would include native pastry attractions of the town like sansrival, masa podrido, mamón and mamón tostado.

Dúman is relatively expensive. Food critic Claude Tayag explains that unlike the regular rice variety, which can be planted and harvested three times a year, dúman can only be harvested in the cool air of November and December, otherwise it will not be a bountiful one. For every hectare (San Agustín and Santa Mónica), a farmer can produce only a maximum of 4.5 cavans of duman, while a maximum of 300 cavans can be harvested from the regular rice variety. Dúman prices range from P600 to P1,000 per kilo depending on the quality.[11][12] [13]

• 
  Duman with flowers
• 
  Blooming duman in November
• 
  Macro portrait of the grains
• 
  Green gold in the bilao

The heritage Church is under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Fernando.

Fr. Pedro de San Nicolas served as minister of both Porac and Santa Rita in 1722, but it was only in 1726 when Santa Rita had its own priest and therefore became an independent parish. Fr. Francisco Royo built the present church in 1839; Fr. Juan Merino completed it in 1868. These two priests also opened the road linking Santa Rita with Porac and Guagua. During the Revolution, the townspeople hid their last Augustianian parish priest, Fr. Celestino Garcia in their houses until the forces of Gen. Maximino Hizon captured him in Bacolor and took him all the way to Lepanto in the Cordilleras.

Building of the church had to be delayed until the late 19th century due to economic adjuristicial conditions. The single-nave church is 55m long, 13m wide and 10m high. It has a large and well lit transept. The solid brass facade has baroque characteristics and the single columns are relatively slender.[14][15][16]

There are five heritage bells in this town: the Señora de la Correa was installed at the belfry in 1869; Dolorosa bell in 1878; and the bells of Virgen de Lourdes, San Jose and Santa Rita—all installed on May 20, 1911. The last three pieces of relic bells were declared “Centenary Bells” by then-Archbishop Paciano Aniceto.

The installation of these bells was initiated by Fr. Braulio Pineda, the first Filipino priest of the town and a native of Santa Rita, before the 1898 Revolution against Spain broke out and after the cessation of the Filipino-American war in 1903, according to Msgr. Eugenio G. Reyes, J.C.D, P.A., Parish Priest from 2009-2014. Enrique Guanlao, then-president of the parish pastoral council, has indicated in a paper that the foundry of H. Súnico Jaboneros manufactured the five bells. By the time that Msgr. Reyes was appointed parish priest here in 2009, only the tandem of the medium-sized Dolorosa bell (campanang menor) and the huge Santa Rita bell (campanang mayul) gave the town a sense of time and ceremony.

Msgr. Reyes learned that a steel hammer was used to strike the brass-made Santa Rita bell whenever it was rung, further damaging the bell. The wooden flanks holding up the bells and the wooden flooring of the belfry were crumbling. In 2010, Msgr. Reyes and Teresita Guanzon raised funds to repair the bells.

In August 3, 2010, Royal Bells Philippines (RBP) took them down for repairs. They were restored 47 days later and were blessed by then-Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David (now Bishop of Kalookan). A note from RBP describes the Santa Rita bell as “the most beautiful sounding bell of its vintage and style that we have ever rehabilitated.” Msgr. Reyes says the pair of bells has been attached to an automated system. But the bells may still be rung manually, Msgr. Reyes says. Their last campanero (bell ringer), a man named Tátang César, is still alive. Guanlao says the bells are an important part of the lives of Santa Rita folk. The bells announced weddings, processions, feasts, floods, fire, deaths, the Angelus and the end of the 8 p.m. recitation of the rosary. In this small town of gentle people, the agunyas (agonías or the funeral sound made by the bell) for the dead is gender-specific. The Santa Rita bell announces the death of a man, while the Dolorosa does so for a woman.[17][18]

• 
  Santa Rita of Casia Parish Church
• 
  Heritage Bell tower
• 
  Main altar
• 
  Interior
• 
  Chapel (nearby San Vicente)

The parish is the site where the Holy Relic of Saint Rita de Cascia is enshrined. The parish first obtained the First Class Relic of the saint through the help and assistance of His Excellency, Most Rev. Riccardo Fontana of Spoleto-Norcia, Italy, the archdiocese to which Cascia belongs. Archbishop Fontana forwarded the Relic through the mediation of the Apostolic Nunciature in Manila to Archbishop Paciano Aniceto who in turn handed it over to the parish of Santa Rita de Cascia on August 17, 2008. The First Class Relic is from the flesh “ex carne”of the Saint. As noted in its accompanying Certificate of Authenticity, the relic was part of the last batch extracted from the incorrupt body of Saint Rita on 20 August 1972.

The reliquary is laid open for public veneration every August 17. St. Rita of Cascia (1381) was born in the Italian town of Roccaporena. When her husband and twin sons died, she entered the Augustinian Nuns. The next 40 years of her life saw St. Rita devoting herself to a life of prayer, and works and deeds of charity as dictated by the rules of St Augustine. At age 60, while meditating before the cross, a wound seeming afflicted by a thorn appeared on her forehead. St. Rita began boring the sign of stigmatization which is considered being one with Jesus. Because of the stigmata, she suffered in pain for the next 15 years which she courageously accepted. St. Rita died on May 22, 1457. Her intact and incorrupt body is kept and honored in the shrine at her hometown on Cascia, Italy.[14][15][16][19]

• 
  Altar of St.Joseph
• 
  Altar of St. Rita de Casia
• 
  St. Rita with the Reliquary in her heart
• 
  Closer photo
• 
  Altar of Apparition

The Grand Old House of Santa Rita[20] is the film site of Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, Tanging Yaman and many other films.[21]

The villa was named after Dona Epifania who came from an equally rich and powerful Floridablanca-based clan, the Alvendias. The ancestral lot was owned by the Guanzon patriarch Don Agapito Guanzon (Captain Pitong) the then Captain Municipal (equivalent to today’s municipal mayor) of Santa Rita.

Capitan Pitong’s son, Don Olympio Guanzon (former Pampanga Governor) would later inherit the lot and an earlier old house in the same lot by 1925. The old house would later be dismantled to give way for the villa and would later pass on to Don Felipe Guanzon. The villa was designed and constructed by Architect Mariano Pineda, a native of Santa Rita and relative of the Guanzons. Pineda would later join the Federal Architects of America.

Constructed between the years 1931-1932, the house was one-of-a-kind at that time; it was the only all-concrete house in Santa Rita and the architectural design is incomparable with other historical landmarks in the town. The whole house is made of concrete with few exemptions, like the upper wall on the western side of the house facing the north.

This part showcases a gallery of windows as old as the house itself. The main walls of the house are concrete, about a foot thick on all the major sidings. The concrete materials were imported from Guiguinto in Bulacan. The villa’s wood portions are of the finest Philippine hardwood (narra, camagong and molave) and the furniture is of King Louis style. The furniture was acquired for the villa in 1931 and was bought from the Philippine Carnival in Manila and allegedly made by the prisoners of Bilibid prison. An azotea flanks the north side of the house which gives a perfect view of the western farm lands in Santa Rita, a major portion of which were once owned by the Guanzons and other notable lords from the Pineda, Lansang and Gosioco clans.

The doors of the former house that stood in the lot found their way into the second floor of the house. The doors and windows are made of colored glass with hues of green and orange. Wrought iron bars and grills protect the glass frames of the windows and the doors. A "portico" with granite staircase, will greet the visitor upon approaching the house and above it is a grand veranda accented with baroque pillars. Another small porch is located at the second floor near the grand veranda.

This porch though smaller is equally grand; the truth is there is no point in comparing the architectural designs from one another. An architect friend once said that the designs of the villa are “asymmetrical”, each with its own beauty and dominance in the house. No two sides are actually the same. The irregular symmetry unfolds into a united design, “baroque yet classical”.

The inside of the house is much the same design. However, a lot is still in store for an inquisitive visitor. The villa also offers other verandas at the second floor and a minor rooftop and chimneys for the kitchen. Not bad for a house made in 1932 at a hefty value of (reportedly) P90,000.

It was used as headquarters by the Japanese officers, USAFE guerillas and alcaldes during World War II and would late pass on as a relic of the past. But such beauty would not go unnoticed and soon enough it caught the eyes of location directors. The house was first featured in the Lino Brocka film “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang” in 1976. Later in the 90s it was used as the backdrop for the movie “Tanging Yaman.”

The villa is located along Ocampo Street in San Jose, north of the town church and west of the municipal hall facing the east. The villa had served as a house that would later shape the political and social life of the town. From this villa came illustrious names in business and politics. The grandeur of this residence has done well to lift the bearings of this clan.

At present, the villa is unoccupied except by a caretaker (but the keys are held by the family of the late Epifania, the same owner of the Lourdes Church and Grotto at San Jose Del Monte City, Bulacan).[20][21]

• 
  Façade of Villa Epifania
• 
  Villa Epifania: The Grand Old House of Santa Rita
• 
  Film site of "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" & "Tanging Yaman")
• 
  The ancestral lot was owned by the Guanzon patriarch Don Agapito Guanzon (Captain Pitong) the then Captain Municipal (equivalent to today’s municipal mayor) of Santa Rita.
• 
  Cultural treasure of Santa Rita
• 
  The mansion is administered by the heirs of Felipe Guanzon y Epifania Alvendia