Global Courant
MASBATE CITY, Philippines — A honky-tonk twang echoes across a fairground as cowhands wrangle cattle in a muddy-floored stadium. The scene would be typical of Texas, but this rodeo takes place about 8,000 miles away, on an island in the Philippines.
For 30 years, the country’s best wrestlers have traveled to the island province of Masbate almost every spring to test their skills at the Rodeo Festival in the town of Masbate. It is both a sporting event and a celebration of Philippine cowboy and cowgirl culture.
“Where there’s cattle, there’s rodeo,” said 51-year-old Leo Gozum, a cattle rancher who runs the festival’s rodeo events. “It’s not necessarily American.”
In the juego de toro event, or bull game, people chase about 30 cattle through closed streets, like those in Spain chasing bulls through Pamplona. The rules say you can keep any cow you catch, as long as it’s with your bare hands.
Some travel to the Masbate rodeo, usually by boat, from other islands in the Philippine archipelago. Others work on farms in Masbate province, one of the country’s poorest regions.
The contestants, mostly farmers and college students, compete for $23,000 (S$31,100) in prize money, an average of $250 for each of the approximately 90 winners. Many of the skills on display have been practiced in the Philippines for centuries – long before the country gained independence from Spain in 1898 and then from the United States in 1946.
One of the toughest events is the carambola, where teams of men or women hold back an unruly cow in the rodeor ring. By hand of course.
Masbate province, like other places in the Philippines, has a violent history and an ongoing communist insurgency. “Here you are bribed and then intimidated,” said Mr. Manuel Sese, a retired judge who owns a farm outside the city of Masbate.
Sese said Masbate’s rugged culture and rolling grasslands produced legions of capable cowboys, some of whom work on his ranch.
One of them is Mr. Justin Bareng, 26, who he usually gets up at 4am to feed his little mare before saddling. With the $100 he earns a month, he feeds his six children and sends his 19-year-old brother to high school.
The total prize pool of the rodeo is an incentive for the participants, who sometimes refer to themselves as koboys, the Philippine slang for cowboy.
But money is not their only motivation.
“Rodeo is a game of strength for me, and only for the brave,” said Mr. Kenneth Ramonar, 50, a businessman and evangelical minister who heads a rodeo team from the southern province of Mindanao.
