Fiesta heritage and diaspora identity maintenance: Sinulog, Santacruzan and Simbang Gabi among migrant Filipinos in New Zealand

• Main Author: Tondo, Josefina Socorro Flores
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Filipino diaspora; Religion and sociology; Identification (Religion); Group identity; Philippines—Customs and practices; Anthropology; Other Anthropology; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12450
• Institution: De La Salle University

Filipino global migration has been pervasive in recent decades, with more than 8 million overseas spread to about 200 countries, and shows no sign of abetting. The diasporas of Filipinos open new trajectories for anthropological inquiries on migration and how heritage and tradition are appropriated and reconstructed by migrants in foreign lands. The Filipino fiesta heritage has become a "global phenomenon" with the spread of Filipino migrants and has become an important form of Filipino cultural capital in the contestation and negotiation of identity and resistance in the diasporic habitus. Tradition and heritage in the triadic relationship between the migrant, the country of origin, and country of settlement figure prominently in the creation of diaspora identity and meaning in a foreign land. Filipino identity maintenance often relies on remembrance and re-enactment of significant events imagined and shared. The appropriation of fiesta as symbol and ritual of "native" performance and food commensality among diaspora groups in New Zealand have aided and facilitated the conservation, and preservation of their imagined "Filipino" or "Pinoy" identity in a foreign land. The Filipino diaspora observance of fiesta celebrations of the "Sinulog", "Santacruzan" and "Simbang Gabi" in New Zealand illustrate and emphasize the role and importance of heritage and tradition in identity maintenance, formation and (re)construction among Filipino migrants. The fiesta as a public ritual event has become a Filipino identity marker overseas and plays a prominent role in Filipino cultural production, consumption and transformation in the global setting.