Coeds turn cowgirls By Jaymee T Gamil
Publisher:Philippine Daily Inquirer - Publication Date: 26-04-2008

At this time of the year, most 'colegialas' (college girls) can be found on the beach, flaunting the latest swimwear and perfecting their tans. Janice Mino and Juanita Palileng of Benguet State University (BSU), however, choose to spend the summer in Masbate’s dusty corrals, wearing denims and wrestling bulls.
For three years, Janice and Juanita have been roughing it, along with teammates from the BSU Highland Cowboys and Cowgirls, at the cattle sports events during the Rodeo Masbateño festival in Masbate City in Northern Philippines. The rodeo is a yearly event to celebrate the island-province’s 'cattle country' culture.
“Most of the live cattle being transported in Luzon come from Masbate. Our province has a lot of vast pasture lands, converted into ranches and backyard cattle-raising ventures. It is a major agricultural livelihood here,” Gov Elisa Kho said.
Masbate has been promoted by no less than Philippine President Gloria Arroyo as the rodeo capital of the country. Since it began 13 years ago, the festival’s main event has been the rodeo sports, attracting enthusiasts from across the country and even abroad.
This year, Janice and Juanita bagged first place in the two-person carambola women’s division. The contestants competed for the fastest time in capturing a bull with bare hands, grappling the animal down to the ground, and tying it up.
“Parang mga lalaki (They are like men),” an awed spectator exclaimed during the contest. In only a little more than a minute, the two women cornered the fleeing bull, wrestled it down, and roped its flailing legs.
“I wanted to show that women can be as tough as men,” Janice said, when asked why she joined the informal rodeo club in school in La Trinidad town in Benguet province. Juanita was inspired by former members and was attracted at the prospect of travelling to different places to compete.
Both students consider the challenge fun. Like other athletes, members of the rodeo team physically prepare themselves with a tough regimen of weightlifting exercises, daily jogging and kickboxing. “But we practice with mechanical bulls at our school, so when we actually compete, it’s a different experience,” Janice related.
A cattle handler also needs technique rather than just brute strength, said Felimon Abelita III, president of the Rodeo Masbateño Inc (RMI), which organised the festival. “During actual contests,” Janice said, “we go for the bull’s head. When you stranglehold the bull, its attention focuses on its head, weakening its legs and making it easier to topple down.”
But the best technique is still cooperation and teamwork, Janice and Juanita said. “Sometimes, we get competitive with our male team mates, but they admit we match them in skills. At the end of the day, we just help each other win as a team,” Janice said.
This year, the cattle sports events at the Rodeo Masbateño included cattle wrestling, two- and four-person carambola, bull riding, casting down (three players bring down a cow with a rope), and steer wrestling from horseback (a horse rider lassoes a bull and jumps on it to wrestle and tie it down.)
All events have an open and school category, but only the latter was required to have a women’s team, said Abelita. “There is already a clamour to allow women in the open category. But we have yet to prepare events for that. There are also no women volunteering for the more high-risk events,” he said.
Only women joined in the carambola and casting down events. Bull riding for women was out of the question.
Abelita explained that the male build could still bear more physical strain and that the limitations on women were imposed more as a safety precaution. “We prioritise the safety of all our contestants,” he said.
Bulls released during the contests had been dehorned, and those used in the school category tended to be smaller than those in the open category.
Janice and Juanita were thankful for the organisers’ consideration. They get scratched up and bruised during the events, they said, but they had yet to break any bones, unlike some of their male teammates.
Kho laments that her province-mates rarely entered into the rodeo sports events. Most of the female contestants came from outside Masbate, she said. “The women engaged in agricultural activities here tend to concentrate on farming rather than cattle-raising,” she said.
Abelita also said that in his experience, the female role in agricultural environments, especially in Masbate, tended to be domestic in nature, such as cooking.
But Janice and Juanita, a fourth-year and fifth-year veterinary medicine students, have their own practical reasons for engaging in rodeo sports. They said they have been able to apply their rodeo skills in real life. “It comes in handy when we have to restrain large animals,” Janice pointed out.
Nine school athletic teams joined this year, some coming from as far as Mindanao, according to John Paul Dimen of the Volunteer Rodeo Officials and Organisers of Masbateño.
But for the past two years, the open category has been kept to local ranches because Masbateños treated the cattle event more as a showcase of everyday livelihood skills rather than as a sport or performance, Abelita said. “They focus more on effectivity rather than the game rules. We felt that our local cowboys need more training in the sport aspect of the rodeo,” he said.
“But back when the event was still open to national-level teams, the contestants were afraid of the Masbateños since our cowboys actually do this for a living,” he said.
While the men intimidated their rivals, the women sparked admiration from the spectators.
Leticia de Jesus, 73, a vacationer from Nueva Ecija province, said the rodeo women’s events were her favourites. She said she felt proud and excited when they come on.
“I admire them. It’s enjoyable to see how strong they are. They’re just like men! They prove women can do whatever men can,” she said. “If I were their age, I would also enter the rodeo sports to show that women can’t be defeated by men. We are just as strong.”
The modern-day 'rodeo', a term derived from the Spanish 'rodear' meaning 'to surround', serves as contests and exhibitions of skills derived from rounding up cattle.
Research endorsed by the provincial government trace modern rodeos to 19th-century post-Civil War America, which saw the boom of the cattle industry and the transportation of livestock from the open ranges of the West to the more populated Eastern settlements.
Informal contests on riding, roping and roundups were held whenever cowhands herded the cows to market centers in journeys called 'cattle drives'. As lands became increasingly privatized and divided, the need for cowherds decreased and they took to showcasing their skills in businessmen-organised 'Wild West Shows' and local 'Cowboy Competitions', which became the predecessors of today’s rodeo sports.
In 1993, in an effort to boost its cattle industry and showcase its potential, Masbate adopted the rodeo as popularised by American movies and books. The idea has proven to be a giant success. Thirteen years after its inception, the four-day festival held in Masbate City was jampacked, not only with tourists but business activities as well.
Expanded this year into trade fairs, parades and sports events, pitched in by different municipalities, Abelita said participation this year was at an all-time high. He estimated that the crowd reached 5,000 on the second day alone.
“The Rodeo Masbateño festival is a vehicle that can boost the tourism potential of the province, so we have expanded the activity from just the rodeo sports. We have several side events surrounding the festival. We hope visitors will also discover the other tourism potentials of Masbate, from our beaches, caves, to the ranches themselves. Our natural resources here can equal all of the other provinces in Bicol,” he said.

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