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Hawaii’s Pinoy community comes out for Santacruzan, rain or shine
HONOLULU, Hawaii — “Rain or shine, keep smiling!”
This was what the organizers of Flores de Mayo and Filipino Fiesta of the Filipino Community Center (FilCom Center) in Waipahu, Hawaii shouted when the Santacruzan procession was met with rain.
Despite the downpour, the procession featuring Filipino-American teenagers and children dressed in costumes portraying traditional Santacruzan characters—Reyna Elena, Reyna dela Paz, Reyna de las Estrellas, among others—went on.
Adding a Hawaiian touch to the Filipino festivity, the procession also featured a “Reyna Hawaii.”
Hawaii is home to nearly 400,000 people who have Filipino ancestry. “That’s about one-fourth of the state’s population,” Emil Fernandez, Philippine consul general in Hawaii, said.
The Flores de Mayo and the Filipino Fiesta held on May 4 were respectively the 11th and 32nd iteration of these events conducted by the FilCom Center to celebrate Filipino culture and heritage despite being away from the homeland.
Apart from the Santacruzan, the festivity also highlighted Filipino traditions through various performances, food trucks, and exhibitions.
“I think the Flores de Mayo and Filipino Fiesta is actually our biggest opportunity to really perpetuate Filipino culture,” FilCom Center chairman Edmund Aczon said.
“It's we're trying to reach the youth… the children that were born here that didn't have any opportunity to experience you know, the way of life in the Philippines, so we bring those here… so they can learn the Filipino culture and at the same time, trying to perpetuate [our] culture,” he added.
The FilCom Center chairman added that holding annual events celebrating Filipino culture is a way that “our children will experience what we experienced growing up in the Philippines… so [we’re] trying kind of make sure they understand where we come from.”
Consul General Fernandez, likewise, said that holding Filipino-themed festivities in Hawaii is “a great way to develop camaraderie and support one another.”
Fernandez recalled the Maui wildfires last year, which claimed Filipino lives.
“We’ve experienced challenges, difficulties in the past year, one of them was the wildfires in Maui. We saw many of our countrymen who were casualties. What’s very inspiring is members of the community not just in Maui but other islands as well came together and raised funds and provided various support to help their fellow countrymen,” the consul general said.
“Events like this unify the community and enable us to be close to one another with the end goal of promoting our interest,” Fernandez said.
The Filipino diaspora in Hawaii can be traced back more than a century, when the first 15 Filipino farmers sailed to the islands in 1906 to work on sugar plantations. Today, residents of Filipino descent are the second largest racial group in the state of Hawaii.
Despite thriving as a community here, Fernandez said Filipino-Americans still face economic challenges.
“In Hawaii, one of the issues that confront not just Filipinos but others living in this state, is the high cost of living… inflation continues to remain high, the prices of housing are among the highest in the country. The average cost of housing here is nearly $1 million so it’s really economic, skyrocketing prices,” he said.
Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the inflation rate in Hawaii accelerated to 1.5% in March 2024 from 0.5% in January.
Moreover, Hawaii’s consumer inflation rate —as measured by the Honolulu Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers— is expected to grow to 2.8% in 2024, higher than the projected US consumer inflation rate of 2.6% for the year, according to Hawaii’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. — BM, GMA Integrated News
