Gunpowder coats Angelito Garce as the Philippine pyrotechnics wizard works his magic on a vat of industrial chemicals, turning them into exploding cows, pythons and fountains.
Come nightfall on Friday, his grimy and dangerous toil is expected to help light up the Asian archipelago’s skies as millions of New Year revelers set off fireworks for a loud and fiery send off to 2010.
The US$16 million industry is based in the sleepy town of Baliuag and adjoining towns near Manila, where tiny sheds rise amid a sea of green rice paddies to give farmers some work between harvests.
PHOTO: AFP
“Our jobs depend on people using fireworks to celebrate,” Garce, 44, said as he and 30 relatives and friends worked overtime to meet what could be a last-minute surge in demand.
Garce is considered among the master artisans who specialize in mixing gunpowder with other chemicals, a tradecraft passed from one generation to another in an unbroken string lasting more than 100 years.
Drums filled with water line the shed’s walls in case a fire breaks out — a firetruck would not fit on the narrow tracks and would likely get stuck in the mud.
Though the work is dirty and potentially life-threatening, the average pay of 3,000 pesos (US$68) a week is good money in a country where the daily factory wage is typically less than US$6.
“Outside these walls are rice fields where you have to toil and wait months before harvest. In here you can make your products in an instant. We get paid quickly,” Garce said.
Factories such as these employ some 100,000 people in Baliuag and nearby areas of Bulacan Province, churning out fireworks of different sizes and caliber.
The louder the explosions, the quirkier the names and the higher the prices they fetch.
Of the street-legal varieties, the “Judas Belt,” presumably named after Jesus Christ’s disciple-turned-traitor Judas Iscariot, is a string of triangular crackers that pop like a rifle clip emptying in rapid fire.
A longer version has appropriated the Filipino name for python. Revelers wrap them around lampposts or trees to be set off minutes before the clock strikes midnight to welcome the New Year.
A “fountain” shoots sparks about 2.5m into the air, while a “screaming cow” moos before it explodes with a loud bang.
Locals say a powerful firecracker that can approximate the explosion of a grenade can also be bought on the sly.
Named after the infamous al-Qaeda leader, the (Osama) “bin Laden” is difficult to find and shopkeepers will not openly admit to selling them.
Prices range from as low as 400 pesos to as high as 12,000 pesos depending on their size and explosive power.
The pyrotechnics industry in the Philippines emerged in 1867, inspired by a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who made small rockets to rouse his parishioners for dawn masses.
He imparted the technology to a man in nearby Santa Maria town named Valentin Santa Ana, who mastered the fiery art and passed it on to his children, according to modern fireworks makers.
His descendants led early moves to regulate the industry after a deadly fire hit a factory in 1966 killing 26 people, but their efforts largely went unsupported.
When the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, however, he banned the industry out of fear that his -political foes and dissidents would turn to readily accessible fireworks as raw materials for weapons.
The ban drove the industry underground, where artisans unshackled by regulations began to produce ever more powerful firecrackers that attracted many buyers, said Celso Cruz, president of the industry association.
The ban was only lifted in 1992, by which time Bulacan was already a byword for the industry. Annual industry sales now hit 700 million pesos, Cruz said.
Nenita Ramos, of family-owned Nation Fireworks, said she hoped sales would pick up to match previous years despite the tight economy.
“We have had people buying truckloads of fireworks, but now sales are a little slow,” Ramos said, as she waited for customers at the family shop along a busy highway.
Still she said, the industry has been the main lifeline of Bulacan.
“We have helped a lot of people over the years. This is not just a business, but a family tradition already,” she said.
Since starting the business nearly 20 years ago, she and her husband, Armando, have lived comfortably, sending their three children to expensive schools.
However, occasional deadly, accidental explosions at small, unlicensed backyard factories have triggered government crackdowns and stricter safety standards have driven up costs, she said.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS