It is 10:30am on one of the main thoroughfare of Metro Manila heading to the southern suburbs. Except...the thoroughfare was no longer a thoroughfare for cars, but for seemingly endless amount of people and goods moving up and down the slim middle path still left over after informal shops and stands took over most of its two paved lanes. Hawkers hawked and shoppers shopped, all the way down to the main church of the community at the end of the road, where repeated session of what seemed to be a widely celebrated phenomenon of "Wednesday Mass" is now in full swing.
Welcome to Baclaran, where every Wednesday is another Sunday, so simply denoted as "Baclaran Day" for the community to get together through praying and shopping together. With people overflowing from the church doors and little real estate to even put down one's feet on the ground, the "weekday Sunday" is not just a lofty exaggeration but very much reflect the situation on the ground. As the author mingled with the massive crowds and shoved his way toward the sounds of the Catholic hymns, the only question that went through his head was, "what are all the people doing here on a weekday?"
The author, surprisingly for his workaholic nature, was on a day off this past Wednesday and took the opportunity to witness the proceedings of this week's "Baclaran Day." But surely it cannot be that all the thousands of people on the streets are all taking a day of absence from work just to come to church. For the shop owners, their presence can be explained by their solid representation among Manila's massive informal economy. But by the laws of supply and demand, had they not be convinced that they can sell to shoppers on that day, they wouldn't be there (at least in such massive presence) in the first place.
For the phenomenon, the author has no solid answers. For he is convinced that if these thousands of shoppers are just people without regular jobs, they would not be in such a relaxed mood as to not go about their daily grind in the informal sector to earn that day's meal money. Nor will these guys have enough money to even consider the idea of "window"-shopping at a street market in the middle of the week. And frankly, from the looks of it, most people at the scene, while not superbly well-off, looked visibly healthy and decently dressed, certainly not the kind that have not had jobs for a prolonged period of time.
So, exactly who are these people and why are they there. The questionable depth of religious devotion aside, the economic reasons for an institutionalized day-off at the middle of the week, could, in a way, make some logical sense. If the visual feast of shops and shoppers is an accurate indicator, the economic value generated by straight-up retailed consumption on this day of the week may very much be more, or even much more than had the combined economic values of same guys working their various jobs on the very same day at the same time.
After all, an informal economy, even more so than the formal, depends on the "critical mass" of the market. If all the participants, both on the supply and demand side, can be brought together in a high density area, higher frequency of transactions and flow of goods should create an economy of scale where the total is much much more than sum of its parts (i.e. individuals scattered across different markets in different parts of the Metro). The regularization of "Baclaran Day" would then allow for individual sellers and buyers to set their expectations on high sales combined with large discounts, and plan their own finances accordingly.
Of course, whoever that started the tradition of "Baclaran Day" decades ago probably did not venture into such grandiose economic thinking. It is, after all, a religion-based day tied to the patron saint of the church and the community. It does say much about how a twisting of an ideological concept can be used for a completely different (in this case, economic) purpose though. Still, either way, ultimately, it does not explain how so many people are there, or to put more speculatively, why so many people are involved in a what seems to be a rather lucrative informal trade.
Imagine if all the activities buzzing around the gigantic Baclaran Church are formalized into taxable enterprises. More resources would be available within the community to repair and upgrade a shoddy infrastructure that can be at best described as creaking along with high and frequent chances of outage and who knows, even turn the Baclaran Day phenomenon into a tourist attraction for outsiders. Only then will the presence of all the people on the streets be perceived not as head-scratching confusing, but highly productive and promotion-worthy.
Welcome to Baclaran, where every Wednesday is another Sunday, so simply denoted as "Baclaran Day" for the community to get together through praying and shopping together. With people overflowing from the church doors and little real estate to even put down one's feet on the ground, the "weekday Sunday" is not just a lofty exaggeration but very much reflect the situation on the ground. As the author mingled with the massive crowds and shoved his way toward the sounds of the Catholic hymns, the only question that went through his head was, "what are all the people doing here on a weekday?"
The author, surprisingly for his workaholic nature, was on a day off this past Wednesday and took the opportunity to witness the proceedings of this week's "Baclaran Day." But surely it cannot be that all the thousands of people on the streets are all taking a day of absence from work just to come to church. For the shop owners, their presence can be explained by their solid representation among Manila's massive informal economy. But by the laws of supply and demand, had they not be convinced that they can sell to shoppers on that day, they wouldn't be there (at least in such massive presence) in the first place.
For the phenomenon, the author has no solid answers. For he is convinced that if these thousands of shoppers are just people without regular jobs, they would not be in such a relaxed mood as to not go about their daily grind in the informal sector to earn that day's meal money. Nor will these guys have enough money to even consider the idea of "window"-shopping at a street market in the middle of the week. And frankly, from the looks of it, most people at the scene, while not superbly well-off, looked visibly healthy and decently dressed, certainly not the kind that have not had jobs for a prolonged period of time.
So, exactly who are these people and why are they there. The questionable depth of religious devotion aside, the economic reasons for an institutionalized day-off at the middle of the week, could, in a way, make some logical sense. If the visual feast of shops and shoppers is an accurate indicator, the economic value generated by straight-up retailed consumption on this day of the week may very much be more, or even much more than had the combined economic values of same guys working their various jobs on the very same day at the same time.
After all, an informal economy, even more so than the formal, depends on the "critical mass" of the market. If all the participants, both on the supply and demand side, can be brought together in a high density area, higher frequency of transactions and flow of goods should create an economy of scale where the total is much much more than sum of its parts (i.e. individuals scattered across different markets in different parts of the Metro). The regularization of "Baclaran Day" would then allow for individual sellers and buyers to set their expectations on high sales combined with large discounts, and plan their own finances accordingly.
Of course, whoever that started the tradition of "Baclaran Day" decades ago probably did not venture into such grandiose economic thinking. It is, after all, a religion-based day tied to the patron saint of the church and the community. It does say much about how a twisting of an ideological concept can be used for a completely different (in this case, economic) purpose though. Still, either way, ultimately, it does not explain how so many people are there, or to put more speculatively, why so many people are involved in a what seems to be a rather lucrative informal trade.
Imagine if all the activities buzzing around the gigantic Baclaran Church are formalized into taxable enterprises. More resources would be available within the community to repair and upgrade a shoddy infrastructure that can be at best described as creaking along with high and frequent chances of outage and who knows, even turn the Baclaran Day phenomenon into a tourist attraction for outsiders. Only then will the presence of all the people on the streets be perceived not as head-scratching confusing, but highly productive and promotion-worthy.
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