Caskets, anyone?

THERE IS no mourning in the casket manufacturing industry in Sto. Tomas, Pampanga.
I still clearly remember the lead of my feature story in a mimeographed folio of featured industries produced by the general information and production division of the Department of Public Information, Region III office in November 1975.
The remembering is spurred by a news item in Sunday’s Sun-Star Pampanga of my hometown mayor mulling the holding of a Kabaong (casket) Festival “to attract tourists and open up business opportunities.”
Casket-making was the sunrise industry in somnolent Sto. Tomas in the late ‘60s through the ‘70s, when the principal industry, farming, became less and less profitable with the intrusion of saline waters in the rivers that adversely affected rice production. The rivers were the principal sources of irrigation then.
If memory serves right, the pioneer mangabaong (coffin-makers) were a Kojak look-alike surnamed Tayag in Moras de la Paz, then only a sitio of Barangay San Matias, and Apung Esu Canlas, whose factory was based in Balut, Sapa also a San Matias sitio then. Both sitios have since been made barangays that brought to seven the total number of my town’s basic political units. See how tiny Sto. Tomas is?
Casket-manufacturing went big-time with the establishment of the House of Woodcraft (HOW) in Barangay San Vicente, taking the industry from the backyard to the production line. HOW also broke the sole proprietorship tradition of the business, going corporate with the surnames Kabigting, Calaquian, Tayag, Manese, among others, as shareholders.
As in the cases of the sari-sari store and hot pandesal – of profitable ventures getting over replication – casket manufacturing mushroomed all over town with company names ranging from Briones to Pineda to PPP Santos, and later Arceo – all of whom entering the political ring but with Pineda – Romulo, and Arceo – Lucas, managing to get elected as mayor.
The ‘70s saw Sto. Tomas as the casket center of the whole Philippines, its factories supplying the whole archipelago – from Appari to Jolo, and even exporting their produce to Asian countries and even the USA.
So used to coffins in all makes – high-end narra with all the intricate dukit (carving), mid-level apitong and tangile, low-low class “flattop” of plywood – and in various stages of production were the townsfolk and the children that the horror the kabaong of lore impacted completely vanished in Sto. Tomas.
As a matter of course, at funeral wakes in the town, the first thing the makirame (condolers) take note of is not the departed but the coffin in which he/she lies. Which is a clear give-away of his/her social status, if not of his/her value to the family left behind. The ante was further raised later with the entry of bronze and metal caskets.
In the ‘80s to the ‘90s casket manufacturing nosedived. For a lot of reasons.
There was a glut in production. Then came the cut-throat competition resulting to sungaban presyu (underpricing). And ultimately the funeral parlors they supplied put up their own factories, with the help of the Sto. Tomas casket craftsmen themselves.
It was at this time when “stowing-away” among skilled workers, primarily carpenters and carvers, became a phenomenon in the town.
The funeral parlor owners or their agents from Northern and Southern Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao regularly called on the Sto. Tomas factories for their orders. This afforded the workers to know them and established some sort of connections. So when the “stowaway” workers suddenly materialized in their funerarias offering their skills and services – usually as industrial partners – to put up their own casket factories, the funeral parlor owners readily welcomed them: the savings not only in freight cost of caskets, but also in time and materials, as primary motive.
That – plus the later liberalization policies that opened the Philippine market to imported caskets – virtually dug the grave for the casket industry of Sto. Tomas.
It is good to hear that Mayor Lito Naguit, though in the other Sto. Tomas industry of pottery-making, is keen in re-placing the town in the national consciousness when it comes to caskets.
Back to the glory days soon for Sto. Tomas, back with our blurb too: Sa aking bayan, hanap-patay ang pangunahing hanapbuhay (In my town, the dead provides our principal livelihood.) Bow.