Flowers for ‘Mama Mary’: Cultural Hegemony and Change in Argao’s Traditional Flores de Mayo

Anthropologists acknowledge the importance of memory, performance and oral transmission as manifested in various forms of intangible cultural heritage which are passed on from one generation to the next, thus providing a sense of cultural identity and continuity. This paper focuses on the Flores de Mayo in Argao, a southern town in the province of Cebu in the Philippines. This is a month-long religious ritual among Catholic Filipinos paying tribute to the Blessed Virgin Mary through the offering of songs and flowers. Specifically it discusses: the performances involved in the ritual the meaning of the rituals to the participants the changes that have taken place in terms of performance and meaning how Argaoanons perceive such changes in relation to their cultural heritage Using Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, the author argues that the loss of this intangible heritage was largely due to the former parish priest’s interventions which went unopposed by the locals because of their reverence for religious authority.