Brief History:
Minalin which used to be called Minalis is a peaceful town of about 39,194 people as recorded by the Philippine National Census of 1995. It has a land area of about 48.27 square kilometers and it is located southwest of the capital town of San Fernando.
According to Don Mariano Henson’s "The Province of Pampanga and Its Towns", the four founders of this town namely, Mendiola, Nucum, Lopez and Intal negotiated with the Datu of Macabebe to acquire an initial piece of land as far as the boundary now called Lacmit and named the place as Santa Maria in honor of the four founders’ respective wives named Maria. When a church was about to be built in Santa Maria and the lumber was piled up already, the flood waters carried the construction materials to another site called Burol (Hilly Place) where the church was finally constructed. Since then the community was called Minalis meaning ‘moved to" until the 18th century when an error was made by the then Capitan Mayor Diego Tolentino who inadvertently wrote the name of the town as "Minalin" instead of the original name "Minalis".
However, according to some documents on file in the office of Mr. Ricardo G. Santos, the current Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator of Minalin, this present town originated as a Malayan settlement under the leadership of Kahn Bulaun, a descendant of Prince Balagtas. This settlement was called Tigip but when the Spaniards came who looted the town and raped the women, they renamed the settlement as "Mina Linda de las Mujeres" because of the many pretty women they encountered in the settlement. A Chinese merchant from Wawa (Guagua) who established a general store in this town mispronounced the name of the town as "Minah Linah Neh Lah Muchele" but the town people shortened it as Minalina.
From 1722 to 1899 there were many more Minalin leaders who were designated as capitan mayor commencing with Don Tomas Tayag and ending with Don Juan Yabut, the last town executive who held on to that government title. There was no organized municipal government in 1900 and 1901 because of the Revolution against Spain and the Philippine-American War. When the American civil government was established in 1902, Don Martin Mercado was appointed as Municipal Resident. When the town of Santo Tomas was created by the administration of Governor General Robert Taft in 1903, Minalin was annexed to Santo Tomas under its jurisdiction and Gregorio Pineda was appointed as Municipal President.
On July 26, 1904, for economy and efficiency, Minalin was consolidated with the capital town of San Fernando. However, through the effort and influence of Don Andres Lagman, Don Martin Mercado and a local revolutionary hero, Don Cristino Lagman, Minalin was returned to its former status as a separate municipality in 1909 when Governor Macario Arnedo of Apalit was still the provincial executive .
Don Cristino Lagman, a brave Katipunan commander served as municipal president of Minalin during the American regime under the administration of Governor Generals James F. Smith and W. Cameron Forbes.
Martin Mercado, Gregorio Santiago, Fortunato Galang, Francisco Lopez, Benito Mercado, Julian Mercado and Celestino Macapinlac served also as municipal presidents. The present energetic and popular town mayor, Honorable Santiago M. Yabut, Jr. succeeded many well-known municipal mayors such as Urbano Pineda, Julian Lagman, Francisco G. Flores, Agapito Magat, Feliciano Pacia, Sabas N. Pingol, Juan T. Macapinlac, Domingo Sagmit and Francisco Flores.
Minalin’s first Catholic Church was erected in 1650 during the term of Spanish Governor General Diego Fajardo. Minalin has also the distinction of having one of the first thirteen Augustinian missions in Pampanga before the close of the 17th century.
Saint Monica became the town’s patron saint and the town people of Minalin celebrate their town fiesta on the 11th of May of every year.
Many Minalenians answered also the call of duty of their beloved country by enlisting in the Armed Forces of the Philippines in defending the motherland against foreign invasion and in preserving a democratic form of government. It is to be noted that the town of Minalin is the birthplace of the Huk Regiment of the USAFFE under Colonel Bernardo Poblete known as Commander Jose Banal which was organized in 1944 within the compound of the Minalin Parish Church with the approval and blessings of the Spanish priest, Fr. Daniel Castrillo. This regiment was trained in Minalin by United States Army officers under the command of Colonel Horton V. White and Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agent William Owens. After a few months of intensive training, this regiment assisted the American Liberation Forces in restoring and maintaining peace and order in Central Luzon and helped capture Japanese stragglers hiding in Corregidor.
Population
Total Population: 35,150
Household Population: 35,150
Number of Households: 6,426
Geography
Located 9 kilometers south of San Fernando, it is bordered by Guagua, Macabebe, and Sto. Tomas
Barangays (15)
Bulac, Dawe, Lourdes, Maniango, San Francisco 1st, San Francisco 2nd, San Isidro, San Nicolas, San Pedro, Santa Catalina, Santa Maria, Santa Rita, Santo Domingo, Santo Rosario, Saplad
Major Industry
Minalin is a fourth class municipality in terms of tax revenue collection, meaning less than twenty million pesos per year.Like a typical town located in the Pampanga delta, the principal industries of Minalin are farming and fishing. Despite of the damages caused by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and the occasional flow of lahar during rainy seasons, the industrious people of Minalin manage to maintain and continue the economic development of their beloved hometown. Currently, poultry and swine raising is also a major industry in this locality. Minalin is considered the "Egg Basket of Central Luzon". For here are found, at least before the 1991 Pinatubo eruption destroyed its farmlands, the biggest and most important poultry farms in the region. In the early '80s some 240 egg raisers raised about a million eggs a day, enough the table egg requirement of Region 3 and large parts of Metro Manila. The poultry raisers, spread in the town's 15 barangays, produce high quality eggs for domestic use, and also for commercial purposes. Eggs are inseparable ingredients for pastries, bakes, leche flan, candies, and are used as stuffing for special food like pudin, imbotido, morcon, arroz valenciana, etc. In 1992, the town's biggest poultry raisers moved to flood-free communities while the remaining producers took their chances in their old locations, battling lahar and flood which hardly escape to the Pampanga Bay due to heavy siltation in the town's waterways.
Festivals & Events
AGUMAN SANDUK OF MINALINCelebrated in the afternoon of January 1, while the rest of the country takes a nap after the New Year's Eve revelry, and there's no one to catch the boys and man of this sleepy fishing town wear their mother's lipstick and put on their wives dresses. This strange and largely secret tradition began in 1`934; even mayors and parish priests are said to have also joined hundreds of men who parade annually the ugliest of the cross-dressers. What's unique: it's part parody of Kapampangan machismo and Kapampangan pulchritude, two biases enshrined on the altar of Kapampangan values; it's part protest against, and liberation from, gender discrimination and repression; it's part attempt to stage tier version of the Gay Pride Parade except that its participants are straight and it's their way of saying we can do it better and we can certainly look better and well, let's do something crazy for once! An experience you won't forget: don't freak when you see ten-year-old boys wearing their sisters' dresses, and farmers and fishermen with sunburned skin and toothless grins wearing micro - minis over scarred legs and blond wings covering their bald heads.
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Sources:
MINALENIANS: http://home.pacbell.net/adobo747/minalin/museo.htm
Mina Linda de las Mujeres: by Alejandro S. Camiling, CPA with Teresita Z. Camiling, BSE, MA (email: camiling@rcf.usc.edu )