-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, June 12, 2005
JULIET CHAVEZ
Agta’s ‘It-Girl
Palanan’s 4-foot-11 beauty queen is on the road to fame
By Roy Aaron N. Espiritu
She is a one of a kind Filipina beauty queen. Seven inches shy of the customary 5-foot-6-height requirement for pageant candidates, she has neither the rosy white skin nor the long black hair that normally guarantees a girl a shot at the crown. She is the first Agta to join and win a beauty contest, and has every right to be a queen.
Her name is Juliet Chavez. Who is she? She’s just a small 15-year-old, fifth grader from the poorest folk of Palanan, Isabela—a pureblooded Agta. But she is beautiful, smart and charming. Back in April, she bested 16 other prototype beauty contestants at the town’s search for the Sabutan Festival Queen. And she is now the proud poster child for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ (NCCA) drive for greater exposure of indigenous culture.
She plays the guitar well, croons her Ilocano songs beautifully, dances and sings videoke with a passion—rather very unusual for a girl who grew up in the mountains. She converses and mingles, politely butts in to share her point when necessary, giggles and laughs, wears makeup and sleeveless tops, and colors her nails à la-Jolina style too. In other words, she’s into anything girls her age would do.
But now, Chavez, the previously “plain” sister in a brood of five, is the ambassador of her entire town. She not only wears a crown and bears a scepter; she is the pride of her people. To the Agtas and other marginalized indigenous peoples across the nation, she is a symbol of their beauty and culture.
The Sabutan Festival—named after a shrub used as a weaving material by the locals—bestowed upon the gifted girl a crown, scepter and trophy, and a P2000 cash prize after she won the title and four special prizes: Miss Friendship, Miss Talent, Miss Photogenic and Best in Sabutan Costume.
Chavez is mighty proud of her indigenous roots. The Agtas, otherwise known as Dumagats, derive their name from tabing-dagat (by the sea). The coastal community is among the poorest members of society, who mostly live in small bamboo huts. Many children do not get proper education.
Chavez herself at 15 years of age is in fifth grade. “Sa ballpen na lang nabubuhay ang mga tao ngayon,” she echoes her father’s words. A consistent first honor since grade one, she is considered the first Agta in Palanan, or perhaps among all the Agtas, to have reached that level of education. Now, she is a beauty queen to boot.
This young girl’s feat, according to Cecile Guidote Alvarez, NCCA executive director and presidential adviser on culture, has developed a sense of pride among cultural minorities and other vulnerable groups. She says, “We are now seeing the dawn of our dream to harvest the gold of talents of vulnerable groups, and focus on the rich cultural tradition as a wealth of inspiration to catalyze new artistic routes of expression from ancestral roots, thereby communicating the UN Millennium Development Goals that are linked with the 10-point legacy agenda of the President: ‘Beat the Odds’.”
The media have taken note of her as well. GMA 7 is set to air her life story on its biographical drama series Magpakailanman on June 30, aside from featuring her on several other shows. Indeed, the “It-Girl” of Agta is now famous.
A Darna role?
Everywhere Miss Sabutan went during her last visit in Manila last May, she was a head turner. Some even said that it wouldn’t be far-fetched if she finally clinches a cameo role (as earlier intimated) in the hit fantasy series Darna. The star of the popular series, the actress Angel Locsin, is Chavez’s idol, and was thrilled to meet her when she visited GMA 7. Locsin herself hit it off with the ever-friendly Juliet.
According to Froilan Sarmiento, the beauty queen’s chaperone in Manila, a career on the silver screen is Chavez’s most fervent dream. And already, in her hometown, the adorable Juliet is considered a “superstar.”
She now holds a position of authority and responsibility and commands respect in Palanan as well as in Isabela. She says she is thankful that a tiara and scepter allowed her to become the “symbol” that would boost the morale of the Agtas and other katutubo in the country. More important, she has put Palanan on the map, and can now hope for aid to come their way.
Mayor Natividad Bernardo of Palanan, through the municipality’s cultural officer Clair Taggueg, thanked the NCCA at the Cultural Summit on May 23 and 24 for taking Juliet under its wing. And beside them, the girl whose dreams are slowly coming true beamed, her eyes dancing excitedly.
‘I am beautiful’
After the pictorial for today’s Sunday Times Magazine the energetic Juliet insisted that the group hang out at a nearby videoke, and sang the song that best describes her—Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.” She sang it with such a passion that young girls her age began swarming the place. Clearly, they all wanted one thing: to be seen for what they truly are on the inside—that which changed the life of one Juliet Chavez.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/j...50612week1.html
