Carmona’s Sorteo festival on

CARMONA, Cavite – This municipality is celebrating its sixth triennial Sorteo Festival, a harvest fair and lottery which are one of a kind in the country and Asia.

The weeklong festival, which showcases Carmona’s best produce – vegetables and rice -– started Friday, with a parade of floats and street dances participated in by women and men in green and yellow crop and flower-designed attire and others holding palay threads which symbolize a good harvest.

Mayor Dahlia A. Loyola, her husband Cavite 5th District Representative Roy M. Loyola and other local officials will lead the events.

Dindo T. Diago, Carmona Information, Tourism and Culture and Arts officer, said the highlight of the once-in-everythree-years event is the “Sorteo ng Bukid ng Bayan,” on Feb. 1920 where 109 land parcels and a number of big cash prizes will be raffled off.

Sorteo is Spanish for lottery or raffle.

Land parcel winners will be given a chance to cultivate the land and profit from it. They would return the land to the local government after three years so that other residents may have a chance at the lot, also through “sorteo,” and earn from it too.

The sorteo began in 2004, during the term of Mayor Roy Loyola.