Actual crucifixions also happen in other parts of Pampanga on Good Friday. Here, a penitent bears the pain of being nailed on a wooden cross in Barangay San Agustin in Magalang town.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR KAPAMPANGAN STUDIES, HOLY ANGEL UNIVERSITY
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Transvestites carrying heavy crosses, flagellants with samurais tied to their waists and their tips pointed to their chins to keep them from bowing, a “cenaculo” played out by thugs, stevedores and slaughterhouse butchers.
These are among the lesser known Holy Week people and events in various parts of this province, apart from the famous actual crucifixions that lure tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists to Barangay San Pedro Cutud in this capital city every Good Friday.
Prof. Robby Tantingco, head of the Center for Kapampangan Studies at the Holy Angeles University (HAU) in Angeles City, has listed other major attractions that could provide visitors alternatives to the colorful but bloody tradition of San Pedro Cutud.
He listed one of themas the “Pasyon Serenata” in Barangay San Basilio in Sta. Rita town in the evening of Holy Wesnesday. “It’s a showdown between two brass bands and their respective choirs who try to outperform each other by chanting the ‘pasyon’ to the tune of classical operas. They play all night long one page at a time, until they finish the whole book,” he said.
Tantingco noted that “the sight and sound of betel chewing barrio folks singing the entire history of salvation in Kapampangan and to the tune of Verdi and Puccini will blow you away” and that “it’s a performance worthy of a concert hall instead of some dusty road in a remote farming village.”
In Mabalacat City early morning on Good Friday, there’s “the grand assembly” of penitents. “It’s a scene straight out of Cecil B. DeMille movie: hundreds, maybe thousands, of half-naked flagellants and cross-bearers in flowing red robes, brought together by sin and tradition, converge in the church patio for an orgy of suffering, self-mutilation and penance.
The number of penitents makes you wonder if flagellation, like circumcision, is a rite of passage among boys in Pampanga,” he said. Tantingco also noted that late morning on Good Friiday in Barangay Lourdes in Angeles City,
a passion play is “performed by actors who I suspect are thugs, stevedores and butchers from the nearby Pampang
market, because they chase the actor playing Jesus and beat him up with such realism and violence the poor guy ends up in the local clinic.”
The passion play also has “a live crucifixion which tourists from Clark and Korea town must pay an entrance fee of P200 to see,” he added. Then there are what Tantingo referred to as “extreme penitents” every Maundy Thursday
and Good Friday all over Pampanga but that “it takes luck to catch them.”
He was referring to cross-bearers “who carry electric posts and huge banana trunks seen in Barangay San Agustin, Magalang, the woman cross bearers, the transvestite cross bearers, the cross bearers who tie a samurai around their waists with the tip pressed against their chin to keep their heads up, and the cross bearers who are tied together to the same cross to that they can take turns carrying it.”
“In Barangay Pampang, Angales City, I saw a cancer-stricken mother carrying a cross while her entire family prayed the rosary and followed her around. And then there are the dreadful ‘magsasalibatbat’, who crawl on the road for miles, rubbing their skin continuously against the concrete until they’re all bruised and covered with dirt.
Those who look for actual crucifixions can also try Barangay Telapayung in Arayat, where they are more private and more heartfelt,” Tantingco also said. And then in Guagua town, there is the traditional “Tanggal” on Good Friday, a ritual “where a life-size statue of Jesus with moveable neck and joints is taken down from the cross and laid down and dressed up to become the Santo Entierro or the Interred Christ.
“The town’s Velez-Zaragoza clan performs the elaborate ritual with the same care and solemnity as I imagine a family would prepare a departed member for burial. In the past, parish workers closed all church doors and windows
and banged metal to simulate the eclipse and the thunderclaps that supposedly accompanied the crucifixion, and
to arouse the same fear and awe experienced by the Jews.
Today, we just rely on the rhetoric and theatrics of the Siete Palabras speakers,” Tantingco also said. He noted that “the entire province quiets down as night falls on Good Friday, when parishes hold hushed processions of their heirloom ‘santos’, led by the Santo Entierro and the Mater Dolorosa.
They’re all happening simultaneously: the candlelit carrozas of Arayat which transport you back in time, the sweet sound of violins playing Stabat Mater in San Fernando with the added attraction of rose petals thrown from the balcony of the Rodriguez mansion, the pomp, pageantry, and piety of Sta. Rita reminiscent of Lino Brocka” s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, the breathtaking beauty of Mater Dolorosa of Guagua. and the grandeur of the Santo Entierro of Sasmuan town.”
Tantingo also noted the “unusual” Good Friday procession in Sasmuan. “Unusual because the grim procession of the dead Jesus and His grieving Mother is followed by a grimmer procession of magdarame or flagellants and cross bearers.
“Sasmuan is the only place I know where this strange mix of the folk and the orthodox is allowed. Parish priests often make an effort to eliminate cultural practices to purify the theology of church rituals. For example, the ‘pasyon’ mustn’t replace the Bible, the ‘puni’ mustn’t compete with the Visita Iglesia, and the ‘penitensiya’ mustn’t keep people away from the sacrament of Confession.”
“But Kapampangans have stubbornly stuck to their folk traditions, and the archdiocese is now finding ways to compromise,” he noted. Tantingco also noted that Pampanga is “where church piety collides with folk defiance, where the holiest days of the year are celebrated in the unholiest manner, where the charming and solemn rites of the Church coexist with the raw, bloody but ultimately more exuberant rituals of the common folk.”
