This is a re-posted opinion piece.
When the Spaniards strayed into the archipelago in 1521, they found the religious practices of the natives neither Buddhist nor Hindu the two great religions that influenced the cultures of this vast Asian region. The Indios, as we were called, were animists, although some were already converted to Islam. The missionaries started learning the indigenous languages so they could preach in them. They withheld Spanish from the early Filipinos, unlike the Americans and the Japanese that followed, who taught the natives their own language.
The Catholicism the Spaniards brought was soon syncretized. The Spaniards knew of the many superstitions, which they discouraged but could not eliminate entirely. The natives started endowing the new faith with the same fidelity that they worshipped their native spirits. They attributed occult powers to Christian rituals, symbols and images, celebrating the Christian holidays differently, however, from the austere manner of the Spaniards.
Thus the elaborate fiestas commemorating the local patron saints. And innovators like the late Alejandro Roces invented Ati-atihan in the 1960s, the harbinger of similar festivals all over the country. With ingenuity, these festivals were brightened and exaggerated with flourishes dances, outlandish costumes, masks, agricultural produce and became entertainment.
This practice seems universal. From the ancients to the present, in all civilizations religion becomes the locus, the reason, the excuse for public spectacle.
Strictly for us, though, nothing beats that colossal Black Nazarene procession early this year.
That procession took more than 20 hours, with an estimated eight million devotees. In the years past, the same procession ended on the same evening at the church itself. Indeed, that event was a stunning example of the despair of our very poor and their superficial if human response to their piteous condition. That expression of Filipino superstition was also spectacular entertainment. And because we are fun-prone and shallow we miss the deeper import of such a historical event, and soon enough, even forget it.
A journalist who talked with some of those milling, praying devotees reported that they wanted jobs no lofty ambitions; just simple, menial jobs.
What would have happened if that procession marched not through the narrow and squalid streets of Quiapo, but through antiseptic Makati, into the haughty precincts of the mighty like Forbes Park? What impact would such a procession make on those moneybags of the Central Business District who control the economic destiny of this nation?
Read the full article: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryId=86&articleId=790600
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By: F Sionil Jose – Hindsight
Source: Manila Bulletin, March 25, 2012
To view the original article, click here.
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