As Lucio San Pedro’s song “Alay sa Nasareno” rang out from six loud speakers and engulfed Plaza Miranda, Quiapo woke up again, this time to unseen electricity pulsating among its early denizens: vendors and devotees.
The Feast of the Black Nazarene has begun but the actual procession is today, Monday.
“Actually, it already began yesterday, Friday,” Pedring Borromeo told the BusinessMirror in Filipino on Saturday from his wheelchair beside his wares: two- and four-feet tall statues of the cross-bearing dark-skinned Jesus Christ garbed in maroon with gold trimmings.
Borromeo is among the hundreds of Filipinos who help feed the excitement—some say passion—on an annual 15-kilometer, 17-hour march of millions of people on January 9 to relive a deep-seated religious tradition.
But aside from an activity of faith, the Feast of the Black Nazarene, considered one of the most spectacular religious events in the Philippines, also symbolizes the resiliency of the market.
Borromeo, for one, said sale was good three days before the feast as his stall earned P10,000 that day.
“The patron [Black Nazarene] was good to us yesterday, Friday, and, hopefully, for the whole year,” Borromeo added, not knowing, like Analyn de los Santos, founder of the Una Jesus Nazareno Bugoy Cofradia organization, that the basilica’s patron saint is actually John the Baptist.
For Arlene “Nonoy” Bona, 55, the feast already began on December 26 when orders for his silk-screened T-shirts began pouring in.
Bona, who has been in the business for 11 years, said he considers printing about 300 T-shirts a day even up to January 10 or the day after the feast, to be his way of showing his devotion to the Black Nazarene.
He also believes the statue that mirrors the passion of Jesus Christ before the Crucifixion has granted his prayers, which is to see his three children graduate from college.
Business also boomed for Bona, who now has two stalls on Palma Street.
Still, he thinks his patron may have paused a bit when, in the past years, orders began streaming beginning December 15.
“People waited for some time; they didn’t draw yet from their pockets,” Bona, one of two dozen silk-screen printers specializing on the Black Nazarene, said in Filipino.
Borromeo, for his part, sells statues of the Black Nazarene dressed in gilded maroon robes and of the Child Jesus for P700 apiece. He also sells necklaces of the Nazarene’s image on wood, rosaries and handkerchiefs imprinted with the Nazarene’s face.
Twelve-year-old Toto also sells rosaries and handkerchiefs—P15 for the rosary necklace and P20 for the handkerchief, hanging from two sticks formed into a cross.
He started early Saturday, before the Mass was celebrated at 6 a.m., propping up his goods at the entrance of the church, as no vendors are allowed within the seven-feet foyer.
Toto said he, like more than a dozen vendors—some his age, others older—walk around Plaza Miranda or at the church’s Hidalgo Street side entrance.
He’s been doing this since he was 9 and agrees with Borromeo that the first Friday of the year was a good day. He was able to take home P400. On ordinary days, before and after the feast, he says he could only earn P200. He gives the money to his father who produces the goods.
“The best day is the feast day itself,” Toto said in Filipino. But he said his father tells him not to join the main bulk of the procession and to stay on the sidewalk.
“It’s dangerous.”
Indeed, deaths and injuries have marred past processions as the number of participants increased from an estimated 2 million in 2008 to 5 million in 2011, according to various news reports.
That’s why, said Romy Roxas of the Hijos del Nazareno-Central organization, they have dissuaded children and women from holding the ropes in towing the carriage—maglulubid—and at least to stay 500 meters away.
“It gets really physical,” said Roxas, who has been a marshal for 35 years and was a maglulubid for 11 years since he was 19.
Now 55, “I can’t do it anymore, obviously,” Roxas said in Filipino, “but I still can tighten screws and stay for 17 hours without sleep.”
He said he became a devotee because of his parents who took him to the Quiapo Church dressed like the Nazarene every Sunday when he was 12.
“I was sickly and thin at the time,” Roxas said, patting a bulging stomach.
When he’s not helping prepare the lifesize Black Nazarene statue that would be taken out of the church early morning of January 9, Roxas said he does electrical works.
“I think Filipinos do this, even I believe I do this, because their patron hears their prayers and their wishes are granted. I’ve even heard of stories that illnesses, even cancer, are healed. But those are just stories.”
For Roxas, he believes his wish that his three children graduate from college was fulfilled because of his faith.
De los Santos agrees.
The 43-year-old unmarried businesswoman told the BusinessMirror she believes she is now on her fourth life, having survived three surgeries.
“The patron has always saved me out of every failure, misery and misfortune.”
Hence, she said, their Antipolo-based organization neither sells anything nor solicits for donations.
“We even give out and do charity work like feeding the elderly. We don’t even rent out our patron,” de los Santos said, patting the carriage of a five-foot-tall statue of the Black Nazarene that their group brought along to Recto Avenue aboard the truck they rode on.
She and her fellow devotees, including three children who were also wearing maroon and gold-striped T-shirts, walked barefoot to the Quiapo church beginning 8 a.m. that Saturday morning.
“Practice,” de los Santos said, and then, in a more somber tone, added that they also wanted to show other people that, “it is good to believe in a higher being rather than not believe in a God at all.”
She said this is one of the reasons she doesn’t mind the many vendors selling products related to the Feast of the Black Nazarene.
“God is giving them a chance not to do wrong but to do good, a chance to earn and be able to buy food or their basic needs.”
De los Santos also said she’s more glad than afraid to hear that millions more people are expected to participate in the procession today, Monday.
“Our patron gives us strength to be together as his faithful,” she said as several people walked to their statue and wiped it with their handkerchief or towel.
Nearing noon, about five replica statues were brought to Plaza Miranda by their respective groups in preparation for the 2 p.m. procession today.
Across from where de los Santos’s group was, Borromeo’s stall on the right side of the church’s entrance perks up with customers either inquiring about prices or outright buying his wares.
Vendors like Toto amble to churchgoers walking on Plaza Miranda, now bustling with the buying and selling not only of religious products but also of fruits, cigarettes and balloons.
This is where faith and market has intertwined, Roxas said, excusing himself to prepare the procession of replicas two days before a life-sized statue of a Black Nazarene captures the hearts and minds of a nation.
IN PHOTO -- DEVOTEES in Quiapo, Manila, are starting to flock in time for the celebration of the Feast of the Black Nazarene today. The devotees believe their patron would grant their wish if they participated in the procession honoring Him. Rain and President Aquino’s warning of a possible terrorist plot to disrupt the rites did not prevent them from proceeding to the Quiapo Basilica on Sunday. An estimated 8 million Filipinos are expected to attend the rites. --NONIE REYES
