The real Jesus Christs of Bgy Cutud, San Fernando, Pampanga

It’s a difficult job but someone has to do it.

On Good Friday, Ruben Enaje of Bgy San Pedro Cutud in San Fernando, Pampanga, was nailed to the cross for the 28th time — “possibly the longest time any Filipino has performed the ritual,” reports Tonette Orejas on Inquirer.net.

2013 was supposed to be Enaje’s last. But yesterday, the 53-year-old signage maker reprised his role in a production that has been staged annually by the villagers since 1954, so far casting at least 10 men as Jesus Christ.

When Coconuts Manila visited him on Holy Thursday, Enaje admitted he was nervous and had not been sleeping well on the weeks leading up to Good Friday. The reason? He was also going to get his feet nailed for the first time — and in charge is a new guy. It’s their first time to work together.

The man who had been nailing Enaje to the cross the past 27 years was pirated by a rival village in Mabalacat, Pampanga, for a tidy sum of PHP12,000; Cutud was paying him zero.
 

When we asked Enaje why he decided to be Jesus Christ for another year, he said his signage business has been slow the past few months. He believes this sacrifice will help get him back on his feet. 

But there is another, more obvious, reason: Enaje and the people in charge of the production don’t want to pass the throne to the man who is next in line.

Technically, the next in line would be decided on seniority. It’s who has been doing it for the most number of years.

But that man is said to have a peculiar moral compass.

His name is Victor Caparas — an outsider from the town of Arayat who some villagers say lives a life of sin outside of Bgy San Pedro for the most part of the year, and returns just weeks before Holy Week.

His wife was born in Bgy San Pedro and his father-in-law makes “burullos,” a wooden instrument shaped like a brush with shards of glass as bristles, used to slice the skin open. It is used by flagellants to heighten the pain during flogging.

In between, Caparas is said to roam the province of Pampanga where he allegedly smokes marijuana, gets drunk, picks fights and commits petty thievery.

When we talked to Caparas, he admitted to having been a bad boy — but, he qualifies, this was before he was crucified in 1991, which he vowed to do yearly in return for the improvement of his parents’ health. Since then, he claims, he has been a good man who sells smoked fish as his day job.

Caparas’ colorful life has been featured in a TV news program. Young filmmaker Jarell M. Serencio made a 10-minute short film shown at the Cinemalaya film festival in 2012, where it is implied that right after getting crucified, Caparas goes to a random lady’s house for sex.

Making him Jesus Christ in the village’s yearly production, which now draws tens of thousands of devotees and curious tourists from the country and abroad, would be a joke and not a good example for Cutud’s young population. 

Enaje, on the other hand, is said to be kind, helpful, generous. An exemplary model of Christian values. 

The other contender is Bob Velez, a 76-year-old local of Cutud who was once cast as the production’s Jesus Christ. But he gave up the role once he completed his vow. Years later, he decided that he wanted to be Jesus Christ again, but Enaje had already taken over. 

Still, he should be the “second Christ,” Velez told us.

The second Christ is the man who takes over the middle cross once the bodies of Enaje and the two thieves are brought down. The second Christ is not part of Cutud’s production, but it is just as important for both Caparas and Velez — for they feel whoever lands there is technically next year’s main Christ, if Enaje decides to retire.

Yesterday at the Calvary, located in a dusty hill located near the end of San Pedro leading to San Nicolas and where the crucifixion was held, you could see Caparas ambling behind Enaje’s cross as soon as it was erected. 

But it was Velez who got the middle cross this year. Caparas got the cross to his right.

Will Caparas get his wish to be the main Christ? 

We’ll have to go back in 2015.


Main photo (clockwise from right): Enaje, Velez and Caparas.

Photos: Lester Babiera

 

 

 



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