I’ve been following the Nazarene devotions for several years now, part of a broader interest in the culture of Manila’s Quiapo district and, I have to say, this year I was getting more questions than in previous years from people—friends in informal conversations and via texts, as well as in formal interviews for television—asking for my reading of Filipino religiosity, as shown in the Nazarene processions. The questions have been quite similar: Do these processions show the strength of the Catholic Church? Of Filipino faith in God? Of religious fanaticism?

They are not easy questions and all I can do is offer some reflections, helped along by one of my assistants, Rej Cruz, who is doing his Master’s in anthropology at the University of the Philippines and who literally waded into the Nazarene crowds last Friday, his first time and, he says, not his last. Rej didn’t go as a religious devotee; in fact, it wasn’t even to do formal research. An avid photographer, he had asked me for leave on that day to shoot the procession; I not only said yes, I also provided him with a crash course on Quiapo and the Nazarene, and what to look out for.

So, to the first question, I’d say the Catholic Church looms large, but even my friends in the clergy point out that the institutional church does not approve of many of the things done around the Quiapo basilica and in the procession. The bishops and friends sound almost like my Protestant friends, who say the devotions smack of idolatry, running counter even to the Catholic Church’s stand that the images are there only to help as visual cues.

But that takes us to the point of faith, and its foundations in history. What we see in Quiapo includes legacies from our pre-colonial past, particularly animism, a complex of beliefs and practices where humans could negotiate with supernatural power through images.

The Spaniards brought in their own images as well, which fitted into our earlier animist core. The Nazarene was brought in during the 17th century and housed in a pilgrimage church. Pilgrimages are found in all religions, based on the idea that one has to go through hardship to attain certain goals. In the case of the Nazarene, you have people coming in from all over, but it doesn’t matter even if someone’s coming in only from nearby Sampaloc. Simply participating in the Jan. 9 processions, jostling with hundreds of thousands (some TV reporters said there were 1 or 2 million) of people is itself quite an ordeal, and a spiritual feat.

Ballet

Rej described to me the feeling of becoming part of a wave (“alon”) — not quite a tsunami, though, because this is a wave that moves ever so slowly. But there’s more here than a wave. After Rej described the procession I reacted, “You know, it all sounds like a choreographed event, a kind of mass ballet,” and he agreed. There are ways of standing in the crowd, conscious of the persons around you who are helping you to move, but who also need to keep the tiny body space left to themselves. For example, many of the devotees who venture into the most densely packed centers of the procession don’t use belts because that could hurt the person ahead. The devotees also leave home barefoot because if they did have slippers on, they would not be able to carry the slippers, or even insert them in their waist.

The real “ballet” is around the “carroza,” the carriage of the Nazarene. There are the devotees tossing their towels and handkerchiefs to the carriage, which members of the “cofradia,” a select religious fraternity, wipe on the image and toss back, hopefully to the rightful owner. Then there are the bolder ones who try to get on the carroza. Male cooperation here is amazing, devotees agreeing to form a kind of human platform so others can use their shoulders to dash to the tail end of the carroza, hanging on Jesus’ cross for a few seconds of pious glory before being thrown off and allowing others to repeat the stunt, oops, I meant, the devotion.

Marshals

The most elusive goals though are to be able to hold the ropes, and to help carry the carroza, even for a few minutes. (Actually, Rej explained, no one carries the carroza for more than a few minutes because it would be too overwhelming.)

There are marshals handling the sensitive choreography around the carroza, shouting out “kaliwa” [left] and “kanan” [right], and the ominous warning “ocho” (number eight). Ocho means that the ropes, normally laid out in U-shape around the carriage, are crossing over. If it ever turns into the number 8, it could mean people getting strangled.

Rej was most touched by the scenes in front of Manila’s City Hall, where the marshals’ life-saving role could not be more evident. In front of the City Hall is the Lagusnilad underpass. The Nazarene crowds don’t go into the underpass but move parallel to it. Because there are so many people moving, the pressure could mean people on the edges falling over into the underpass, which is quite deep. The marshals prevent this by forming tight human links on the sides, in turn risking their own necks.

Many devotees are there with a “panata,” or religious vow, asking for a cure, a job, better business, an election victory. But many go as well without a panata or even a religious motivation. The Jan. 9 events become almost a show of machismo, something that goes back to a pre-colonial warrior mindset. Today’s warriors — jeepney drivers, “cargadores” [stevedores], construction workers — go through these rituals maybe to get the strength to face an even more daunting world.

But amid all this, I do see faith, and sometimes it’s not so much a faith in God, or the gods, than in fellow human beings. The procession is like dancing on the edge of a cliff, or a breath away from a stampede, from being crushed in the crowd, yet it does not happen. Many of the men know it is their social connections and camaraderie, as well as their esoteric movements and language, that allow the chaos to make sense. This year, too, in their own mysterious way, the men were able to maneuver the carroza into the traditional route, much to the chagrin of the authorities.

When I’m asked, is all this “right” in the sense of Church dogma and teachings, I have to wear my anthropology hat — popular religiosity has its own logic, the devotees creating and recreating their own traditions for their own needs. Jan. 9 is mainly the pilgrimage of vows and dreams and machismo, and a bit of politics — this early, bottles of water were going around with labels carrying the name of the politician who donated them. Come Holy Week, and I’ve written about this in the past, it will be a pilgrimage that does remember Jesus’ suffering and its redemptive function.

Faith is there, often in ways that violate dogma and the sensibilities of religious institutions, but always with a fervor that cannot but be respected.