Last Holy Week in Bantayan Island

Bantayan Island lies at the northernmost tip of Cebu Province and is considered the egg basket of Cebu. It has the highest per capita consumption of beer products for reasons that there really isn’t much to do after a night’s fishing outing. Bantayan is where my wife Jessica grew up when her grandparents Angel and Filomena Cabatingan had a ferry and electric plant business, which they sold in the ’70s to stay with us in Cebu City.

We haven’t been back to Bantayan Island for nine years now and it is time to rediscover it, especially that it is Holy Week and Bantayan Island proudly hosts the best processions bar none ever seen in this country. That’s two processions, one for Holy Thursday and another for Good Friday. They number at least 20 carrozas for each procession that is prepared by the old families of Bantayan Island, which is why Holy Week was also a family reunion, as these carrozas were passed from generation to generation.

The procession for Holy Thursday starts with the biggest carrozas of all, the Last Supper, which depicts the 12 life-size apostles on the table that stretches the entire width of the street. This is followed by the Agony in the Garden. the scourging at the pillar, Jesus with Pilate on a huge throne and parts of the Way of the Cross and ends with Jesus falling with Simon of Cyrene ready to help him carry the cross. This is offered by the Escario family, the family of Mayor Geralyn Escario, who was my wife’s schoolmate.

On Good Friday, there’s another set of carroza’s starting with St. Peter with a rooster depicting his denial of Jesus, then followed by the nailing on the cross, another huge carroza with Jesus lifted up on the cross between the crosses of the two thieves owned by the Yap-Hubahib family. Then one carroza with Jesus being pierced by the lance of Longinus. Then the carroza of the Pieta by the Mabugat family (the family of Vamp Verni Varga) and the Pestano family’s magnificent carroza where Jesus is being lowered on the cross to his waiting mother.

As in Holy Week processions, the main carroza was the Santo Entierro showing the dead corpse of Jesus Christ. In the ’70s my wife’s grandma told her that this was more than a hundred years old. The biggest crowds followed the Santo Entierro, but the last carroza in the procession were the Mother of Sorrows and Mary Magdalen.

The procession was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, many of them coming from very poor families holding their little children, letting them wear angel’s wings or dressed as St. Joseph or Carmel depending on the devotion of the parents. Before the procession, I was watching many of them arrive in their motorized bancas (that doubles as their floating house) coming from various islands of Botigues, Doong and many more islands that litter the way to Cadiz. They bring their children to offer them to God during the procession. These fishermen really don’t ask much, except for a good catch so they could have enough to feed and clothe their families.

Because of the faith and devotion of the poor fishermen, Bantayan Island has fewer natural calamities than most islands along the so-called typhoon belt, although they were badly hit and damaged during Typhoon “Frank” last year. At the end of the procession last Friday, without warning, we got a sudden downpour that lasted only five minutes. It was as if God responded to the prayers of the people who were feeling the heat and doused them with a little five-minute downpour of a blessing.

Bantayan Island has changed a lot since the days we used to come regularly. Today, thanks to the backbone program Strong Republic Nautical Highway (SRNH) of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) we can now bring our cars to Bantayan via their Roll-on, Roll-off vessels.

The Bantayan-Hagnaya Port is now served by two shipping companies, the Island Shipping Corp. and the Super Shuttle Ferry, which I learned has been into a bloody, cutthroat competition that is a boon to commuters, but we know too well that if one of these shipping companies go under, the winner will have a heyday raising the fares and as a consequence the service will go down. So we bring this matter to the attention of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) to solve so that there will be a friendly competition.

Although Holy Week has always been Bantayan’s main attraction that brings in local tourists to this island, however its sugar white sand beaches has now attracted many foreign tourists to Bantayan. This is why Cebuanos proudly say that Bantayan is comparable or better than Boracay. If so, the DENR should stop those concrete walls being constructed by the new resort owners, preventing tourists from walking through the beach. This has been given the nod of the Municipality of Sta. Fe despite the fact that no environmental compliance certificate (ECC) has been given to them.

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show entitled, “Straight from the Sky” shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8:00 in the evening.