The “carosa” is a wonderful contraption and a beautiful one. It is generally a cart carrying a statue on a bed of flowers. It is lighted every which way ranging from car batteries to power generators usually loaded onto another cart following the carosa itself. In which case, it would be noisy. Its noise and fumes drowning out the chant of prayers and the air of holiness that would have been appropriate to the occasion. But still it falls within the range of the local sense of propriety and accepted tradition. And so, are bourn by the populace as part of the magic of the whole event. One might wonder if the “prosesyon” has ceased being true religious practice and has simply become mere “touristy” spectacle. But even so, it is the center of the holy week tradition defining the local religiosity more than anything else.
As always one must look deep beyond what is readily apparent to get to the core. What is readily apparent are the saints themselves. In Dumanjug, Cebu, the tradition is to have just one figure on the carosa. But in Baclayon, Bohol, there are carosas with 2 or more figures. In one instance, there is the figure of Pilate to go with the bound Christ. He is of course washing his hands of the whole event. Soldiers ride with Jesus Nazareno. Strangely, they seem Arab more than Roman. But this only tells us these are images constructed from the local imagination recording inevitably the local biases of earlier times. They lean to the local history, the local sensibility, more than to historical correctness.
The flowers are holy. The holiest rides with the “Santo Entiero”, the dead body of Christ. The flowers are brought home by the populace to grace houses, bring good luck to fishermen’s nets or become ingredients for the magic potions of shamans, this under-worldly subculture surviving to this day in some parts.
A black veil drapes over the body to symbolize Christ’s true death. There are rituals to accompany its installation and de-installation. Always the statue is treated with as much respect and devotion as would have been deserved by the dead Christ’s real body. These are enough to make you sure the figures of the carosa are not mere sculpture. They are religious icons, venerated and adorned with a magical quality quaint to the culture itself.
The story does not end with the deck of flowers. The carosas have parts unseen. Below the flowers, a skirt of fine lace and fabrics wrap around the carcass, the body of the cart. Lift the skirt and you will find the machine itself, the hidden mechanical contraption that carries everything. It is a thing of cultural interest as would invite some academic research of a sort. Here one might find also a core of the carosa’s history.
The carosa is always lighted, at one time by carbide lamps, at a later time by kerosene lamps called here petromax, and still later by electric generators. The lighting has to survive the length of the prosesyon, which in most cases leaves the church at dusk. The power source of the light is therefore essential. At one point car batteries were used. But if one connected them to direct-current (DC) light bulbs they did not last too long. The lights would have dimmed before the prosesyon wound back into the church. This is not a problem beyond the range of new technology to solve. And so, some carosas now use inverter systems to transform DC to alternating current (AC) for lighting up ordinary light bulbs. These are more efficient. They last longer and produce no noise at all as does your old traditional gasoline fed electric power generator.
Look a bit deeper and you realize the carosa is an old machine made and adapted from even older machines. And here you might appreciate even more their true loveliness. Some carosas are made entirely from hardwood but for its steering mechanisms and suspension springs. But there are some cases where the cart itself had been made from the chassis and suspension of old cars. Walk yourself one day through the church at Baclayon the day before the Wednesday prosesyon and peer into the undercarriages. There you might see that some of the carosas bear old car brands stamped still into its parts, Ford, Chevrolet, etc. And so if you might have seen photos of an old Model T Ford in one of the ancient photographs of the family album, you might now possibly get a clue of whatever became of it.
Now as ever before the rituals of holy week still contain and express the deepest parts of the local belief system, the local culture, which is not owned entirely by the religious institution. The practice extends and covers a whole system of cultural practice: What to eat. How to cook them. What things and acts are allowed. What are not. A whole complete fabric of social interrelationships woven over time and surviving to this day.
Thankfully, these are not apparent in the tourist spectacle itself. You will have to dig deeper into the culture to find them. You will have to live it. These are what truly makes the affair holy and spiritual, and lovely not only in the sense of religion but really also of culture.