until now, despite all the puerto rican pernil, the jamaican jerked pork i have enjoyed here in the bronx, nothing could still out flavor the sapid spit roasted pigs served during the holy weeks of my childhood.
while the rest of catholic philippines fast and abnegate from the divine delights of meat, the folks from our island jump into a papal sanctioned bacchanalia from tip top palm sunday ending in hang over easter.
this could be apocryphal, but my island is probably the only parish in the philippines today that boasts of an indult. in our case, it is a special ecclesiastical dispensation exempting the parishioners from the edicts of fasting and abstinence during holy week.
this indult was allegedly obtained in 1840 by the local vicar from the ne plus ultra of orthodoxy, spain's office of the holy inquisition. the indult was believed to have been granted to the island folks who feared that fishing during semana santa would only net them tragedy. in return for the hiatus from the treacherous sea labor, the fisher folks promised to join the terrestrial processions.
and then there were the processions, a two day theatrical extravaganza of close to 20 carros bearing life sized recreations of the stations of the cross, the series of tableaux representing gory scenes in the passion of christ.
under the guise of extreme devotion, buena familias in the island outfox each other in coming up with the most garish of these rolling ecclesiastical floats. rococo is the name of the game.
in our baroque loving island, i was raised most spartanly in a poor family, a poor non catholic family. but i was an extremely social climbing kid.
my best friend during these weeks was the bastard son of the only scion of the family that sponsored the carro bearing the image of the crucified christ speared by a grinning roman soldier in a peek-a-boo, skimpy, leather skirt.
i couldn't do the procession route for fear that my conservative protestant mother would catch me taking part in this heathen activity (her word) nor could my friend walk along with the legit family of his dad behind their heirloom carro.
so we waited for the entourage to wind up back in the ancestral stone house of my friend's dad near the water's edge while the household help were in a frenzy preparing the after procession spread.
hills of pale noodles (mostly for the hands who pushed the carro on), vats of blood pudding (for the now drunk relatives) and half a dozen lechon(initially for the family members), their perfectly roasted skin reflecting the sickly yellow light of the incandescent bulbs hastily strung across the yard.
today at lunch, my trusty dominican restaurant did not carry any meat dishes. i settled for a salty, really pedestrian baccalao.
i realized i forgot to tip the waitress only after i passed by the curbside kiosk of decorated palm fronds tended by a squat, mexican looking woman, her hair bunned severely.
speaking in rapid spanish, she offered me one of her beribboned, origamied palm fronds. i shook my head and walked on. about ten paces away, i looked back at the vaguely familiar woman.
waving her wares at the passersby, she had this look of determination, not unlike that of the helpers in the household of my friend's absentee dad, shooing away the pagan island flies swarming over the divine spit roasted pigs.