ON PAEANTAWAN FAR AWAY

By Mario Gregorio Masangkay
Baranggay Kagawad, Sta. Cruz, Ibajay, Aklan

 

ON Paeantawan far away, someone suggested to the Sangguniang Barangay of Sta. Cruz, should be erected a big concrete cross to mark the peak as historic and to symbolize Sta. Cruz. But to symbolize Barangay Sta. Cruz by a big or a small cross is an insult most gross.

Evidently, Barangay Sta. Cruz was named for the cross to which Jesus Christ was nailed to die, but this does not mean that a cross should symbolize the barangay. This shows that in ancient times the cross was used to effect capital punishment. Death by crucifixion was shameful, agonizingly slow, and excruciatingly painful. The victim was left hanging, perhaps stark naked, exposed to public view, sun or rain, and wind for up to maybe nine days before finally dying. The cross, therefore, was an instrument of shame, torture and death. It was yesteryear’s electric chair, lethal injection, and gas chamber. St Paul used the symbolism of the cross for suffering, shame, persecution, or death. In our time, the cross is used to mark tombs, errors, sites where one died violently, or churches where the final religious rites are administered to a corpse. Using a cross to symbolize Barangay Sta. Cruz is saying that Barangay Sta. Cruz is a shame, a torture, a suffering, an error, an instrument of death, a grave, an excruciating death, a place where one dies violently or persecution. That is a very gross insult to the people of Barangay Sta. Cruz.

Another purpose of building the big cross is to mark Paeantawan as a historic site. A marker is usually commemorative. What must we people of Sta. Cruz commemorate in the occupation and garrisoning of Paeantawan by the Japanese Army? Paeantawan was not, and is not, a place of martyrdom. A man of Sta. Cruz is known to have collaborated ( Pilipino nago, Pilipino sugid, Pilipino turo ) with the Japanese in Paeantawan. A Japanese soldier shooting from atop Paeantawan killed a Roman Catholic priest, the only one to have come from Sta. Cruz. A woman from Suepo (now designated as purok I) is rumored to have been raped and kept as “comfort woman” by the Japanese who occupied Paeantawan. The people of Sta. Cruz and of the surrounding barangays suffered privation, constant fear, torture, and death when the Japanese were in Paeantawan. Indeed, Paeantawan in World War II was a big, big, heavy cross for the people of Sta. Cruz. Are we people of Sta. Cruz today to commemorate and glory in our ancestor’s disgrace, humiliation, privation, torture, and death? Would not erecting a tall, big, concrete cross on Paeantawan be glorifying and commemorating the brutality that the Japanese Imperial Army inflicted on our ancestors? And yet some barangay leaders seem obsessed with a tall, big, concrete cross to sit on Paeantawan.

Amicus humane generis, ora pro nobis (friend of human race, pray for us.) Far be it that the suggestion that a tall, big, concrete cross be built on Paeantawan is a prophecy of the future of Sta. Cruz. God forbid that any living person now perceives Barangay Sta. Cruz as a tall big concrete cross.

Far be it that far away Paeantawan is the insult to Sta. Cruz.