Night at the Fiestas

Amadeo Padilla has been chosen to play the role of Jesus in his town’s annual Holy Week passion play. At 33 years of age, he still lives in the house of his mother, Yolanda. As an inveterate sinner, Amadeo is an unlikely choice to play the role of Jesus, but his uncle Tíve chose him in hopes that the role would teach Amadeo to properly appreciate the Lord and the concept of sacrifice. Tíve leads a small community of faithful men who gather together to worship and pray at their local morada. Amadeo is 33 years old, the same age as Jesus was when he was nailed to the cross, and he hopes to realistically emulate Christ’s pain. Amadeo grew up with the legend of Manuel Garcia, a man forever scarred by his choice to use real nails during his passion play. (Typically, the actor playing Jesus merely carries his cross and then is tied to it.) Amadeo hopes to be similarly serious in his own representation of Jesus’s crucifixion, and he also has ambitions to use nails instead of rope.

After a morning spent building the cross that he is to carry, Amadeo is chagrined to see his daughter Angel appear on his doorstep. She is eight months pregnant, and Amadeo thinks that she looks inappropriately sexualized in her tight jeans and low-cut top. Her birthday falls on Good Friday this year. She will be 15. Angel does not notice her father’s foul mood and explains that she and her mother have gotten into a fight. She intends to stay with her grandmother, Yolanda. Amadeo tries to tell his daughter that he is too busy to be her “support system” because he is playing Jesus in the upcoming passion play. Ignoring him, Angel walks into the house.

Amadeo and Angel’s mother, Marissa, were also young parents; Amadeo was 18 and Marissa was 16 when Angel was born. His daughter, around whom Amadeo is still uncomfortable, seems so young to him—far younger than her mother had seemed during her own pregnancy. Now, Angel chatters on about her plans to finish her education and her intentions to be a good mother. Amadeo listens in silence, unsure what to say in response.

Angel asks Amadeo about his role in the passion play, and Amadeo tells her that it is more than a play; it is a serious responsibility because he will, at least temporarily, share in the pain of Christ. Angel asks to see the morada, the small chapel where Amadeo and the other brothers meet for prayers, but Amadeo explains that women are not allowed in the building. Angel, who believes that her father is ashamed of her pregnancy, begins crying. Amadeo remembers Angel as a little girl. They had been closer then. He enjoyed teaching her things and showing her off, but he never truly had a major role in her life. He and her mother Marissa got into a heated argument when Angel was just a baby, and when he slapped Marissa, all talk of the two moving in together and getting married had stopped. Although he spent some time with Angel when she was young, they drifted apart as she approached adolescence, and he now feels nothing but distance between them.

Because he feels guilty for having made his daughter cry, Amadeo sneaks Angel into the morada one night when no one is there. She comments on the unusually bloody crucifix and asks him why playing Jesus means so much to him. Amadeo is unable to fully articulate his reasons, but he wants to know if he is capable of using real nails, and he hopes to redeem himself through his performance of Christ’s sacrifice.

Manuel Garcia, the man who lost the use of his hands after his portrayal of Christ in the passion play years ago, is now Amadeo’s neighbor. He sits outside of his house all day, and he has taken to teasing Amadeo about Angel, calling her a “puta” and a “whore” and telling Amadeo that the man tasked with the role of Jesus should not harbor such a woman in his own home. Manuel deeply annoys Amadeo, who is then short-tempered with Angel, but Angel’s sincere affection for Amadeo soon wins him over. Although he is increasingly focused on the upcoming play, he softens toward his daughter.

On the morning of the passion play, Amadeo carries the cross along the two-mile procession route, wearing a crown of thorns. As he struggles, Angel runs beside him, trying to offer him water. He will not take it. Manuel Garcia taunts Amadeo and calls Angel a “puta,” and Amadeo is filled with rage. He wants to hit Manuel, but he realizes that the man’s taunts are a gift; he is now enduring pain just as Jesus did. When Amadeo is tied to the cross, he asks for nails. As his hands are being cleaned with alcohol, he looks down at his daughter and realizes that he is not the son of God, and that it is Angel who has been “forsaken,” not him.