Abstract

The symbiotic relationship between formal structures and informal dwellers constitutes a bond that defines Metro Manila. Where we find slums, we also find one of the most attended religious festivities—the feast of the Black Nazarene. This paper argues that the locality shapes the body; similarly, the body defines the performance of the devotion within the continuities and discontinuities of the city. This paper is divided into three parts. The first part considers the body vis-à-vis the everyday struggle for survival by looking at embodied and disembodied spaces identified as “squatters.” The connaturality between bodies and spaces is juxtaposed with the performances of the devotion to the Black Nazarene. The second part considers the bond between the slums and the devotion. The third considers the play in the body of the informal settlers as a convergence of law and lawlessness as well as sin and atonement.