The easter weekend starts tomorrow - and tonight, devoutly religious Christians may go to Church, to remember Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. But when we speak of religious devotion, few can match the singular act of faith - pulled off by Edgar Sanchez in January of 1961. That’s when he went to La Immaculada Church in Orange Walk like everyone else; but while they go to worship, he went to sacrifice. In September of 2004, Alfonso Noble retraced this remarkable history with rare documentary footage:

Alfonso Noble Reporting, [From Orange Walk Town]
On Sundays here at La Immaculada Church people come for absolution but 43 years ago one man came here with a divine directive so overpowering that it led to one of the single greatest acts of devotion ever seen in Belize. But was it devotion or madness? Edgar Tasiano says his memory of that day begins with the recollection of his wife cutting his hair.

Edgar Tasiano, Flying Man
“But this time she cut my hair because she got a dream like it was over with us so she decided to give me a Delilah.â€￾

And Tasiano told me, that “Delilahâ€￾ gave rise to an angry “Sampsonâ€￾ in him. He followed her to the police station where he was restrained by two officers who he broke away from and dashed for the bushes straight into a barbed wire fence.

Edgar Tasiano,
“I don’t know how it happened but I passed through the barb wire. I remember I passed through the barb wire and by the time I got out here I had a barb wire crown.â€￾

And with that barb wire crown he grabbed a machete and headed towards the heart of the town.

Edgar Tasiano,
“So I was going down the road…how you say it…feeling so crazy then.â€￾

And under that spell, he ended up in another confrontation with police. This one was violent.

Edgar Tasiano,
“But then they just surrounded me. I was like since that is your answer well thank you then I am going and I want to go in peace. But then I took the snake off and I held it by its tail and swung it and everybody opened up and gave me way, you know? I had the machete in the other hand and I ran down the street and curved into in the main street, the Queen Victoria Avenue, but I heard footsteps (making sounds of footsteps) close behind me. So I swung around with the machete and swung it at them. The machete and the baton hit each other forming a cross and then I think it hit the Sergeant on his finger.â€￾

That’s where he was overtaken, he says, by a hand at his neck.

Edgar Tasiano
“Right there is when I felt this power grab me behind my head and from there on the street it held me and it carried me right up the stairs, or let us use the old terms it took me up the ladder.â€￾

This very rare footage taken by a U.S. missionary on super 8 film showed him walking under that spell heading towards the church, carrying the machete fashioned into a cross. The footage also shows the trail of blood he left behind after being shot in the foot by the police. Re-visiting the 6 foot high bell tower for the first time in 40 years, he showed us the spire rungs he climbed up that day, climbing then in certainty, that the bells were waiting for him.

Edgar Tasiano,
“When I got up there I could hear the voice again ‘ring the bell and ring the alarm. I rang the bell and I hit the correct chord, the one they always ring when somebody dead and I hit it three times and it went like boom and even I felt the sound. It was as if you are going down there you know so I hit it the three times. And I turn around and I tell them forgive them for they know not what they have done.â€￾

And it is there, under what he believed to be the direct influence of God’s hand that he was gripped with the vision that he should jump.

Edgar Tasiano,
“I remember I became conscious and I asked ‘how you want the body dead or alive?’ You see that’s when I regained consciousness but then I got that way again under that amount of influence so I was told to ‘deliver your soul now ‘and I decided to deliver my soul.â€￾

And propelled by that messianic vision, maybe a delusion, he took the plunge into martyrdom and history as shown on these pictures taken by Fernando Sosa. The photo shows him, arms outstretched in a Christ like posture, crashing towards the church grounds.

Edgar Tasiano,
“There was a part when I was like that (rocking) and with the breeze I felt as I was going to faint. So I when I said ‘father I commend my soul,’ I only imagined that I jumped.â€￾

He only imagined it but it really happened. A part of his jump is captured on the missionary’s film. Unfortunately the camera operator, probably so shocked by what he saw, cuts it right at the point that he would have hit the ground. The film and Sosa’s pictures show the chaos that ensued as his mangled body, with a badly broken hand, was picked up by police and onlookers and taken through the streets to the hospital. Looking at it again, the non-defensive position he jumped in, the miracle is that he lived.

Alfonso Noble,
When you were jumping, did you think you were going to die?

Edgar Tasiano,
“No. I thought it about it before when I asked if they wanted me dead or alive. But I got knocked on my head and lost consciousness when I jumped so I didn’t know what happened. When I woke up…I see my eyes open in the hospital on this picture but I didn’t feel it there.â€￾

His eyes would open later at Sea-View psychiatric facility where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, counseled, and medicated back to mental stability. And that is where he is now, very much the town eccentric. He dons this crown and desert hat and rides through Orange Walk Town where he is an institution affectionately called “Rey,â€￾ the king in deference to the crown that he wears everyday. And that’s not the end of his eccentricity, his home offers a bizarre homage to the La Immaculada Church where all the windows and doors are the same shape as those in the church steeple like a reflection mirrored through the vast channel of history. Indeed this defining event has shaped his and the town’s life.

Alfonso Noble,
Did this event change your life in anyway? Your falling from the steeple, did it change your life any at all?

Edgar Tasiano,
“I feel so. It changed my life because some people keep away from me and that was very nice of them to do.â€￾

People moved away from him and he keeps his distance in the feeling that he has been specially blessed.

Alfonso Noble,
Was this religious in anyway? Do you feel God told you to jump?

Edgar Tasiano,
“I feel this was religious because it happened at the church and they say the Church of the God will always remain so that makes me feel gifted.â€￾

Alfonso Noble,
Do you think you are crazy for having done such an action?

Edgar Tasiano,
“That is a good question. You could just accept that if you want to feel crazy but not for too long.â€￾

As he visits the grounds of the church today, he remembers it all. There is no monument to his act. A broken disfigured hand and the gunshot wound on his leg are the only physical signs that this event did happen. Still, there is a hidden testimony, maybe only slightly audible on a Sunday afternoon in September, with the sun staring down on the bell tower. If you listen closely enough the wind, it seems, still whispers his name among the sacred emblems and the saintly statues through the slitted spire windows and in the rusty bells â€" all these tributaries to God and Rome. Even on these holy grounds, Edgar Tasiano still matters. This, after all, is a church and his was an act of devotion, maybe in the clutches of madness, but devotion nonetheless. So whenever those church bells gong, town residents should recall that January day in 1961 when this man ‘hurt’ himself because he thought he’d be caught by the hands of love.

The story was compiled with the assistance of NICH and the Banquitas House of Culture. Edgar Tasiano's very unusual home is at the corner of the new bypass road and the northern highway. The 68 year old says he works as a watchman for the bypass.

Again, that story first aired in August of 2004. Edgar Sanchez still lives at the same odd house, and can regularly be seen in and around Orange Walk.