CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 30, Issue 3, pp. 424–447, ISSN 0886-7356, online ISSN 1548-1360.  by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.14506/ca30.3.04 EXPORT-QUALITY MARTYRS: Roman Catholicism and Transnational Labor in the Philippines JULIUS BAUTISTA Kyoto University Sencho is a forty-year-old technician from the Philippine province of Pam- panga who, for most of the past ﬁfteen years, has whipped his own back to a bloody pulp in a ritual commemorating Jesus Christ’s Passion on Good Friday. When I spoke to him in 2012, he told me that he began self-ﬂagellating on behalf of his mother, Meling, who worked as a domestic helper in Hong Kong to earn enough money to service a family debt. Sencho’s ﬂagellation was a way of ap- pealing for God’s help in alleviating his family’s ﬁnancial situation. After several years of this kind of self-sacriﬁce, Sencho too had taken up employment in the Middle East, an endeavor he took on with a self-conﬁdence extending from the ritual experience. “No problem,” he recalled; “if I could ﬂagellate, I knew I could handle Saudi.” Narrating this experience brought back memories of his mother, who had since passed away because of illness. “My ﬂagellation is painful.... But that’s nothing compared to how she sacriﬁced for us in Hong Kong. She’s the [real] hero . . . she’s the martyr.” One of the more enduring legacies left behind by the late Philippine pres- ident Corazon Aquino is her valorization of the heroism of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) like Sencho and Meling. In April 1988, Meling may well have been among the many OFWs who gathered at Hong Kong’s Saint Margaret’s Church to hear Aquino tell them that “it is not only your relatives who are grateful for your sacriﬁces but also the entire nation.” The president reiterated her gov-