According to the workers and neighbors of the necropolis, looters and “fugitives” take refuge among the graves
14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2024 — “Cruel, gloomy, inexcusable.” With three adjectives, the official press summarizes this Friday the panorama of the Vicente García de Las Tunas cemetery, which has become, according to its own caregivers, a no man’s land. The necropolis is not only haunted by the typical cases of looted graves and drifting bones, but also, after five in the afternoon, when the workers leave and the darkness lends itself to misdeeds and hiding places for “fugitives,” not even the police dare to enter.
The unusual chronicle of Periódico 26 provides not only descriptions of the cemetery but also stories that could be part of a thriller. The protagonist of the article, Daysi Aguilera Santiesteban, a woman from Las Tunas who sought to move* the remains of her relatives to the Jobabo cemetery, tells the newspaper that after exhuming two brothers and their father – in a process already painful for the families – the plastic boxes where they were deposited disappeared.
Upon returning to the cemetery, the woman found the remains of the three men – all soldiers who went to Angola or participated in some campaign of the regime – scattered on the ground. There was no sign, in the pantheon of fighters where she had left them, of the funeral boxes.
“A head on one side and a bone on the other,” is how the remains spent the whole month of August, says the newspaper, “in God’s hands,” while Daysi knocked on the doors of the police, the technicians, the Prosecutor’s Office, the municipal government and even the Party. The answer was always the same: “mistreatment” and “little sensitivity,” says Periódico 26. Only at the end of August was the woman finally able to transport the remains of her relatives.
“After 5:00 pm, this place has no security, and we are located in a very complex neighborhood”
One could think that what happened to Daisi Aguilera is excessive bad luck or an isolated case, but the confessions of the employees of the necropolis themselves – who have given up secrecy in the face of the situation – say that it is not. “After 5:00 pm, this place has no security, and we are located in a very complex neighborhood, constantly attended to by the structures of the Government and the Party,” is the first thing that Jorge Gordales Reyes, manager of Vicente García since the beginning of this year, tells Periódico 26.
The manager assures that, until recently, “many people lived in the cemetery.” He says there were “more than five workers” who have had to be separated from their positions, some “with more than 15 years of work,” for “violations and crimes.” “I can assure you that this place has not been like that for a long time. You can walk through it and not see any debris; it is clean, and we are very severe with indiscipline,” he says, although his own workers deny some of his statements.
Not only are most of the niches and graves dilapidated with slabs torn off, but two large bee hives hang from the back wall, and, faced with the problem of lack of space, the guardhouses have become depositories for the remains. “They removed the windows of the internationalists’ pantheon (guardhouse), closed it, and it’s full, because there’s no room for all the skeletons,” complains Ramón Nicolás Delgado, head of the group of custodians who also suffer from the place’s poor condition.
When the cemetery closes, the guard on duty is not only left without a place to rest but is also plunged into darkness. “The head of the sector has asked us not to have women guards at night for fear of what may happen to them. It’s totally dark here. There was a tower with spotlights focused on several perimeters, but not anymore,” he explains.
“The pantheon of the combatants, to give an example, has a 200-volt switch and can’t be used because there is no breaker. The main entrance is dark because it has not been possible to get a cable for the custodian to have light,” he summarizes. In difficult situations, such as a downpour, “the custodian takes down the flag, picks up the phone and asks the neighbors to give him shelter. And then the cemetery is unguarded, with no one here,” he says.
The lack of security has brought the consequent robberies. “The flower boxes, the little books, the little boxes that people buy for the remains of the family member are stolen. Many are worth 3,000 or 4,000 pesos. They empty them and resell them,” he says.
Periódico 26 also says that the workers don’t receive snacks, gloves or other basic tools for their work, and they’re not the only ones whose lives revolve around the cemetery. A neighborhood has sprouted there, full of people who live with the fetid odors and let their children play in the cemetery as if it were natural. In fact, one of the workers of the necropolis attributes the place’s destruction in part to the residents in the area.
“The children fly their kites; they start running around and when you step up and scold them, the parents fall on top of you as if you were the one invading a sacred space,” he says. He knows, however, that this is not the only reason. The Vicente García lacks maintenance, space and workers, but the employee confesses that “no one wants to work for 2,527 pesos in the midst of so many shortcomings, without lighting and in a diverse and complicated community.”
Periódico 26 reports that, not so many years ago, the provincial authorities announced the construction of another cemetery and an incinerator plant. The plans, however, never materialized despite the promotion they had then, something that the newspaper attributes to the “excess enthusiasm” of the leaders.
The land that had been planned to expand the necropolis, where the earthworks had already begun, was given to some individuals
At the moment, the Vicente García Cemetery lacks space to deal with the amount of remains, and the overexploitation of the cemetery is another reason for the poor condition of the facilities. As for the new projects, “the work on the crematorium is stopped due to lack of materials; the incinerator is already there but has not been installed, and the land planned for expanding the necropolis, where “the first earthworks had already begun, was given to some individuals,” regrets Eiser Prieto Pons, deputy director of Hygiene and Obituary in the province.
In Las Tunas, Vicente García Cemetery is not the only one in that situation. “In Puerto Padre, for example, whose main cemetery is equally overexploited, the work has stopped for bureaucratic reasons. It’s a shame, because we could comply with the rule of building this site next to the garbage dump with the distance it requires,” says the manager, without explaining the reason for the decisions that come “from above. ” However, he adds, the Party has favored the manufacture of coffins, and they will soon be able to add four hearses to the six they have for the entire province.
However, that is not enough to stop the deterioration of the province’s cemeteries like the Vicente García, which serves, according to its neighbors, as a warehouse for remains that are then sold for thousands of pesos to be used for santería rituals, depending on “which bone it is and the dead in question. If it is a child, a foreigner or a combatant, the price goes up.”
The anecdotes about fugitives and criminals who take refuge in the necropolis, the “harmful” policemen and the debacle of the cemetery, were a final point in the official chronicle, which closes without a direct allusion to the negligence of the State that has led to that environment. However, the reminder that, in one way or another, anyone can end up being part of the template of lost and dislocated remains of the cemetery does not go unnoticed in the article: “Death is the path we all take.”
Translator’s note: Cemeteries in Cuba with limited room require that families disinter remains after a given time period, and deposit them in a mausoleum to make room for new burials.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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