Juarez cemeteries forced to make room
Gravediggers take extra precautions for burials
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Guadalupe Uribe stood by herself in the dusty terrain of Parque Funeral Sueños Eternos, a cemetery in Ciudad Juárez. Six feet away stood her sister holding their fragile mother, who shed tears behind a face shield.
The open gravesite for Uribe’s father, Jose Uribe Ruelas, was previously dug alongside 18 other graves awaiting COVID-19 burials.
Uribe’s family gathered in front of the gravesite, staring from a distance and staying with the members of their households.
“He’s the fourth one in the family to die from COVID-19,” she said.
She had already lost a sister who lived in Durango, then an aunt and cousin.
“This is horrible. I don’t wish this on anyone.”
Parque Funeral Sueños Eternos, like other cemeteries in the Borderland, is taking extreme precautions with the bodies of those who die of COVID-19. The gravediggers, dressed in hazmat suits, set the coffins in cement-lined graves and keep a distance from the potentially exposed families.
After the hearse driver pulled the casket out of the vehicle, a cemetery worker approached and sprayed it with bleach and water. Only his eyes were visible under protective layers of a white jumpsuit, a face shield and a face mask.
To prevent any potential exposure, neither Uribe nor anyone else was allowed near the casket to touch it, lay a bouquet of flowers, or peer at her father for the last time through the coffin’s glass.
Next to Uribe, her brother embraced his son and wife as four gravediggers lowered the casket into the grave. She watched as they poured fresh cement over her father’s casket, then shoveled dirt on top.
Crisis puts stress on cemeteries
Sometimes the cemetery sees up to five COVID-19 funeral processions a day. Before the pandemic, a busy day would have three burials.
As Juárez continues to lead the state of Chihuahua in COVID-19 cases and deaths, shifts like this have been the daily occurrence for gravedigger Mario Palacios.
Palacios remembers when the first COVID-19 funeral took place at one of the corners of the cemetery. In October, more than 40 recent graves and funeral wreaths lined up reaching the opposite corner of the cemetery.
“When the pandemic had just started, I didn’t expect it would get like this,” Palacios, who has worked at Parque Fu
neral Sueños Eternos for four years, said. “In this second stage is when we’ve had the most work ever.”
Public health officials reported 18,658 confirmed cases and 1,704 deaths of COVID-19 as of Nov. 17. Hospital General #6 is at full capacity while the rest of the public hospitals remain with an occupancy between 60% and 80%.
Yuma Garcia, manager at Parque Funeral Sueños Eternos, said the cemetery has seen close to 50 COVID-19 funeral services since March but more than half of them have taken place since the last week of October.
“But I think we’re on the lower scale and we’re private, I think other cemeteries are having busier days,” Garcia said.
The San Rafael Cemetery is the only municipal cemetery in Juárez offering funeral services for COVID-19 deaths. At the start of the pandemic, the municipal cemetery was having, at most, six burials per day.
The high demand for COVID-19 services spiked in the last two weeks of October and has steadily continued with eight to 10 burials a day, Daniel Pando Morales, director of municipal services, said. There were 24 COVID-19 services in the first weekend of November.
At the beginning of 2020 and before any cases of coronavirus were reported in Juárez, the municipal government bought 50 hectares to expand the capacity foreseeing that the cemetery was already nearing its full capacity.
But city officials were not expecting to require the expansion so soon.
“We’ve already started the process to prepare and clean this added space to utilize it for the high amount of COVID-19 services that are required,” Morales said.
Since the last week of October, Juárez has had close to 600 COVID-19 deaths. Without widespread testing, the impact of the pandemic in the border city might be even greater than it has been reported by health officials.
Adapting to COVID-19 funerals
Palacios walked between lines of
open gravesites and the unstable piles of soil from recent burials. Most of the flowers in the funeral wreaths had not yet withered and filled the air with a fresh fragrance.
But Palacios could only smell the bleach sprayed on his clothes and the layers of protective gear to sanitize after every service.
For Garcia, his main concern is the safety of his staff who handles the coffins and works in close proximity with families potentially exposed to the virus. Cemetery workers also had to continue digging graves next to the recently buried, worried they might be directly exposed through the soil.
“We had to adapt to the COVID service,” Garcia said. “We didn’t know how it would affect my staff.”
Under the regulations of Mexico’s federal health department, funeral services are limited to 10 people, but Garcia has kept them to six.
To prevent any contagion, the cemetery workers prepare the graves with a “drawer,” a cement box-like structure constructed inside the gravesite. This is covered with another layer of cement and finally with dirt.
“The casket is completely isolated from the soil giving my workers a little bit more of protection,” Garcia said. “The deceased eventually gets here with some level of decomposition and we don’t know if the virus can still be active after their death.”
The added precautions increase funeral expenses. Families can expect to pay from 15,000 to 17,000 pesos, or $730 to $830, for a regular burial at Parque Funeral Sueños Eternos. A COVID-19 service costs 27,500 pesos or $1,334.
Even with all of the protective measures, Palacios feels unsafe and often paranoid whenever he has a slight sore throat. His wife worries about him working at a high-risk job, especially with the couple’s 9-year-old daughter.
“The first thing (my daughter) wants to do when I get home is to hug me, but first I need to take my clothes off and shower,” Palacios said. “I feel very worried. I have to take my precautions to not affect my family when I get home.”
Because his job provides the sole income for his family, Palacios has not considered looking for another profession.
Francisco Gonzalez has been working at the cemetery for eight months. In terms of the spread of the virus, the 40year-old worker said he feels safe with all the protective equipment his job has provided.
But the experience of working at a cemetery, interacting with mourning families can be difficult.
“Every day I work doing this and every day I see death,” Gonzalez said. “It has become a normal experience and you learn to deal with it.”
Saying goodbye
Uribe spent days only hearing about her 82-year-old father’s health through text messages and calls. The last time she saw him in person was Oct. 30, when she drove him to a clinic because he started showing COVID-19 symptoms.
Uribe’s aunt passed away last month from COVID-19, a cousin in September and a sister living in Durango in May. With no recent family gatherings, Uribe believes they all caught the virus from different places.
“This is very painful, but we’re all here standing strong. My father left us with a mission to take care of her,” Uribe said, referring to her mother who caught the virus from her husband but recovered.
Jose Uribe didn’t even get a coronavirus test. He was treated by a private doctor who determined it was coronavirus. After multiple attempts to get him admitted into a hospital, the family decided to take him home where one of his daughters took care of him.
On Nov. 8, he died.
“All I can say is that he left in peace, despite his suffering,” Uribe said.
With it being the last funeral of the day, the family was allowed to stay longer than the two previous services. There was no eulogy, but “Tu, Sólo, Tu” by Pedro Infante played in the background from a truck parked near the gravesite.
The voice of the ranchera singer filled the cemetery with lyrics describing a lovestruck man with a wounded heart filled with sorrow.
“He was very cheerful. He loved singing,” Uribe said. “He would always welcome us with a big smile and there was always music in the house. My brother thought it would be a good idea to say goodbye this way.”
Once the gravediggers finally stepped away, Jose Uribe’s family members, one by one, were able to come close to the gravesite and say farewell to their father, husband, brother and grandfather.
“I don’t know if this goodbye was enough,” Uribe said. “Only time will tell.”