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Pandemic Triggers New Crisis in Peru: Lack of Cemetery Space

Associated Press

   LIMA, PERU - After Joel Bautista died of a heart attack last month in
   Peru, his family tried unsuccessfully to find an available grave at
   four different cemeteries. After four days, they resorted to digging a
   hole in his garden.

   The excavation in a poor neighborhood in the capital city of Lima was
   broadcast live on television, attracting the attention of authorities
   and prompting them to offer the family a space on the rocky slopes of a
   cemetery.

   "If there is no solution, then there will be a space here," Yeni
   Bautista told The Associated Press, explaining the family's decision to
   dig at the foot of a tropical hibiscus tree after her brother's body
   began to decompose.

   The same plight is shared by other families across Peru. After
   struggling to control the coronavirus pandemic for more than a year,
   the country now faces a parallel crisis: a lack of cemetery space. The
   problem affects everyone, not just relatives of COVID-19 victims, and
   some families have acted on their own, digging clandestine graves in
   areas surrounding some of Lima's 65 cemeteries.

   Financial burden

   The desperate lack of options comes as the country endures its
   deadliest period of the pandemic yet. More than 64,300 people who
   tested positive for COVID-19 have died in Peru, according to the Health
   Ministry, but that figure is almost certainly an undercount. A vital
   records agency estimates that the true figure is more than 174,900,
   counting those whose possible infection was not confirmed by a test.

   As recently as April, an infected person died every four minutes at
   home or in a hospital, and hospital space has been so scarce that
   Peruvians have read on social media about families offering kidneys,
   cars or land in exchange for one of the country's 2,785 intensive care
   beds.

   Even when cemetery space can be found, burials pose a huge financial
   burden, especially for families who have fallen into poverty because of
   COVID-19. The cost of a burial in a cemetery on the edge of Lima is
   nearly $1,200, almost five times the monthly minimum wage of $244.

   Retired merchant Victor Coba took matters into his own hands, building
   graves for himself, his wife and four other relatives in a narrow space
   in a cemetery at the foot of a treeless hill in the north of Lima.

   Coba, 72, carried bricks, sand and cement to the site, where with help
   from a friend he began constructing his "eternal home." He and his wife
   decided to act after watching the news and learning that two dozen
   neighbors died of COVID-19.

   "You feel quite worried when there is nowhere to take them, and there
   are no pennies with which to bury them," Coba said.

   Many of Peru's sprawling cemeteries have grown with no development
   plans or government approval. They lack walls or fences and are
   adjacent to irregular settlements, making it nearly impossible at times
   to determine where they end and where the impoverished communities
   begin. Graves are now encroaching on the settlements.

   Of Lima's 65 cemeteries, only 20 have a health license. One on a hidden
   hill has been operating for 24 years and does not require any paperwork
   for burials, which cost $361.