“Is my father here?” Clandestine burials: those who suffer another tragedy of the pandemic

IQUITOS, Peru.- When Adriana Wong walked into a field of red soil and cut down trees with dozens of crosses planted in the Peruvian Amazon, she was confused. He was unsure of the location of his father’s grave.

“Are you sure my father is here?” The nine-year-old asked her mother. Glendy Hernández has no answer yet.

Almost a year ago, her husband Herman Wong and hundreds of those who died from Covid-19 were secretly buried in an open field in Iquitos, capital of the Loreto region, in the heart of the Amazon.. Authorities approved the burials, but never informed relatives who believed the dead were in a local cemetery. Months later, they found out the truth.

This is the first known case in Latin America where authorities are hiding the fate of dozens of virus victims and no one has explained why they were carried out clandestinely.. The regional government did not respond to requests for comment from the news agency. The Associated Press. Families told the agency that at least 403 people were buried there.

Loreto was one of the regions hardest hit by the coronavirus in 2020. So far, more than 52,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Peru, including 3,200 in Iquitos, which has 550,000 inhabitants.

The brutality of the pandemic in this remote city has been concentrated in the crowded hallways of its only two hospitals where patients have died without receiving help as the few doctors and nurses had no medicine, oxygen, or available capacity. to help the sick.

Adriana hates the rain because it reminds her of the early morning hours of April 30, when she last saw her father. After countless unanswered calls for help, Glendy took the camera technician to the hospital where he died in his arms at 11 a.m. She passed out, but when she woke up a doctor told her to come the next day to take her husband’s body away..

He waited for hours in vain with a coffin until a health worker told him that Herman Wong had already been buried in the San Juan cemetery, located 11 miles away, inaccessible at the time because Peru was under a 106-day lockdown to prevent expansion. virus.

Hundreds of relatives have heard the same thing: that their dead were in the San Juan cemetery, founded in 2017 and which has a chapel, parking, walls and surveillance.

In March, the national government ordered the cremation of all those killed by the virus, in one of the strictest regulations of its kind in Latin America. But, given the collapse of several crematoriums, the rule was changed in April, allowing funerals and at least five family members could attend..

But, on June 1, the front page of the newspaper The region He kidnapped Iquitos: “Dead without a name and without their own grave,” the headline reads. The story quoted an anonymous resident who said that at least 330 corpses of people killed by Covid-19 were reportedly buried in mass grave near San Juan cemetery.

A day after the post, half a thousand relatives, including Hernández, arrived at the land where their husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and children were reportedly buried. The place was inundated with rain, despite protests against the corpses. “We realized they had lied to us,” said Glendy, Adriana’s mother.

“They are ashamed that the catastrophe, the disorder, the lack of humanity with which they buried our loved ones are known,” said Patricia Cárdenas, whose grandfather Antenor Mozombite, 80, was also buried without the permission from his family. The government remains silent, but the bereaved continue to pour into dry land.

Hugo Torres is now the guardian of the premises. He told the PA he helped unload the bodies from a Navy truck and place them in holes dug in the reddish earth. “We buried 30, 40, one day 50, the dead were in black bags, four of us grabbed each end, if it weighed more, we carried six”the 42-year-old said.

He said that initially graves were excavated where they placed three people. Then, when the death toll began to rise, a tractor dug out the shape of rectangles more than 15 meters long by three meters wide, and inside the bodies were placed in two rows.

The PA spoke to three other people who confirmed Torres’ account, including one who participated in the operation with him. They all preferred not to be cited. Ten days after the story was known, the governor of Loreto, Elisbán Ochoa, signed a document committing to exhume the bodies. Nine months later nothing happened.

Ochoa told a parliamentary committee that it was not a mass grave, but a new “Covid cemetery” built in four days because “overnight the growth of the deceased was violent.” He assured that there was a list of the places where each body had been placed and that the authorities intended to give the information to the families.

But Ochoa did not explain why he had buried himself underground, lying to those close to him and breaking the law. The AP left messages at his office, but got no response. The burial site is larger than four football fields and when it was first discovered the ground had been flattened, leaving no sign of bodies underneath.

For weeks, mourners have flocked to place crosses where they believed their loved ones were buried, but many do not know where they are. Joaquín García, a 32-year-old accountant, says they first assured him he was in a place marked D24, but a few days later told him the correct place was D22. “I mean, did the dead walk?” He asked.

Robert Lecca, a 23-year-old administrator, learned his father was in row D34, but later found out from a map issued by authorities that he was in row D38. The families sued the local government to force them to collect the remains, but a judge ruled in favor of the authorities., saying that the law establishes the exhumation one year and one day after the burial. The families have appealed against the conviction because the rule was changed in 2018 and exhumation is possible, according to relatives’ lawyer Pedro Casuso.

Legal litigation

Amid the legal dispute, some families visit every Saturday to visit their dead. Maritza Monzón and her husband are two grandparents who arrive with their two grandchildren Eymi, 16, and Tiago, eight, who are left without a father or mother. “God took their father and mother from my grandchildren, he took my son away from me”the 68-year-old said.

One recent morning, the AP agency accompanied several relatives who were visiting the burial area. The vegetation acts as a wall in the contours and relatives have decorated certain graves with crosses, photographs and umbrellas so that “souls are not wet by the rain”.

In that group of parents was Adriana Wong, who had in a pink backpack nearly a dozen letters she had been writing to her father since that early morning in 2020 when she saw him leave for the hospital. in an incessant rain that had fallen on Iquitos since the previous day.

“I miss virtual tasks a lot, everything you have taught me,” he read in his low voice the pages of his square notebook which he adorned with red and gold hearts. “Where did you stay? I want to see you and give you a big hug.”

AP