Nightly burials and 200 graves a day: the grueling new standard for Latin America’s largest cemetery

In nearly three decades of work, the oldest gravediggers at San Pablo’s largest cemetery remember doing less than 10 night burials. But Since the worsening of the second wave of the pandemic in Brazil, this exception has become the rule.

The dizzying increase in cases and deaths in São Paulo in recent months has forced the mayor’s office in the country’s richest and most populous city to adapt your funeral plan to avoid a collapse: in addition to hiring more staff and vehicles to meet demand, night shifts have been authorized in four of the 22 municipal cemeteries, where 600 graves are open daily.

One of these is the Vila Formosa, the largest in Brazil and Latin America, and one of the postcards of the deadly cost of the pandemic in Brazil, where more than 360,000 people have already died from covid-19.

At 6 p.m., the changing of the guard takes place and the two huge lamps powered by generators are lit which light up the graves and imbue the place with the smell of diesel. It’s early fall and in this tree-lined cemetery on the outskirts of São Paulo, the temperature is around 16 degrees.

Eight gravediggers dressed in white overalls, masks and gloves arrive in two vans. They descend and form a circle around the pits, with their hands behind their bodies, upside down; As a sign of respect, they observe a minute of silence. Right now, They go get the shovels and carry the first deceased of the night.

“Are there no parents?” Asks one of them. “No. You can bury it,” replies another with the deceased’s documents in hand.

In May 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, the cemetery incorporated three excavators to open 60 pits per day. Now there are six machines digging 200 pits a daysay the gravediggers, who prolong their work until the 22nd.

Too they hired about fifty vans to load the bodies, because the hearse was not enough. The town hall denies that school transport vehicles are part of this park, a version widely circulated in local media.

Shortly after, a van arrives with another drawer. A large group of relatives surround the grave where the 57-year-old man will be buried, whose file indicates he died of covid-19.

The sons of the deceased ask to place a “verdeamarela” jersey of the Brazilian team on the coffin. “It’s the only thing we can do”said enthusiastically the gravedigger holding the funeral documents.

Four men begin to deposit reddish sand on the coffin which, in a few seconds, is covered. Cries of pain mingle with the sound of shovels and the hum of electric generators.

Already used to the presence of journalists and photographers, the gravediggers speak but ask not to be identified. Almost all vaccinated, they say the pandemic affects funeral home administrative staff more than those who have worked like them in open spaces.

“I would like this to end quickly, because it is very sad. We try not to get carried away in our work, but it’s sad, it’s a lot of people, for a long time, ”confides one of the gravediggers, removing a pair of green gloves from the end of his watch.

Vila Formosa shelters more than 1.5 million corpses on its 750,000 m2. In March, it peaked with 105 burials in a single day, three times the pre-pandemic average.

On March 30, the city of San Pablo set a record by burying 426 people in a single day. The experience has not been repeated since then; the current average is 391 deaths and 325 burials per day.

The mayor’s office warns that if the daily average exceeds 400 burials, it will take new measures, even if it excludes the Vila Formosa starting to operate 24 hours a day.

The city council is analyzing the construction of a vertical cemetery in the eastern area, while the lots in Vila Formosa are filling up quickly.

The gravediggers estimate that in 12 months, they have already used 26 batches, an area which, in the pre-pandemic era, would produce more than two years of burials..

“There is room to continue here,” said one of the men. “Now at this rate, I don’t know how long it will be.”

(With information from AFP / By Paula Ramon)

KEEP READING: