Line-up for Burials at Night in Latin America’s Largest Cemetery

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Covid-19 has changed life in the largest cemetery in Latin America, in São Paulo, and today there are lines of families waiting to perform funeral ceremonies, even at night.

Brazil is the country with the second-most Covid-19 cases in the world (more than 600,000) and is ranked third in deaths, close to 40,000. The Vila Formosa cemetery, on the east side of Brazil’s largest city, is today a clear indicator of the pandemic.

“Our everyday routine used to be a bit of a rush, but nothing compared to what there is today (…) We performed around 30 burials a day. On a very busy day it was 45. Today we are performing an average of 50 to 60 burials a day. The number of burials has almost doubled,” said James Alan, undertaker at the cemetery for seven years.

Burials are performed one after the other, even after dark. In the burials of Covid-19 victims, there is a maximum of five people present, by local government decision, and officials fear they will become infected.

“We basically spend the day together and are afraid of becoming infected,” said James Alan.

“Out of a total of 50 to 60 burials, at least ten or even 15 relatives want to open the caskets, but the guidelines are that they can’t be opened, and the graves must remain sealed,” he added.

The Municipal Funeral Service of São Paulo stated that 1,891 burials were performed at Vila Formosa cemetery in May alone.

Throughout the city — considering municipal and private cemeteries and the crematorium — 6,401 burials were recorded in January, 5,985 in February, 7,077 in March and 8,296 in April and 9,794 in May this year, in a total of 37,573 burials, 10,000 more than in the same period last year.

The mayoralty of Brazil’s largest city announced in early April a funeral plan designed to prevent the collapse of the burials due to the increase in deaths from the novel coronavirus.

Among the measures announced by Mayor Bruno Covas is the opening of 13,000 graves, the hiring of 220 undertakers, and the purchase of over 30 cars for the Funeral Service fleet.

Evangelical pastor Rogério Xavier was among those who went to bury a colleague, age 63, who died of Covid-19. With a Bible in his hand, Rogerio Xavier tried to comfort the victim’s family.

“He was a friend, he was a minister of the house of God, he had a wife, four children. He was at home, he wasn’t going out, but the children have to work and he probably got the virus that way. He got it, his daughter, both sons got it. The wife and the other son didn’t get it. As he was the most vulnerable one, he died,” the pastor said, visibly moved.

In the peripheral suburbs of São Paulo’s eastern zone, cases and deaths from the disease have been common.

Daiane Cristina Gomes Lígia Bernarda was in the cemetery at the same time to bury her grandfather, Dermival, 77, who also died from Covid-19 and who was only buried after nightfall.

Throughout the day, the family waited for the body to be released by the coroner’s office. Unable to see her grandfather’s body, Daiane lamented a context that does not honor her grandfather’s memory.

“It was a full day, from midnight, when they gave us the news of my grandfather’s death, until five o’clock in the afternoon when the body was released. It’s disrespectful. We stood outside waiting, waiting for the time when the body would be buried,” she confided.

The pandemic in Brazil has been the subject of several international warnings after the government, led by President Bolsonaro, began to downplay the disease, refusing confinement measures and pressing for medical treatments whose efficacy is still to be confirmed.

But in Vila Formosa, in the cemetery founded in 1949, the moment is for mourning the dead.

“We are experiencing a time when, almost every day, we see deaths in this part of the city, in Itaquera and São Miguel, which is a peripheral region. Unfortunately, we have news of either those who have died or who are infected. This is not an unusual thing,” said Pastor Rogério Xavier, trying to rationalize the pain in a place where 1.5 million already have been buried.

Source: Lusa