Columbus Cemetery is life’s work Havana’s old and emblematic 56-hectare-large Columbus necropolis [{Greek: City of the Dead], the final resting place for one of every five Cubans and a space for spirituality rich in artistic and historic treasures in a city celebrating its 490th anniversary, is getting a face-lift. Margarita Barrios margarita@juventudrebelde.cu November 12, 2009 - 2:04:12 CDT A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. This spot illustrates Columbus Cemetery’s –and Havana’s– cosmopolitan nature. Within 400 square meters visitors can find a Byzantine cupola, an Egyptian pyramid, a Western-style obelisk, the entrance to a Roman catacomb, a Florentine Gothic palace, and a virgin of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees, all surrounded by four palm trees. Much as death is the first thing that a cemetery brings to most people’s mind, it’s actually a reflection of a city’s history, its social relations and its citizen’s behavior. Or so says Columbus Cemetery technical assistant manager, Eng, Carlos Bauta Martín. “This necropolis was built for a city five times larger back when Havana had a population of 100,000. Although we now have 21 cemeteries in Havana, this one keeps taking around 80% of the deceased, that is, almost 20% of them nationwide. “In other words, one of every five Cubans who die are buried here, an overuse not without consequences. For instance, the mortal remains of around 100,000 people are kept in state-owned ossuaries, while 1,200,000 of them are in private ones. We have exhumations nonstop, and there have been times when we had no room for more ossuaries. That’s why the new incinerator is so important and we’ll use it as our definitive solution to this problem”. Eng. Bauta first joined the cemetery staff in the 1990s. As a restorer and a sensitive person, he’s aware that his job here, sad as it may be, is quite useful. “What’s your assessment of the cemetery’s present condition?” “Not so good. Cuba always had a tradition of sound construction. These family vaults and tombstones were made with good hard-wearing, damage-reducing materials. But the ornaments have taken much of the wear, often beyond repair. “We’ve made large investments and put a lot of effort into restoration work. The Office of the Historian is putting the finishing touches to main chapel, which saw it last full-scale repair in the 1940s, and the northern gate, also a major landmark. Many symbolic memorials have been already restored and left as good as new, such the firemen monument we repaired last year. All this work involves special materials and skills. “Part of this effort is in the hands of entities like the Communal Services Enterprise, in charge of minor but large-scale tasks. So far this year we’ve taken care of over 900 works, including the replacement –free of charge– of almost a thousand vault lids. Of course, the new ones are made of terrazzo, not marble. “Most monuments here are private, and the owners are required by law to fix any problem, but we can’t force them because they simply have no resources”. However, Eng. Bauta remarks, there’s political will to do the repair work. “There are cheaper problems we can solve quickly without skilled labor, but others are really expensive and time-consuming. “In addition to that, we’re paying the workers a higher salary and reviewing our pay scales to try and attract more skilled manpower”. “What’s your current capacity to bury those who have no family vault?” “In accordance with the law, the state must provide burial grounds in proper sites. Some of them used to be available for free, but they were not really nice. Society demands more as its members increase their cultural level. We have an adequate place now, but it’s a collective burial ground, and sometimes the mourners want a more personalized site, which makes sense but it’s out of our hands”. “There are very old family vaults. Are the owners still alive or have those freeholds been renegotiated?” “The right of ownership and inheritance is held for life. What the cemetery gave is not just a plot, but a tract of land in perpetuity for the concessionaire’s use. “Some vaults are still kept by the original owners, but others are in the hands of people who ended up with the deed, whereupon we have a problem: having a vault is one thing, but the human remains inside is another matter altogether. And since Cuba has no legislation to that effect, we need a special cemetery law. I may tell someone they no longer own the property, but then they would ask me, ‘What about my granny’s remains down there?’ “This new law would not only allow people to consider the vault as theirs, but force them to do at least something to preserve it if they can’t keep it in perfect condition. Some families only drop by once a year and don’t even bother to cut the grass”. “Are grave robbers still a problem?” “Well, that happens everywhere. But since the professionals from SEPSA stepped in, things have settled down. We’ve had no crimes or serious problems this year. “We’ve received complaints about missing or cracked planters, but most are very old and just fell and broke when the maintenance staff is cleaning or weeding and someone steps on them by accident.” “What about litterbugs? I see no wastebaskets around…” “Cleanliness depends mostly on people’s manners. No sooner have some of them crossed the threshold than they feel to have come into contact with a number of values they tend to forget in their daily life. Those who like to see a tidy cemetery are in general the same ones who seldom look after the city. “We have a brigade of sweepers here, but it’s no easy task because the roads of the cemetery were originally built for stagecoaches and the loose pebbles, hardly an obstacle for horse-drawn vehicles, make sweeping difficult. That’s why we’re pouring a coat of asphalt on some of them these days. “There are no wastebaskets, but we have 80 garbage cans and four maintenance brigades responsible among other things for the elimination of mosquito sources, and we have not had that problem for the last three years as a result, even if we receive around 4,000 visitors on any single day, and at least 10% of them bring flowers that they leave in 400 containers with water. “Throw in the fact that we have around 40 burials a day, with each hearse carrying three wreaths as an average, for a total number of 120, and they will all dry up. Then we have the junk left by exhumations, including pieces of rotten coffins, which we take to a ditch we dug for that purpose to keep the surrounding buildings from suffering the effects of the smoke, taking into account there’s no longer a dividing strip between us.” As laid down in the legislation, the engineer pointed out, all graveyards must be 200 meters away from any household, but the distance today is 25 meters and even less. “That land was sold in Republican times, supposedly for shops, but in the end they built homes on it”. For all its initial design, Columbus Cemetery was never actually finished: a few things were deemed needless and put off until a later time, “including a drain. At first the soil would absorb the rainwater, but there’s been a lot of construction work and now it just runs freely. “That’s also the reason why the power supply is so poor and we’ve had to put up lamp posts in specific spots where we need surveillance, for which we also use TV cameras and are planning to set up more. However, if I need to plug in a drill or a polisher I have to take a 200-meter-long extension lead”. “There are not enough road signs…” “You should know about the history of this place before you can manage it. These streets were designed for stagecoaches and inlaid with iron bars that the driver could use as a guide. “When the first cars came in they put up signposts, but they left very small space to turn at the junctions, get knocked down by the vehicles and damage the vaults. “Now we have plans to bring back into use the original floor traffic signs, all with their ancient typography; the Office of the Historian is making over a thousand of them. You see, the institutions in charge of this cemetery are not related to history or culture and their dynamics is completely different, so we have no choice but solve our problems as we go along.” http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/cuba/2009-11-12/el-cementerio-es-obra-de-la-vida/ |
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