QCOSTARICA – A strong foul smell led residents in La Fortuna to the macabre finding of a burned coffin, after the remains were exhumed from the local cemetery because the family did not pay the annual fees.
The story is that prior to the burial of a local villager on April 26, due to lack of space in the communal vaults where poor people are buried, the gravedigger told the family of the recently deceased to remove the remains of buried eight yeas ago, since the family never paid the ¢12,000 colones (US$22) annual fees.
Without proper protocol, the family exhumed the remains, depositing the skeletal remains in the ossuary and burned the coffin, and then covering with a tarp.
But the nauseating smell betrayed them.
Members of the Asociación de Desarrollo de La Fortuna (La Fortuna Development Association) said they are taking steps to ensure this type of thing never happens again.
But, the association admits it is powerless to control the improper use of the cemetery and the frequent acts of vandalism.
Source: Telenoticias
Well CR has again fallen to a new low in moral and ethical levels, dragging a person’s corpse out and burning it to make way for a another customer. I shudder to think what will happen in a national emergency, it seems the various religious groups have failed society completely, soon it will be like packs of wild dogs roaming looking for new victims.
If this is a low, it’s not a new one. My understanding is that it’s standard practice for cemeteries to remove bodies from graves when the fees haven’t been paid, as well as to remove the bodies from the vaults after a specified number of years. I haven’t been able to get a clear answer to the question of what the authorities then do with the bodies, but the hearsay is that the bodies are put into a common mass grave. The only unique feature of this story, which is probably why it made news, is that a private party handled the corpse removal (and botched the job).
There is meanwhile a larger public policy issue, namely Costa Rica is running out of cemetery space and there’s no money to acquire more. It’s also the case that burials (as well as cemetery space) are expensive, and lots of people die too poor to pay. The costs therefore fall on the families, who often can’t afford to pay them either, and even when the families can afford to pay, after a few years many stop paying the maintenance fees. And realistically, how long are living relatives suppose to pay for the upkeep of all their relatives’ graves? But if they don’t pay, should the taxpayers?
A related issue, I understand, is that cremation is fairly expensive (around $2000 I hear), which puts that option out of reach for many families of the deceased.
In all, I wouldn’t recommend moralistic finger-wagging on this issue, but do think this is a policy issue that is becoming a crisis. Many cemeteries are simply full now. Yeah, when a private party removes a corpse and then botches the job, we have a problem, but I think this is mainly a symptom of a larger problem. Costa Rica no longer has an effective way to dispose of the bulk of the dead.