COVID-19: Peru's dead mourned at barren cemetery for poor

Virgen de Lourdes cemetery has become a monument to the devastating toll among the poor

Last updated: June 03, 2020 | 14:43

AP and Compiled by Nathaniel Lacsina, Digital Content Editor

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Lima, Peru: The cemetery on a remote hill outside Peru's teeming capital does not have granite tombstones, a green lawn or even paved roads.

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The dead from coronavirus here are buried on a hill filled only with dirt.

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As the number of COVID-19 deaths in Peru rapidly mounts - becoming an epicenter for the virus outbreak in Latin America - the Virgen de Lourdes cemetery has become a monument to the pandemic's devastating toll among the poor.

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The cemetery is among the largest in the world, with over 1 million tombs, and it's located in one of Lima's most impoverished neighborhoods.

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Now, with COVID-19's escalating death toll, the cemetery is becoming even more gargantuan. The newly dead from the virus are being buried at a distance, in one of the sprawling cemetery's most remote hills.

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Relatives and cemetery workers carry caskets up the steep terrain and place them in freshly dug pits. Before one tomb, a man thumbs the strings of a worn wooden harp. Family members cry, collapse, and sometimes, let out a sorrowful laugh.

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Stray dogs linger, sitting alongside graves when relatives have left.

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Known among locals as Nueva Esperanza Cemetery - or New Hope Cemetery - the graveyard was built in the 1960s and later filled with the remains of Peruvians who died after migrating to Lima in escape of a brutal war against Shining Path guerillas.

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The cemetery has grown so exponentially in recent years that it has become a destination for international tourists, drawn to witness the area crowded with crypts, some painted bright pink or blue, set among the barren landscape.

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Now the travelers are gone, only relatives, some in face masks, venture inside.

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There are children and teens mourning parents. One woman burying two brothers. A man who has now lost three. Many of the victims are no older than 55. Many died quickly, lives interrupted by an unforgiving virus.

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Gregoria Zumaeta, 44, have two siblings, who died days apart, taking solace in thinking, "They no longer suffer." Peru now has over 170,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,600 deaths.

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