In Venezuelan crisis, families can’t even afford to properly bury the dead
CUCUTA, Colombia – As the crisis in Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship deepens – gripped by mass hunger, starvation and a lack of medical supplies – there is no comfort even for the dead.
“What is happening is medieval. People are ‘renting’ caskets for a service, but giving them back. The same casket is being used over and over again because people cannot afford to buy one,” Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges, who has been living in exile in the Colombian capital of Bogota for the past nine months, told Fox News. “And then they have to wrap the body in plastic bags for the burial. Others don’t have money for a land plot, so they are burying loved ones in their back garden.”
Borges said the “really creepy” problem of how to properly bury the dead has become the norm rather than the exception. Other Venezuelans concurred, indicating the use of “common graves,” along with backyard burials, was becoming standard.
One Venezuelan, who asked his name not be published, described the sudden death of his father in the capital Caracas last week, which left the family without a vehicle to take the body to the morgue. It took more than a day for the body to be collected.
Atilio Gonzalez (C), a priest of the Southern Cemetery for the last 24 years, prays during a burial ceremony at the Southern Cemetery in Caracas January 28, 2014. Since then, proper burials have become too expensive for the vast majority of the population.
And even then, the family had to say their goodbyes – they had no money for a funeral, or burial – praying the body would be disposed of in some kind of mass cremation.
For every day a body remains in the morgue, the cost rises, leaving families without the means for collection. In such cases, loved ones are simply left stranded – their relatives in mourning, not knowing what to do, and without closure.
“Funeral services are too expensive. Coffins are expensive, as well as paying for a place in the cemetery and everything that comes with it: the chapel for the service, the plate,” Julett Pineda, a health journalist for Efecto Cocuyo in Caracas, told Fox News. “People cannot have a decent funeral.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges, who has been living in exile in the Colombian capital of Bogota.
Pineda recounted stories of parents who have tried to collect and earn money for the funerals of their own children. But as the economy of the cash-strapped nation continues to deteriorate, all they can afford is the cremation, which costs roughly a third of burial costs.
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