Their family was unaware of what happened to Karina Ahuanari’s mother Teresa, who died from COVID on April 24, 2020 at a hospital in Peru’s port city Iquitos. The country was under lockdown at the time and people couldn’t leave their homes. Despite COVID restrictions Ahuanari’s brother-in-law and sister-in law went to the hospital to search for the matriarch of the family.
The scene at Loreto Regional Hospital was chaotic. Other relatives were looking for information about their loved ones, and harried workers tried to attend to the dying and the sick. Ahuanari says that Teresa was initially listed as having been cremated. Officials announced that cremations had been stopped. A few days later, Teresa’s name was listed on a list for the buried. However, Ahuanari could not find the actual location of the body. “We didn’t know where to look to find the answer to the question, “Where is my mom?” She says. “That was the entire month of May. We discovered through social media and the press that the bodies had been “dumped” in a mass cemetery near Iquitos in June.
Teresa is believed to have been one of the more than 400 COVID victims that were buried there. The Ahuanaris, along with other families, have been trying for over a year to get their loved one’s bodies exhumed, identified, and reburied in what they consider a proper resting place. This is complicated for many reasons. A mass grave in the jungle. The mass grave is located in a clearing just off a dirt track. It looks like a timber road. It is difficult to drive on, even with a pickup truck or car, because it is so rutted. Ahuanari and her siblings walk the last quarter mile like they’re walking through the forest. They then turn right into the clearing.
Ahuanari said that the entire area was open when she first visited the mass grave site last January. “There wasn’t a single cross. There were only a few small blue flags that marked the location of the bodies. There are now dozens of crosses and small shrines scattered across the red soil, with photos of the dead. Local journalists discovered the mass grave in June 2020. Many people came to the spot in search of relatives who had disappeared during the pandemic. They found only what the local newspaper described as a “slab” of earth sealed with a steamroller. The local government placed a gate in front of the grave and declared it the “COVID-19 Cemetary.” The health department published a map of the site that showed where each body was believed to be buried. It included graves with three-to-one holes and bodies. It also indicated which level the body was located — on top, middle, or bottom. Ahuanari claims that, due to the initial secrecy surrounding the burial plot, her siblings and she don’t believe that officials know where the bodies are. Or if their mother is in the second-level grave as they claim.
Community members added crosses to the places where they were told that people were buried in the mass cemetery in Iquitos. Although the mass grave was later renamed to the COVID-19 Cemetery, many family members still wish to exhume the bodies to be moved to individual graves at the San Juan Bautiste Cemetery.
A staggering number of bodies. In Peru, COVID caused so many deaths that the health system couldn’t keep pace. Iquitos was in a difficult spot when the country was placed under strict lockdown on March 15, 2020. The only way to reach the city is by air or barge on Amazon. After the COVID measures were implemented, all flights that normally carried medical supplies to Iquitos were cancelled and river cargo was banned. The local hospital, which had only seven ICU beds, was quickly overwhelmed. Doctors say that patients could have been saved, but they died from lack of oxygen. In the initial waves of the pandemic, things were so bad in Peru that the country has the highest COVID death rates per capita in the entire world.
Elvis Ricardo Sandoval Zamora was the director of environmental health at the provincial health department. He was responsible for a team that was created to collect corpses during the initial wave of the pandemic. He says, “We’d go on calls to pick-up the dead in the streets, in the streets, and from people’s houses.” “And these cadavers where taken to the regional hospital’s morgue.” The morgue could hold five bodies. Sandoval claims that COVID was killing people in Iquitos at the time. Funeral homes were overwhelmed. The town’s only crematorium had been destroyed. Sandoval claims that it was almost impossible to buy coffins. The hospital morgue was crowded with bodies. He says, “We had to rent an air-conditioned shipping container that could hold more than 50 cadavers.” However, it quickly filled up to its capacity. Families had difficulty claiming the bodies of their loved ones due to the pandemic. The nationwide lockdown meant that people could only leave their homes to go to the grocery store. Funerals and wakes were banned. Sandoval said that the problem of how to deal with the accumulating bodies at a morgue was a major problem that needed to be solved.
The regional governor directed the local health department in April to begin burying bodies in an unmarked area south of the city. Sandoval claims that the intention was not to conceal it as some have claimed. His team was on the ground 24/7 dealing with the crisis. Everyone was overwhelmed. He says that health officials were trying to manage the massive backlog of cadavers. Sandoval’s office now manages the COVID-19 cemetery, which is still used today as a place for unclaimed COVID patients. He is sympathetic to families who wish to move their loved ones into formal cemeteries. He says that exhuming and re-identifying the bodies would be costly. It’s not clear how to legally authorize exhumations. He says, “The law states that you can’t exhume bodies after one year.” The majority of the 400+ people buried at COVID cemetery were there more than a decade ago. Many others, including the Ahuanaris, claim that they have been trying for months for exhumation arrangements. However, they keep running into bureaucratic roadblocks at every turn. Some people are so fed up that they have dug up their loved one’s remains themselves, according to rumors. Ahuanari claims that the risk of strangers digging up body bags at night and trampling on her mom is another reason she wants the remains moved into a proper cemetery. A number of families have filed suit to seek a waiver from the law that prohibits the exhumation of bodies after one year. Ahuanari and her siblings are involved in that effort, but for now they are still waiting in limbo.
Peru has a Sunday for proper burial. Families often visit cemeteries to view the graves of the recently dead. It is often festive. At the cemetery gates, vendors sell flowers, soft drinks and empanadas. Children race along the walkways between rows of crosses. Adults gather around the graves of their loved ones to share drinks, tend to the flowers, and chat. Ahuanari and her family were present at the Cementerio San Juan de Bautista on a Sunday. If Teresa can be exhumed, then this is where they would like her to be reburied. It is a small, city-run cemetery. It bustles with people on this morning. To shade the tombstones from the heat, people have put colorful umbrellas on top. Alex Pizango, Ahuanari’s brother, says that this is what they want for Teresa and their entire family. “We haven’t seen our mom since her death. He says that we didn’t have the opportunity to bury her. “That’s why we are asking for exhumation of her corpse so that we can find out where she is buried. He says that this will allow us to go to her grave on Sundays as a family unit forever. “And also to make sure that it’s my mother’s body in that grave.”
World News1 year ago
World News1 year ago
World News1 year ago
World News1 year ago
World News1 year ago