• THERESA MAE DULMAN
For many, the Burgos Public Cemetery evokes a chilling landscape where the past lies unsettlingly close to the surface. In its sea of abandoned graves, neglected tombstones crumble, and the smell of decay lingering in the air is undeniable.
With bones also occasionally peeking through the earth, it is a place where one expects only silence and buried dreams.
The boundary between death and the necessity of making a living blurs completely.
Cemetery workers who have established homes within the cemetery walls see the stone markers and resting places not as objects of dread, but as part of their daily landscape.
‘PATAY-GUTOM’
That’s how Ronaldo Villanueva, a cemetery worker, described themselves, emphasizing “Kon wala patay, gutom ta eh (without the dead, we go hungry).”
Having worked in the cemetery for 3 years, this is his version of working 9-to-5, where he took the graveyard shift literally. Travelling from his home to the cemetery everyday became his routine and the graves became his little office corner.
For standard upkeep, such as cleaning or painting of the grave, they can earn a minimum of P500. While a more intensive labor that requires a shovel can earn them P2,500 at most. They exhumed the remains from older plots of those who have long passed with the families request. It’s either to reuse the plot and bury other departed loved ones or to move the bones elsewhere. Though it is not a fixed source of income, they can live especially during peak Undas season, where they can earn around P5,000 from the crowd of mourners visiting their dearly departed loved ones.
“At first I was afraid and disgusted [in exhuming remains] but then it is a job that I choose so no need to be dramatic,” he said.
GRAVE SITUATION
Although the Burgos Public Cemetery was closed by the Bacolod City government nearly five years ago due to overcrowding and disarray, the economic circumstances of other cemetery workers compelled them to stay.
They choose to live in vacant mausoleums and use the large tombs as their makeshift beds, transferring the final resting place of the departed into an unconventional home.
It may be a normal necessity for them, but there are some who expressed distress.
Some families have voiced their concerns when visiting graves due to constant “pestering of the caretakers offering their service.” There are claims that tombstones are also being stolen, refurbished, and resold.
When asked about the situation, Bacolod City Administrator Atty. Mark Steven Mayo acknowledged the issue, stating that they received reports about it.
He said that the city’s General Service Office and the Public Order and Safety Office has been tasked not just to monitor the people, but to clear the overgrown areas that became a home not just to dwellers, but also mosquitoes.
“This is frequent, the same personalities are coming in and out, we are monitoring and reminding them of their limitations in the public cemetery,” Mayo said.
Looking at the silent graveyard of Burgos Public Cemetery, the dead rest in disarray and the living find their last resort among the tombs, a revolving door of dispossession and desperate return. It embodies the circle of life where the poor live in the margins of death just to live.*
