On a walk to death in 'Parque Elcano', the green space with 800 corpses at ground level

Hernan Firpo

01/16/2021 11:00

• Clarín.com

• Shows

Updated 01/16/2021 11:53 AM

Perhaps it was an avant-garde cutie: the little boy in the San Lorenzo shirt jumping off the slide

without knowing that under his feet, near the slide, next to the hammock, there could be a pile of corpses

.

Raven had to be.

The thing is that the baby got back on.

And again.

And smiling he did.

On behalf of the

Gran Diario Argentino

,

Hernán Santiago Vizzari

is asked to

accompany us on a walk to Death.

He is one of the only investigators of funeral customs in Argentine history.

Nobody knows as much about the dead as this boy.

Wednesday morning, 25 degrees, variable clouds.

The man has his tragic style: latex gloves, chinstrap, mask.

Pandemic uniform reinforced against what it considers incitement to blasphemy.

The baby from San Lorenzo, jumping off the slide.

The play space is now closed.

Photo: Fernando de la Orden

-To give you an idea, this was done about 800 or a thousand graves.

Let me be clear about one thing:

we are walking on corpses

.

-Próceres?

-I don `t believe.

Tombs from the late 1800s. When I was a boy we would go here and

learn live what the word desecration meant: an open drawer and the dead man dressed in a jacket and tie

.

Or a woman, all in white, lying on the floor.

It was the first close contact of a group of 12-year-olds with the idea of ​​death.

Some call it "The little square of horror."

Its construction began without a work sign in 2016. According to Vizzari, the strategy was carelessness: letting the grasslands grow to alter the funeral space until the terrain becomes diffuse, empty.

What is all this? The expert wanted to know for whom the Chacarita cemetery is something like a second home.

-Before this was a plaza, the place was full of crosses and tombstones.

In the networks the advertising of

#CiudadVerde

puts signs of admiration to the initiative: "The City continues to add Squares and Parks! We celebrate the new Plaza del Cruce Medrano, Elcano de Chacarita Park and the expansion of Plaza de Mayo. Together we take care of and preserve the green spaces of the City ”.

The excitement doesn't end there.

Elcano Park?

"A perfect space to enjoy a romantic walk!", Reads the official account of the Ministry of Public Space of the City.

Vizzari walks on tiptoe.

As if he was impressed to be here.

Julio Bocca in

Swan Lake

.

We sit.

Elcano Park are two blocks that belonged to Chacarita.

Since its inauguration four years ago, this green space has been transformed into the most denial cemetery in the country.

Hernán Vizzari, investigate funeral matters.

"This square is a sacrilege."

Photo Pepe Mateos

Leaning against one of the chess tables, Vizzari points his chin toward some metal fireplaces located next to the outdoor gym.

“Look at that hustler.

Can you believe it ...? "

-Short?

-A cold room, the place where coffins are sent when they break and cadaverous liquid begins to flow.

The railing has died sometimes!

The procedure consists of removing the body from the drawer, fixing the coffin, correcting the fault, and re-entering it at its destination.

It was also the temporary morgue for the victimized boys of Cromañón.

The square was inaugurated on the last day of 2016. There were authorities.

There was also Vizzari and others who opposed it.

“

What they did is a sacrilege

.

I come because you ask me, but I don't even touch this square with a stick ”.

-Bad vibes?

-A recreational space with dead people located two meters from the ground ... If this is sacrilege, obviously the vibe is highly negative.

I had to be when the corpse smell was horrible.

Not everyone recognizes it.

For many it must be bursts of a strong, ugly odor.

But especially the ancestors.

Family genealogy matters to me.

Imagine the people who want to come to see their grandfather who once, until a few years ago, was buried in a Buenos Aires icon such as La Chacarita.

What do they find now?

That your relative's grave is under a ping pong court?

I really worry about those people who cannot close the circle.

That he cannot chat with his ancestors, with his photo, with his beloved mausoleum.

Within days of opening there was controversy.

Journalistic notes from February 2017 published things that not even a horror story.

Clarín

said that there were even complaints about the presence of human remains in the area in question, something that the City denied.

Page 12

interviewed Camila Rodríguez, a community member of the neighborhood for the Front for Victory: "A plaza of terror and terror."

Due to a demographic condition, there are many more people buried in Chacarita.

In the Recoleta cemetery are the bulk of the patrician families.

It is Evita.

In Chacarita rest the remains of artists, scientists, entire tango orchestras.

Porcel, Olmedo ...

-Those porches are centuries old.

The cemetery, as you will understand, could be entered through Elcano.

This is my own responsibility, but say that currently homeless people live here who use these buildings as a lair.

They talk about Vizzari.

It is said that he has an office between the galleries of the cemetery.

A table with two chairs.

He spends many hours in there.

He has a book on cemeteries.

"I'm interested in the funerary heritage," he specifies. "I found an Italian harpist in a tiny vault."

In his opinion, Gustavo Cerati should have a “thick” tomb as happened with Gardel or Goyeneche, which even their monument has.

Behind the bodybuilding room, the “chapero”: a place that functioned as a morgue for the Cromañon victims.

Photo: Luciano Thieberger.

He introduces himself as "investigator of funeral customs."

If the question is what face would you make of death,

hmm

, think six seconds and answer: "That of a clown."

Connected with his time, he invented the Virtual Funeral Museum where pieces such as the original obituary of Evita's death can be seen.

Vizzari, "Outstanding Personality in the field of Culture", believes that there is life after death.

In that area of ​​the plaza they planted trees.

A way of delimiting the life of the other.

Some are seen that they did not grow as expected and the necropolis looms like a neighbor the size of La Matanza, but silent.

Hard information indicates that the so-called Annex 22 worked here. The City Government razed the galleries of niches and the wall that divided the cemetery from Avenida Elcano to 4300.

The park is entered through the front door.

The welcome is colossal.

For the common, as if suddenly one were crossing the Arc de Triomphe.

Stately reception for a public space.

Worthy of a successful socialist regime.

We watch people sunbathing on a patch of well-cut grass.

A summer day in Jardín de Paz, drinking tea with a view of the niche.

Behind the privet that did not finish growing, Gallery 27.

-Do zombies exist?

"The zombie is a metaphor for the counterculture," Vizzari returns.

Those movies have a social background and talk about people enslaved by the system.

WD