Ligaya García settled in the largest necropolis in Manila when she was just a child.
Today, at 75 years old, the cemetery continues to be her only home, where
her fifteen children and 53 grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been born,
who live among tombs and pantheons with another thousand families.
Several generations have grown up and lived
in the North Cemetery of Manila, the majority of its members earn their living as caretakers of graves that they have turned into their homes due to the lack of decent housing in this overpopulated capital, where a third of its 13 Millions of inhabitants live in informal settlements.
"Here we are safer. At seven at night the cemetery doors close and no one can enter," says Ligaya, who buried her husband in the same pantheon where they both
shared almost half a century of marriage.
Several generations have grown up and lived in the North Cemetery of Manila (EFE).
Every night Ligaya sleeps on a thin mattress that she places on the grave where
the remains of her husband and parents rest
, in that family grave where she keeps her few belongings, a television and the school medals of her vast offspring.
"Yes, I believe in ghosts, I live surrounded by them, but I'm not afraid of them. I think they protect us," the García matriarch says in Tagalog with a half smile.
In adjacent tombs
live their children
(some take care of cemeteries, others paint clay pots to place flowers for the dead, others run a small "sari-sari" shop) and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who entertain themselves by playing among the tombs
when they return from the school
with their immaculate uniforms.
Filipinos rest on a sofa next to the graves in the Manila cemetery (EFE).
"Here we have electricity and water. We are even registered voters and
politicians come to the cemetery to campaign
," says his daughter, Andrea García, from the "sari-sari" counter where she sells soap, soft drinks and canned food to residents and visitors to the cemetery.
The Garcías are lucky, they all have a roof over their heads, sheltered in different cemeteries that they keep clean and tidy (they earn about 1.8 dollars for each one), but other neighbors
live on tombs in the open.
Some families have managed to install a uralite roof over the graves they care for to provide minimal protection from the frequent Manila waterspouts, as is the case of Giselle Bautista, 29 years old, who lives this way with her husband and five children between 5 and 13 years.
Ligaya Garcia (left) rests on her husband's grave in the Manila cemetery (EFE).
Giselle moved to Manila's North Cemetery at the age of 14 from the streets of the dangerous neighborhood of Bulacan, but her husband is "native" to the cemetery, where
he works as a painter of the colorful tombs
of the 54-hectare cemetery.
"Before it was safer. Now with the anti-drug war we have had police raids at night. Although we are more protected, there
are also drugs and prostitution here
," he laments.
A cemetery with a million dead
The cemetery, where
nearly a million dead people
rest , is a functional neighborhood: families live in good neighborhood, they share cleaning tasks, distribute water, there is a fleet of
bicycle taxis
to get in and out and, as in the rest of Manila, the music is blaring.
A man cooks on a bonfire over a grave in the Manila cemetery (EFE).
With reggaeton blaring from his phone's speaker, Joseph Lopez trains roosters with several neighbors for
Sunday fights
, in which they raise some money to survive in the tiny houses that about twenty families built on top of them. the niches of the largest necropolis in Manila.
The transfer of a coffin during a burial in the Manila cemetery.
Several generations have grown up and lived there (EFE).
Sometimes a few pesos are earned by digging up the dead from the niches, where they cannot remain for more than five years unless the family pays the corresponding fee.
On the other side of the city, embedded between the luxurious skyscrapers of Makati's financial district, is the South Cemetery, where
some 300 families also live with the dead.
Filipinos rest in front of their improvised homes on the niches of the Manila cemetery (EFE).
Angilyn Pulga
was born there 35 years ago
, as did her parents (who got married there) and later her two children, ages 16 and 5.
"This has always been my home. I'm fine here, although I haven't known anything else," he says while he plants some pots between the graves he cares for.
For her, the best thing about her home is that her children are safe within the rigid walls of the cemetery, on Sundays they participate in parish activities and can go to the nearby school, although she dreams that "one day they can have a real job and a real house.
EFE Agency.
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GML