At $24 per body to remain in the plot for another 4 years after being laid to rest there for 6 years, if families can no longer afford to pay for the private crypt of their dead loved ones- their dead loved ones will be evicted from their grave. In Guatemala City’s main cemetery, as soon as a lease on a grave expires, grave cleaners will come and free up the space for a new paying customer. With a sledgehammer, grave-cleaners smashes open the crypts, removing the decomposed remains that lurk inside as vultures circle the graves from above. Any unclaimed remains will be stuffed into plastic bags, labelled and sent off to a mass grave to be reburied. Most of the excavated corpses are decomposed, but those that were laid to rest in the upper crypts, where conditions are hot and dry, become mummified. Bags of broken corpses are tossed into heaps like piles of garbage waiting to be transported on forklift trucks to their new burial site. Once the corpses have been removed, the coffins will be discarded, and thrown onto a rubbish dump near the graveyard. Remains that are claimed by family members are stored in a box and then deposited at an ossuary at the general cemetery.
