The Grave Squatters of Manila

[jack_babalon]

I don't know if anyone else heard this story on NPR this morning, if not...

Manila Eyes Eviction of Poor from Cemetery

"In Manila, where housing and hope are in short supply, some people have come up with a novel alternative to their housing woes...

..As much as one-third of the population lives below the poverty line, often squatting in shantytowns, unable to afford anything better. Manila's North Cemetery offers a respite for some, a place to rest, not just for the dead — but for about 10,000 living, breathing souls who call the cemetery home"

The story goes on to describe life in the cemetery. How market stalls have been set up between tombs, how some of the locals use coffins as tables to play cards on, learning to share your home with a corpse and the dangers of drug addict grave robbers breaking into the tombs at night.

Oh and don't forget the dangers of Possession!

"Boyet Zapata, 42, grew up here and helps maintain tombs for several families. He says spirits from the other side sometimes inhabit his coworkers' bodies. Those spirits are of the newly dead, pleading for God's forgiveness, he says."



Can you imagine if this happened here in America? In Atlanta? After some preapocalyptic economic crash or environmental catastrophe that left millions of citizens homeless maybe. Eventually degentrification sets in. The townhomes become faux deco ghetto catacombs. The fortress walls of gated communities fall. Soon there is nowhere else to go but the cemeterys. Grave towns sprout up in almost every city, Cheneyville's their residents come to call them. Oakland Cemetery turns into a Burroughesque nightmare. A flea market refugee camp. A perpetual slum circus where even the law won't go. A truly recyclable community where every cradle is also a grave, every home a tomb.

If we've taught ourselves to live in factories, warehouses and cubes is the Land of the Dead really so far off?

Comments

[kittymel.livejournal.com]

we had a cemetery project in architecture school - I wanted to mis the plots with a golf course, the faculty didn't quite go for it - never could understand why, I proposed that the golf course would be closed on Sunday so that funerals and internments could be held in a quiet setting.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it could be interesting. I'd like it if the holes were in actual graves and you had to stick your hand down into a strange coffin to retrieve your ball.

[musewithamagnum.livejournal.com]

Oakland Cemetery turns into a Burroughesque nightmare

That was actually the first place I thought of, though New Orlean's Masonic cemetary came a close second...

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of that one before. I'll go google it in a second, thanks.

[re-animating.livejournal.com]

That is a very cool pic.

Actually, you're not so far off. I know that parts of San Francisco were built right on top of cemeteries, the bodies never having been removed. Interestingly enough, this is the only place I've ever lived, where is actually smells putrid when it rains.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Yeah I got it off the NPR site.

Okay when city planning parallels the Poltergeist movies you might have some problems. Really though, it stinks of corpses when it rains? Jesus...

[re-animating.livejournal.com]

Yea, it really does stink. I'm actually outside of the city a bit, but the first rain here always smells like dead things. I'm not sure if it's pollution from the oil refineries, or something else, but the stench is just saturated into everything. I usually don't notice it until things get wet.