After several months of investigation after the macabre discovery of bone remains in the cemetery of La Platathe mayor of that city, Julio Alakpresented this Thursday the results of an audit carried out in order to have the magnitude of the irregularities found and it was estimated that the abandoned remains correspond to more than 13 thousand people.
The survey carried out by the Buenos Aires Municipality was part of the general audit carried out by the municipal leader in all municipal departments to guarantee transparency and order in management hours after assuming his mandate.
Based on inspections in the cemetery, coffins with corpses inside and polyethylene bags with bone remains abandoned in places that were not suitable for these purposes were found. In February of this year, with the discovery, the calculation was that there were more than 500 coffins and 200 bags with human remains.
Immediately, the Municipality summoned the General Government Notary Office and the provincial director of the Registry of Missing Persons of the Ministry of Security of the Province of Buenos Aires, Alejandro Incháurregui, an expert in forensic anthropology, who directed a detailed work that seeks to clarify the origin of irregularities and try to confirm the identity and origin of the remains.
The audit conclusion established that there were found 477 coffins with corpses inside and more than 3 thousand waste bags with human bone remains“Although it is difficult to establish a precise number, it is estimated that the remains correspond to a figure close to 13 thousand people. They are all crammed into seven different deposits, none of which was officially designated for this purpose,” the municipality of La Plata officially announced.
As official sources explained, the count of 13 thousand bodies was made through the calculation of the coffins found, the bone remains, the bags that had not been torn, and the capacity of the warehouses. “They are full, in some you can’t even go inside. The cameras had to be brought in through the skylights in the ceiling. There were bone remains stacked 2.20 metres high.”they detailed.
Except in 16 cases, the coffins have a plaque on the wooden lid with the name of the deceased person and the date. “In the case of the bags, there were many tied with names and surnames, and then others did not have them and it is not known. There were also other bags that were open with remains scattered around, so they had to be swept up, refunded, and no one knows who they are. “They are mixed bone remains,” detailed the sources consulted by this medium.
Regarding the reasons that led to such a disaster, The authorities assume that they were there because the ossuaries are saturated. “They were full and there was no more room and the number of bones did not go down. Since they had no ossuaries, they began to put the exhumed remains in other rooms of the cemetery. The cemetery has to exhume approximately 10 people per day, and since there was no space, they were sent there, to places that were not suitable for these bodies to occupy,” commented an official source.
According to Alak himself, once the first stage of the audit is over, the process of “re-burial” of the remains will begin and the Municipality will promote a draft ordinance to modify the regulatory framework that governs the operation of the cemetery to ensure that irregularities are not committed again. In addition, a plan will be launched to enhance the value of the site, which will logically include the construction of a new ossuary (the third), and a special administrative unit will be created for its administration.
“You know what type of administration you have according to how you treat your dead,” commented the mayor in a presentation made during noon this Thursday in the Golden Hall of the Municipal Palace, and described the discovery as something “painful and sensitive to the feelings of the community.”
“The negligence with which the Municipality of La Plata has handled the administration of the cemetery in the past is a lack of respect for the deceased, their families and the entire community,” added Alak.
The discovery occurred last February. One of the first places where they noticed anomalies was in the pantheon called “Protectora”, a basement with a staircase where the inspectors smelled a strong and nauseating odor and discovered 16 wooden coffins with an internal metal protection, which indicated that it could have come from a vault or a niche.
Several drawers were on the floor with stagnant water. None of them had the corresponding identification., nor were the badges that contain that necessary information. For the authorities, this “was not the product of natural wear and tear,” but “it was an act carried out deliberately.”
In a second warehouse, in the so-called “wake room”, they were found lying around near 200 black consortium bags with bone remains, many without being identified with name, niche and cadastral location. Others were also found there. 15 wooden coffin drawers.
The third surveyed space was on the second floor of the building, at the cemetery entrance on 31st Street, where 340 coffins of adults and another 22 of children were foundsince they were identified as “little angels.” Likewise, there were also garbage bags with bone remains and bones scattered on the floor.
Also in the fourth deposit, called “sand shed”, four separate places were found with more than 107 coffins stacked indiscriminately and more black garbage bags with human remains.
In the complaint, the municipality mentioned that “all these sites were also in a very poor state of preservation and cleanliness, with nauseating odors, stagnant water and even skulls.” Although it is unknown how long they had been in these conditions, a municipal source told Infobae that the accumulation of bodies “is not new” but rather “has been going on for many years.”.
