|
Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Announcements
Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
|
|
Buenos Aires Restores Evita Perons Crumbling Recoleta Cemetery |
|
|
|
|
Written by DeadGirl
|
|
Wednesday, 27 April 2005 |
Buenos Aires Restores Evita Peron's Crumbling Recoleta Cemetery
April 26 (Bloomberg) -- Every day, busloads of tourists visit the black granite tomb of Evita Peron at Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. They listen to a few words from their tour guide, snap pictures and move on, rarely stopping to appreciate the grandeur of one of the world's most significant graveyards.
Sitting on a four-block area of the city's most expensive real estate, the 183-year-old cemetery is in grave need of restoration.
Marble tombs are being eaten away by acid rain, and their stucco ornaments are also dissolving, exposing brick interiors. Some historically significant tombs are being destroyed by human hands, through neglect or modernization.
A program created by the Buenos Aires Office of Historical and Cultural Patrimony is trying to undo the damage that time, weather and people have done to a place that's now home to an estimated 75 stray cats as well as the remains of famous Argentineans like Evita, boxer Luis Firpo and former President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear.
``This is one of the five most important cemeteries in the world,'' said Miguel Crespo of the University of La Plata, who is working with fellow professor Carla Garcia to restore the tombs and monuments. ``Recoleta represents an important historical moment for the city of Buenos Aires and how it was forming at the time.''
Buried Alive
While the cemetery dates from 1822, most of the elaborate tombs were built between 1880 and 1910, when Buenos Aires grew rapidly in population and wealth. Many were built by the same sculptors who were working on the city's grand new houses at the time.
``The tombs are like little mansions,'' Crespo said.
Many look like Greek or Egyptian temples, including one that belongs to the wealthy Paz family. Almost two stories high, the black granite tomb is adorned with white marble angles and Masonic symbols such as anchors and Maltese crosses inside circles.
Perhaps the most touching gravesite is the one for Rufina Cambaceres, a 19-year-old woman who was accidentally buried alive by her family after being pronounced dead in 1902. (Hearing noises coming from the tomb, graveyard workers opened it and found scratch marks that indicated she had been trying to claw her way out before expiring.) A white marble sculpture of the girl shows her holding the tomb's door and looking out at passers- by with a tearful expression.
National Monuments
In some cases, restoration of the tombs means rebuilding the metal and brick underpinnings that have been damaged by rain seepage over the years.
``We want to make sure they are preserved in the long run, so it is also a matter of looking at materials under the fine stone veneers and seeing how they have held up,'' Crespo said.
Not all of the 6,000-plus tombs can be restored. Only 90 or so are national monuments that the government has the right to fix. While the city of Buenos Aires owns the cemetery grounds, the vast majority of the tombs, including Evita's, are privately controlled.
Evita's tomb is the most-visited site in the cemetery and one of the best maintained. Visitors often leave wreaths of flowers or attach notes to the bronze door; others tape political messages to the smooth stone surface.
Stealing Evita
How Evita ended up at Recoleta is a bizarre story. Following her death in 1952, President Juan Peron had his wife embalmed and preserved in life-like condition while he planned a monument for her. But after Juan Peron was overthrown in 1955, the military regime stole Evita's body and took it to Milan, where it was buried in a graveyard under a false name. Her body was finally returned to Argentina in 1974 and, two years later, was placed under a layer of steel and concrete in her family's crypt so it would never be stolen again.
While Evita's tomb is in good shape, others require a lot of time-consuming restoration. Crespo and Garcia have been working in the cemetery since 2000, but only 24 of the monuments have been completed. (One of them, from the De Carril family, took more than a year to finish because of its size and complexity. It's a fin-de-siecle masterpiece of massive marble columns, with stairs rising to a sculpture of the family patriarch on a chair, next to a bust of his wife.)
``This is the first government program in the 200 years of the cemetery,'' said Alberto Orsetti, the city official in charge of the project.
Cutting Costs
Orsetti estimates that the renovations, which are being funded by private as well as public money, will cost about 250,000 Argentine pesos ($86,000). To help keep expenses down, Orsetti said, companies are discounting their fees and part-time workers are being used. Crespo and Garcia, the two full-time restorers, are each receiving an annual salary of about 12,000 pesos ($4,100).
Although the project was supposed to last five years, Orsetti now estimates it will take about nine.
``I am a realist; we can not go more rapidly,'' he said.
But Orsetti doesn't want to stop with the 90 landmarked monuments. Forming his hands in a circle, as if trying to take every tomb within his grasp, he exclaimed, ``I want the whole cemetery protected.''
At the time, Orsetti was standing next to a seemingly modern tomb with an old stained-glass window, a contrast that indicated the original ornamentation was stripped and resurfaced with sheer black granite. While the look destroyed the continuity of a row of old tombs, there is currently no law to prevent it. Orsetti is on a committee that is drafting legislation to change that.
Buenos Aires also is planning to build an information center on the city's cemeteries at Chacarita, a middle-class graveyard just over two miles from Recoleta.
``It will be a panorama of everything about the cemeteries,'' Orsetti said. ``We think all have the same value, regardless of the people who are buried in them.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=a8.NQKgdFPY4&refer=latin_america |
|
