While extended Mexican families have many hands to keep up the tombs of their deceased relatives, who is looking after grave sites of foreigners buried at the Chapala cemetery, most of whom have no local survivors?
The answer is a few good hearted volunteers affiliated with American Legion Post 7 and the local branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
Post 7 Adjutant Vince Britton and local Royal Legion President John Kelly carefully guard copies of a complete catalogue listing the names of all known grave occupants and a numbered diagram identifying each corresponding burial plot. According those records approximately 210 expat souls, many of whom were military veterans, rest underground in two separate sections of Chapala’s municipal Panteón.
The oldest burial ground for foreign settlers, originally developed and overseen by the Lake Chapala Society, is situated on the lower level in the main segment of the cemetery. Additional plots are located in the in the newer south side annex.
Most Mexican grave sites hold the remains of numerous members of local clans and are distinguished by a helter-skelter style of tomb construction, adorned with crosses made of diverse materials, religious figurines, plantings, floral vessels and other disjointed details. In stark contrast, the majority of the foreigners’ graves are solitary sites, simply marked by flat tombstones set in the earth in an orderly layout.
Until the legionnaires took charge, the care of expat graves remained in a state of almost total abandon for decades. They appear more groomed since Roy Lahti assumed regular maintenance duties to keep the lawn cut, free of litter and tidy year-round.
The volunteer caretakers have recently gone a step farther, engaging incumbent Chapala Mayor Javier Degollado in negotiations to get city hall’s cooperation for permanent upkeep, particularly to prevent recurrent dumping of dirt extracted from new graves dug up in the cemetery’s upper section. They are also developing a plan to replace tombstones that have been damaged or disappeared over the years.
When the cemetery is bustling with visitors and gaily decorated for next week’s Day of the Dead commemorations, the foreign sections will remain rather colorless and under a notable veil of eerie quiet. But, on an upbeat note, a few years back Post 7 members instituted the custom of holding a November 2 midday picnic, an admirable initiative to ensure that all those expat souls are not left alone and forgotten on the nation’s big day of remembrance.