Mariana Enriquez at Bomb Magazine:
New Orleans has around 350 thousand inhabitants—over a million if you include its metropolitan area—and forty-two cemeteries. That’s a lot. Graves here are aboveground; there are almost no burials. The city is in a swamp, so close to the water table that it’s as if it were floating. To attempt an underground grave means condemning the coffin to float out someday, when the water rises. That’s why there are only niches, vaults, mausoleums.
St. Louis No. 1 is the city’s oldest cemetery. It’s not far from Congo Square, the plaza where, two hundred years ago, enslaved people could congregate, dance, sing, and were even allowed to drum. That’s where jazz was born. For many years, the graves of St. Louis No. 1 were crumbling and collapsing, and bones were scattered. The city’s cemeteries were badly neglected. However, for some time now, NGOs have been working to protect and restore them—in particular, Save Our Cemeteries, which takes care of all New Orleans graveyards. No other city in the world has so many: New Orleans has forty-two cities of the dead.
more here.
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