Even the dead aren’t safe in Maracaibo, a sweltering, suffering city in Venezuela.
Thieves have broken into some of the vaults and coffins in El Cuadrado cemetery since late last year, stealing ornaments and sometimes items from corpses as the country sinks to new depths of deprivation.
Cemetery director Josş Antonio Ferrer says “starting eight months ago, they even took the gold teeth of the dead.”
Much of Venezuela is in a state of decay and abandonment, brought on by shortages of things that people need the most- cash, food, water, medicine, gasoline. Some of the most acute misery plays out on the streets of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest city and a hub of the once-booming oil industry. It was here in March that residents looted hundreds of buildings and businesses.
