Category: Current events

All good things must come to an end, & after several years of researching Recoleta Cemetery it’s time to concentrate to other projects.

We will continue to post as time permits but nothing as regular as our standard 3 posts/week. The prolonged pause is necessary in order to develop additional walking tours around Buenos Aires… & the rest of the world. Exciting stuff! Also, another year of full-time work in Europe means I will be away from Buenos Aires for most of this year.

By way of a summary, here are a few interesting stats:

First post: 03 Oct 2007

Total # of posts: 400

Total word count: almost 82,000 or about the size of a small novel

Readership: over 3,000 unique visitors per month, about 180-200 per day. Amazing for a blog about a cemetery!

Most comments: Liliana Crociati de Szaszak

Total number of photos posted: almost 1,200

Number of bilingual posts: currently 155, or 39%. Unfortunately Spanish text is not available at the moment, but we’re working on bringing it back!

Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere; this blog will remain online. Since so little information in English exists about Recoleta Cemetery, this should remain a valuable resource for the future. Much work is left to be done to make AfterLife 100% bilingual… it will come eventually. Purchasing the PDF guide will help maintain this site for everyone.

Demystifying urban legends is something Marcelo & I have worked hard to accomplish. Recoleta Cemetery—the most visited site in Buenos Aires—has much more value than those few wild & crazy stories. As the last paragraph of the PDF guidebook states:

… in spite of all the money spent to be immortalized forever, it is difficult to ignore the irony that so many prominent families have fallen on hard times. Argentina today is not the country those families envisioned, whatever their personal ideology. Several of the same issues they tried to resolve still exist today for a different generation. Recoleta Cemetery should therefore offer guidance & hope for the future. What better place to be inspired by beauty, honor past achievements & learn from previous mistakes?

Due to heavy rains in Buenos Aires over the past week—the city received more than a normal month’s rainfall in just a few days—the entrance gate to Recoleta Cemetery suffered serious damage. Large portions of stucco crashed down last Saturday, & city engineers were on site Monday to figure out a course of repair.

Surprisingly enough, the ceiling is not made of brick like most buildings in Buenos Aires but merely a hollow, wooden frame. Architect Buschiazzo’s budget must have been tight in 1881:

Update (06 Mar 2010): It seems like city officials are taking advantage of the damage in order to make other improvements. The women’s restroom is currently gutted… perhaps a new one is on the way. For the moment, the men’s restroom is for the ladies. This is probably the only time to see the ceiling structure:

Posts in AfterLife are frequently updated to reflect new or continuing developments, but most readers rarely sift through previous listings. No worries. Below are four important updates recently made… click on the link for the original post & scroll to the bottom to read the complete update.

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• Back in Feb 2009, there was controversy over the possible repatriation of the remains of Jorge Luis Borges. Stopped by his widow, María Kodama, Borges will not be joining his relatives in Recoleta Cemetery any time soon.

• The cemetery entrance remains a construction site six months after removal of the marble staircase in Aug 2009. The access ramp was quickly completed on the left side, but heritage organizations stopped any further work. Irreparable damage to the staircase has already occurred, so why keep the entrance in such a horrible condition?

• Marcelo has made a lot of progress in uncovering facts behind the death of Liliana Crociati de Szaszak. With 34 comments to date, it is the most popular post of this blog & has generated the most controversy. Added to the original post are 1970 newspaper clippings which report the avalanche & consequent rescue mission.

• We’re still waiting to hear from Congressman Roy Cortina for an update about the possible transfer of General José de San Martín proposed in Aug 2008. Stay tuned…

I’m not sure how many regular readers I have, but at least the people I write about don’t move very often!

I only spent a little over one month in Buenos Aires before leaving again for work; in fact, I’m posting this from the Basque Country. And since my mother passed away recently, there have been many things more pressing than maintaining this blog. Unfortunately she did not want a spot in Recoleta Cemetery… there goes my chance for a family plot 🙂

I’ll be back home in November, eagerly posting again. The frequency of posts may change, & the ultimate fate of this blog will be determined by the end of this year. Too much personal detail to discuss here, but I will likely be living in Lisbon (or maybe Madrid) by February 2010. Although I maintained this blog while living in Australia in 2008, it required a huge effort prior to the big move. I don’t see myself having time to do the same for Portugal. If work & personal matters allow for it, I’ll probably be away from Argentina for most of 2010.

Subscribe to the RSS feed to find out the latest. I enjoy writing this blog, researching details & documenting the cemetery’s continuing evolution. A lot remains to be done. But if life takes me elsewhere, it has to be for a reason…