For a border funeral home that survived the cartels, the coronavirus crisis is worse [Los Angeles Times]
Perches Funeral Homes has been burying bodies for more than half a century, through wars, cartel violence, epidemics and mass shootings, but nothing has filled its crematoriums, chapels and cemeteries like the coronavirus.
“The soonest I could do it is in two weeks,” funeral director Richard Villa told Brissa Leony, who had come to make arrangements for her grandfather last week.
Villa looked at her. He knew. He had almost lost his 87-year-old mother to the virus this year.
“Was it COVID?” he asked.
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A new display about the pandemic is in the works.
“It’s hit us really, really hard,” said Salvador Perches Jr., 51, comparing the spike in deaths to cartel slayings that flared in Juarez from 2007 to 2012, when it became known as “Murder City.”
Back then, Perches funeral homes were shot up. The family was forced to pay extortion money, and employees feared for their lives at viewings. COVID-19 deaths are less bloody, but just as constant, he said, as is employees’ fear of catching the virus.
“This pandemic, it’s taking it to another level,” he said. “It’s nonstop.”