James Chance

Projects: Living with the Dead (work in progress)

In the middle of the bustling Philippine city of Manila, home to almost 11 million people, lies the North Cemetery. Founded in 1904, it is the final resting place for several Filipino Presidents, celebrities, and hundreds of thousands of the city’s Catholic dead.

In recent years extreme poverty, overcrowding and demolition of city slums has forced more than 2,000 of Manila’s poorest residents to reside within the North Cemetery’s walls.

This story reflects the resiliency of people who lack stable housing and community infrastructure. It is an inspirational example of people making the best out of very little, as well as an alarm bell for human rights activists, as it shows how difficult it is to find stable housing due to poverty and overcrowding in the city of Manila.

James is currently expanding this project with assistance from the POYi Emerging Vision Incentive. Recent images can be viewed on the blog.

Like any community there are ''classes'' of people living here who enjoy more or less luxury, depending on their relative wealth. At the bottom of this hierarchy are the squatters who live in one to four story shanties on top of the wall of tombs that form the northern exterior wall. This is the most populated area of the grounds and is home to around 100 families.
   
Between 30 and 80 funerals are conducted here each day. Mourners often wear white and follow the casket in hired transportation, such as jeepneys and tricycles, to the gravesite.
   
Residents of the squatter neighborhood peer down on a funeral below them. Many of the residents will make a few extra pesos by carrying caskets to burial sites.
     
  
The residents overcome significant challenges daily in order to access utilities in an area which was obviously not built to support permanent, living residents. There is no sewage system, for instance, so people rely on bucket toilets, disposing of the waste where they can.
   
Squatters and residents of the North Cemetery have one thing in common—their anonymity outside the cemetery walls because they have no legitimate address within the city of Manila.
   
The cemetery is large. At 54-hectares or 133 acres, its area easily consumes eight football fields. Within most of this area single tombs are cramped in such close proximity that residents and visitors have to clamber over the graves to get around. Due to the lack of space, those dead that cannot afford a small plot or a mausoleum ''rent'' tombs for five years, after which the bones are moved to crypt or buried make room for a new body.
     
  
Drinking water is tapped illegally from the Manila City supply, and washing water is pumped from wells for 2 pesos a gallon. Most residents bathe publicly with a bucket of water drawn from the well.
   
Cemetery resident and caretaker, Rodolfo Villanueva, breaks for a cigarette during his work maintaining the United Spanish American War Veterans' memorial.
   
A group of children seek shelter in a mausoleum to escape the rain. Children who live here are not eligible to attend public school because they have no legitimate address. A handful of parents make enough money to send their children to private school, but most will receive no formal education.
     
  
Children play a coin game known as ''tanching'' in one of the cemetery's main streets.
   
Basketball games and tournaments are a daily occurrence. Families will gather on the tombs in the cooler afternoons to cheer on their friends who compete in larger organized tournaments.
   
Oliyvi Balase sits on the porch of a Mausoleum, which is also home to her sister and brother-in-law, Jenny and Jerry Juan. The Juans are caretakers. Jenny and Jerry have taken great advantage of their plot, utilizing the land to build a house and make a business selling rare, exotic birds. They are one of the ''success stories'' in the cemetery and are very proud to send their two oldest children to private school.
     
  
Although local authorities periodically attempt to expel residents from the cemetery, they continue to come back. The cemetery provides shelter, protection from outsiders, and more job security than would be had in the slums. Under the current policy caretakers are able to live here legally after obtaining an official permit from the cemetery's office.
   
Adanita Binaverdez, who has been living as a caretaker in the North Cemetery for six years, gazes out of her mausoleum home as a funeral procession passes.
   
In the middle of the bustling Philippine city of Manila, home to almost 11 million people, lies the North Cemetery. Founded in 1904, it is the final resting place for several Filipino Presidents, celebrities, and hundreds of thousands of the city's Catholic dead. However, since the 1960's a new, living population has grown. In this surreal environment, people have formed a functioning society that is literally built on tombs. A community of approximately 3,000 people currently live and work within in the North Cemetery's walls.