WHY THEY CRIED AT TIGUAK CEMETERY

 

Tiguak, usually spelled Tiguac, is Guam's one and only public cemetery. It's also perhaps Guam's most pitiful cemetery.

Recently, in the news, it's been announced that the cemetery has only 8 burial plots left. A bill has been introduced to give the cemetery more land adjacent to the present cemetery. But some community leaders are saying more land is not the only issue; properly maintaining the cemetery that already exists is just as important an issue, and that the Government has done a poor job of it.

Many might be surprised to know this is not a new problem. People were decrying the condition of Tiguak Cemetery right from the beginning.

The Guam Code authorized the Government of Guam to establish a public cemetery, but nothing was done to put this into effect in the 1950s. In 1961, Governor Flores designated nearly 20 acres in Talofofo to be used for a public cemetery, but it was never done.

Then in 1964, the need for a public cemetery was brought up in the Guam Legislature. Up to that time, your options for burial on Guam were just with the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries, and, much more rarely, the US Naval Cemetery in East Agaña. But these cemeteries were filling up fast. The Catholic cemeteries ordinarily buried only Catholics, and even Protestants who were not Baptists or Seventh Day Adventists depended on the good graces of those two churches to bury them. Then there would come the time when people with no religion, or non-Christian people, would need a final resting place.

The days of relying on the churches to bury everybody were fast coming to an end. Both Catholic and Protestant church leaders urged the Government to move on a public cemetery. In late 1965, Governor Manuel Guerrero chose Tiguak as the site of Guam's first and only public cemetery, but funding would have to come from the Guam Legislature.

EL PATIO FIRE IN 1957

Interestingly, the site Guerrero put aside for a cemetery had been the location of a popular nightclub called El Patio which had burned down! Perhaps that should have been an indication that the area was under a cloud of some sort.

By January of 1967, the news reported that Public Works was building a road leading into the cemetery. That February, a documented burial took place at the cemetery.

But it seems that building a road to Tiguak, and removing tall grass and trees, was all the Government did. The rest was up to the family of the deceased. No structures of any sort were built. No hall, no restroom, no parking. A grave was dug and the coffin lowered into it. It was the family's decision what marker was to be placed. 

Part of the challenge was the terrain. A lot of Tiguak is not level, but slopes down into gullies. The landscape makes it very hard to even the ground.

ALREADY COMPLAINTS IN 1968

"Pathetic, disgusting and shameful" were just some of the words used as early as 1968 to describe the situation at Tiguak.

Joe Murphy wrote about it in his column for the Guam Daily News, after receiving phone calls and personal visits from people who had attended a burial at Tiguak and found the condition of the cemetery intolerable. 

Since the cemetery was not maintained, reaching a burial plot meant walking through overgrown weeds, with sticker burrs all over your pants and socks. Pall bearers had to carefully step over loose boards lying all around. 

"No one cried until they saw the cemetery," one person said, who had attended the funeral at Tiguak. Guam was no place to die, they said, unless you could get buried at one of the religious cemeteries.

DECADES OF MINIMAL MANAGEMENT

THE FAMOUS HORSE GRAVESTONE AT TIGUAK

The only thing, apparently, that has changed at Tiguak since the first complaints in 1968 has been the increase of burials.

Because it is Guam's most affordable burial place, Tiguak has filled to over 4000 burials. Pigo Cemetery, Guam's largest Catholic cemetery, is still the most populated on Guam, with over 8000 burials. Guam Memorial Park in Leyang, a private business, is fast approaching with over 7000 burials.

Due to the large number of burials, graves are often very close to each other. Families freely augment the graves anyway they feel like it, recently creating controversy when a life-sized white horse was built on a grave. Weeds and debris are everywhere, and there are no paved roads nor parking lots inside the cemetery. The cemetery has also been a favorite dumping ground for illegal dumping.

Responsibility for the cemetery, considered a headache to handle by many, shifted from Public Health to Public Works to Parks and Recreation.

In the 1980s, the cemetery was named the Vicente A. Limtiaco Memorial Park, in honor of the long-time Commissioner (Mayor) of Piti.

Already in 1988, former Senator Ben Ada was saying that the problem wasn't the need for more cemetery land, but the need to fund and properly maintain the cemetery.