A few issues back (I’m catching up slowly), The Economist had an item about the funeral industry, such as it is, in Cuba’s socialist paradise. One major problem:
Just two funeral homes have refrigeration, and that is reserved for foreigners and VIPs. Because of Cuba’s searing heat, most folk have to be in the ground within 24 hours.
Not that Cuba’s undertakers would be able to do much with the extra time if they had it:
Coffins, made by the state-owned forestry company, are flimsy. Pallbearers must carry them with extreme care, lest they fall apart. Government workers get better coffins; children are buried in white ones. With flowers in short supply, mourners make wreaths from twigs and leaves.
And the hassles don’t stop when the loved one is interred:
Of the 24 cemeteries in Havana, all of which were nationalised in 1963, 20 have run out of space. At the Colón graveyard the mausoleums of important pre-revolutionary families near the gates give way at the periphery to unmarked stone slabs. These cover vaults containing up to 24 coffins in which the newly deceased rest for two years. After that relatives must collect the bones to make room for fresh corpses. Many deposit the remains in a nearby ossuary, which houses 80,000 skeletons.
To be sure, the American funeral industry has long been criticized for going to the opposite extreme, selling overly expensive ceremonies to grieving families. But things are changing there:
The internet is disrupting death as it has life. Comparison sites shed light on funeral providers’ services. And though not many bereaved relations yet “bring their own coffin”, a quick browse online gives people a far better idea of what it should cost. Startups are offering more radical disruption: rocket-launches for ashes; QR codes on graves linked to online tributes; new ways of disposing of bodies besides burying or burning.
In death as in life, consumers benefit from free markets and the Internet — two things that Cuba conspicuously lacks.