Panteón Civil de Dolores

The Panteón Civil de Dolores is the largest cemetery in Mexico and home to the prestigious “Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres” (Rotunda of the Illustrious Persons). It is located on Constituyentes Avenue in Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City, between sections two and three of Chapultepec Park. The history of the cemetery goes back to 1870 when Dolores Murrieta de Galloso acquired 2,400,000 sq meters of land on which to found a cemetery. She died in 1874, leaving the work unfinished but her family completed the project. In 1875, the cemetery opened and named in Dolores’ honor. Today the cemetery has about 700,000 tombs, many with multiple occupants.

Although it is considered the largest cemetery in Latin America,the most serious problem at the cemetery is that it has run out of space. No new gravesites have been established since 1975 and only those families who bought a site in perpetuity before 1977 may bury loved ones here, as long as they stack them over those already interred. Municipal laws only allow for five bodies to be buried in the same plot, but in some tombs as many as ten have been buried one atop another. The cemetery is working to encourage the acceptance of cremation as an alternative, and the crowded conditions along with the desire to be interred here has created demand for exhumation and cremation services. The cemetery has four crematoria averaging about four cremations daily. However, about ten traditional burials a day are still performed here, all in graves that had been used previously.

The cemetery is listed with National Institute of Anthropology and History as a historical monument due to the persons interred and age of the cemetery. However, this has not kept the cemetery in good repair. There are problems with maintenance and security. In the back part of the cemetery in a gully, workers have discarded old coffins and urns that are considered unusable. Those who work in the cemetery testify to graverobbing here for artistic and archeological pieces. In January 2009, a section of the original retaining wall built in the 19th century on the south side fell. This section was over a km long and 4 meters high, damaging a number of graves. Rehabilitation work is scheduled for September 2008 and includes the remodeling of the main entrance on Constituyentes Avenue.