Yabra Cemetery receives facelift
It is one of the city’s most revered historical sites, but the years have not been kind to Yabra Cemetery. As part of an urban renewal project, a section of the site will be used for housing and recreation. On the remainder renovation work has begun…and News Five’s Jose Sanchez has an update.
The Yarborough cemetery is being given a new chance at life. This graveyard, which houses the remains of some of the earliest colonizers of the Bay of Honduras is being washed, plastered, painted and sculpted. Preserving what is no longer simply a burial ground, the Department of Archaeology considers this site to be an archaeological reserve.
George Thompson, Acting Archaeological Commissioner
“We have undertaken an extensive project to restore the graves and the tombstones that have over the years been lying idle at the cemetery here. This place is getting restored. That will be followed by fencing the inside area and building a commemorative wall that will basically give just recognition to the people who were buried in the Yarborough Cemetery.”
“You look at the tombs and see varying styles, varying decorations that clearly indicates that a large cross section of the population was buried out there.”
Jose Sanchez
The cemetery reflects our country in more ways than one. Like the city, itself the cemetery was not planned. Some graves are plotted very close to each other, while others are spread out across the field. But what the tombs lack in arrangement, they make up for in historical richness and design.
Paul Francisco, Project Coordinator
“We are familiar with tombs only of a rectangular nature, but at this cemetery we also find out the tombs are made in varied styles. For example, this one that we’re looking at, we can refer to this as the inner tomb. It is of an oval or arc shaped where it is not conventional. So when that is completed another rectangular alignment is placed around it and is sealed completely from the people. And also we’ve noticed that most of these tombs here are only memorial tombs for the deceased, because most of them are shell. The deceased are buried down, way down, under the ground. And then covered with sand or mud, and then a layer of bricks is tightly placed over it. And then it is those bricks that form the base of the tomb. So all the tombs that you are seeing, we can safely say that nobody or no coffin was placed inside of them.”
So whose body lies under this tomb? He or she was probably not part of the settlement’s monied class. But that doesn’t matter to Francisco because his interest in the project has become a labor of love. The Yarborough is an intimate part of Belize’s colonial past. Much has been done to preserve Mayan history, and now more effort is being placed on the sometimes painful, history that lies within the site. That’s why Francisco is determined to use his expertise to restore all the tombs to their former grandeur.
Paul Francisco
“It’s a pity that we’ve lost most of the tiles. We’d like to retrieve them and put them over the tombs. It’s a beautiful tile, I hope we can find them around later in the project, so we can do justice to this tomb.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Jose Sanchez.
The Department of Archaeology plans to post a caretaker at the site and also to publish a booklet which will share the history of the cemetery and its occupants.
