When people die in Brazil, there are two ways for them to be buried, depending upon their wealth:
1) They can be buried in a private cemetery, where their family effectively leases the burial plot, making payments year by year, or something of the sort, or
2) They can be buried in a public cemetery, where the State lends them the burial plot for free, until it is urgently needed for someone else to be buried.
A couple of years ago, I attended the funeral of the father of a friend, an old man who had died suddenly from stroke. With little money even to buy a casket, there was no possibility whatever that João would be buried in private cemetery. He was buried in a massive public cemetery on a hill about half a mile from the family home. We had no idea that, like garbage in a landfill, the bodies of the poor are overturned to make way for new remains.
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