After Joel xo slot Bautista died of a heart attack last month in Peru, his family failed to find the graves that exist in four different cemeteries. After four days they dig a hole in his garden.

Excavations in the impoverished neighborhood of Lima's capital have been televised, attracting the attention of officials and urging them to offer the family a place on the cemetery's rocky slopes.

"If there is no solution, there will be a space here," Yeni Bautista told The Associated Press, explaining the family's decision to dig at the foot of a tropical hibiscus after her brother's body began to decay.

Other families across Peru share the same fate. After more than a year of struggling to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the country is now facing a parallel crisis: the lack of cemetery space. The problem affects everyone, not just the relatives of the COVID-19 victims, and some families digging in the area around Lima's 65 cemeteries.

The lack of desperate choices arose as the country had to endure the most dangerous times of the epidemic. More than 64,300 people positively diagnosed with COVID-19 have died in Peru, according to the health ministry. But that number is almost too small. The Vital Records Agency estimates that the actual figure is over 174,900, including possible infections, not confirmed by testing.

As recently as April, infected people die every four minutes at home or in hospitals, and hospital areas are so rare that Peruvians read on social media about families offering kidneys, cars, or land to In exchange for the country's 2,785 precipitation.

Although the cemetery area can be found But burial is a huge financial burden, especially for families in poverty due to COVID-19.The cost of burial in Rim Lima cemetery is nearly $ 1,200, nearly five times the gross pay. Monthly low at $ 244

Retired merchant Victor Coba sets up a gravestone for himself, his wife and four other relatives in a narrow space in the tree-free foothills in northern Lima.

Coba, 72, carried bricks, sand and cement to the site, with help from a friend he started building. His "eternal home", he and his wife decided to act after watching the news and learning that two dozen neighbors had died of COVID-19.