These modern tenants installed electricity by tapping into street lamps inside the cemetery. They drilled holes in marble roofs for chimney vents. They raised their children among the crypts, and those children, in turn, learned to read using the epitaphs on the walls. As one resident told a Chilean newspaper in 2005: "Los muertos no me molestan. Los vivos, sí." (The dead don't bother me. The living do.)
En muchos casos, los inquilinos de los muertos no tienen otra opción que ocupar una propiedad abandonada. La falta de vivienda asequible y la escasez de recursos sociales y económicos los llevan a tomar medidas desesperadas para asegurarse un techo. Sin embargo, la ocupación ilegal de propiedades abandonadas puede tener graves consecuencias para todos los involucrados. Inquilinos de los muertos
There is a famous case in the Río Piedras district, where a developer built a 12-story apartment complex over a 19th-century cemetery that was never officially disinterred. Within a year, every apartment had reports of the same thing: water glasses moving three inches to the left. Doors unlocking themselves at 2:47 AM. A child’s voice humming a nana that no living parent had taught. These modern tenants installed electricity by tapping into
The concept of Inquilinos de los Muertos is not unique to Puerto Rico. It echoes through Mexican ofrendas , where the dead return each November to collect their share of the living’s breath. It haunts the palenques of Colombia, where escaped enslaved people buried their ancestors beneath their kitchen floors so that no one—neither the living nor the dead—could ever be evicted. As one resident told a Chilean newspaper in
“I am not the owner,” she tells visitors, crossing herself with a smile that holds no fear. “I am the tenant. He was here before me. He will be here after.”