December 10, 1995|By JOE MATHEWS
Marcos Sandoval fingers his beeper and perches himself on the arm of a chair in the apartment of his lifelong friend, Arcadio Guerra. Mr. Guerra's companion of six years, Maria Rios, sits slumped in a couch across the way, her hand over her chest.
Just 24 hours earlier, Mr. Guerra, a Guatemalan immigrant who ** worked as a cook in a Little Italy restaurant, had been shot to death during his nightly walk in Patterson Park. Mr. Sandoval, a 37-year-old Owings Mills resident, knows the job of making burial arrangements will fall to him. Ms. Rios, by her own admission, is too strongly in the grip of "la pena negra," the black pain of losing a loved one. Still, there is one issue they must decide, now, together.
"There is no doubt in my mind we should send him back home," Mr. Sandoval says firmly, mustering a smile. Home is Guatemala.
Ms. Rios looks around the South Washington Street apartment the couple had shared. "Ay, Ricardo," she whispers her boyfriend's nickname. "I would like him to be buried here, where I could visit. I will miss him. But Marcos is right: That is where he belongs, with his parents and family."
Returning Mr. Guerra to his homeland for burial will be a costly and complicated process. But immigrants in Maryland and throughout the nation increasingly are choosing to bear the cost of repatriating remains. In fact, many plan and save for a posthumous trip home from the time they set foot on foreign soil.
"I think the commitment to becoming an American was so strong in the past that no one thought of going back," says Richard E. Meyer, a professor at Western Oregon State College who studies ethnicity and cemeteries. "The sense of finality in leaving one's country is not what it once was."
Although the vast majority of immigrants still elect to be buried here, the airlines that ship remains, the foreign governments that approve the shippings and many immigrants themselves say the number of repatriations is surging.
"I love this country, but I do not wish to be buried here," says Jose Luaces, a Baltimore resident for more than 33 years and a U.S. citizen since 1967. He has a wife and daughter here, but wants to be buried beside his mother in Bilbao, Spain. "You can be far away from your family and parents for a long time, but you can't be away from family for all time."
Mr. Luaces and others acknowledge that repatriation represents something of a rejection of American tradition -- particularly for immigrants from Latin America and other predominantly Catholic areas. There, religious and cultural traditions dictate that the graves of loved ones be visited regularly, and in some countries special holidays honor the dead.
Many immigrants see American cemeteries as quiet places where small, tasteful graves blend too much into the landscape, as though the dead were meant to be forgotten.
"The graves in Guatemala look more alive, with small houses for the bodies," says Mr. Sandoval. "It's about culture and customs." He knows the pull of home and tradition remained strong in the life of his friend, who was slain on Sept. 19.
Mr. Guerra, who was 46, grew up in the eastern Guatemalan town of Agua Blanca, where he and Mr. Sandoval played soccer on the same field. Mr. Sandoval came to Maryland 15 years ago, and his stories of job opportunities inspired his friend. Saying he was a tourist, Mr. Guerra arrived in Baltimore in 1989 and did odd jobs until securing a work permit.
Friends say he planned to apply for U.S. citizenship, and he was further tied to this country by his close relationship with Ms. Rios, a Honduran immigrant. But on slow nights at Capriccio, the restaurant where he worked, he would confide to co-workers his dream of making enough money to return to Guatemala someday to open his own Italian restaurant.
Much of the activity at the viewing of Mr. Guerra's body, five days after the slaying, was designed to bridge the distance between Baltimore and Guatemala. Mr. Sandoval and Victor Flores, a waiter at Capriccio, both held video cameras and recorded testimonials from the 75 visitors. A tape would be sent to Mr. Guerra's parents.
"I want to tell you about my godfather, a good man," Marcos Sandoval's sister, Ana Sandoval, said into Mr. Flores' camera. "To his family in Guatemala, I want to say, 'God bless you. I hope you can see now that all our families are united: here and in Guatemala.' "
A Group Effort
Mr. Guerra died on a Tuesday. The next day, Marcos Sandoval searches his memory and phones the only funeral home whose name he can remember: Frank Della Noce's place on High Street.
The easygoing Mr. Sandoval and the gruff, task-oriented Mr. Della Noce aren't an easy match. They argue over whether to have an open casket for a man who, after all, was shot in the head (Mr. Sandoval wins, and the casket is open). And Mr. Della Noce consistently refers to the body's destination as "Guadaloupe."
