The Chinese Cemeteries in the Philippines: Immobile Spaces?

Abstract

The second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries were characterized by high-speed urban development that resulted in the encircling of the old Chinese cemeteries by new settlements. In many cities, especially in Manila, Jakarta and Surabaya, incoming migrants squatted on cemetery land. Some municipal authorities issued new regulations intended to close old Chinese burial sites and eventually to demolish them. It is in the context of this grave burial crisis that the private sector came in. The first private-led initiative into the memorial park business appeared in 1964 when the multinational Castle and Cooke taking advantage of American models, founded Manila Memorial Park which opened the era of a new concept of deathscape in Insular Southeast Asia. This new concept of memorial park located at the periphery of cities was introduced in Malaysia in 1990-1991, and in Indonesia in 2002-2003. In both cases, the initiative came from local entrepreneurs. In this article we look at pioneers in the memorialization industry, development of memorial parks as gardens of dreams, new cemeteries as mirrors of cultural identities, legal frameworks, the memorialization industry, and finally marketing strategies.