How did they manage to steal that too?

Apparently, dying in Mexico—and the process that follows, arriving at a funeral home, holding a wake, taking it to be cremated, receiving the ashes—is no guarantee that those will be the body's last moments on this plane.

The problem with deaths in Mexico is that, as with many civil proceedings and procedures in this country, there's no guarantee that things will turn out as they should.

A case that should be even more scandalous due to its inhumane treatment is the one recently reported in Chihuahua. A group of people learned that if their relative died sometime between 2021 and the next four years, and they had the body held for wake and cremation at the Luz Divina, Amor Eterno, Protecto Deco, Plenitud, and Del Carmen funeral homes, it might not be their relative's ashes in an urn or other location.

They are not sure whether they cremated them or simply charged for the service, leaving the body piled up, at best, at the back of a lot.

The news itself was already a sensation in a country where finding bodies outside of a cemetery isn't necessarily a novelty. But the list of aggravating factors isn't short.

One of the problems is that there are 383 bodies. That's a huge number of people whose families were lied to, robbed, and on top of that, they're going to have to grieve a second time, as if the first one had been easy.

The second major flaw I find is that the entire discovery didn't necessarily come about as a result of swift action by the authorities. Neither as part of an operation, nor as part of a crematorium inspection.

It was caused by a citizen's complaint. Someone somehow saw that there was a body in the adjacent field. With so many stories about people who can't find their dead, they notified the authorities, and the whole mess was uncovered.

This fact is serious in itself, but it is even more so considering that the number of cremations has increased by up to 110 percent per year, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

But it also tells us that those who were supposed to go and check that the ovens were working, that they weren't a health problem for the neighbors, that they were functioning, and other things, clearly didn't do their job.

This problem isn't the first to arise with the preservation of bodies. A similar, though not necessarily identical, problem arose in Jalisco. Due to overcrowding in the state's forensic services, a refrigerated truck had to be used as a warehouse.

What we're complaining about is the lack of decorum for those who die before us, and above all, the loss of that calm or process that the death of a loved one and the ceremony of bidding farewell to their body should give us.

And here's the real question: do we have overwhelmed authorities who don't have the capacity to supervise all the facilities that provide this service? It's up to the health and sanitary regulatory authorities to keep an eye on this.

Or we simply have authorities with astonishing negligence who may have the stomach to let our dead lack dignity.

@Micmoya