City Of Coffins

In Gang-plagued El Salvador, A Cluster Of Businesses Is Taking Advantage Of The Abundant Resources At Hand: Lumber, Skilled Craftsmen, And Murder Victims

- Matthew Bremner

Juan Carlos Pacheco and his brother Carlos Stanley begin, as always, by asking the dead man for permission. In the living room of a modest house in eastern El Salvador, Juan Carlos pulls a surgical mask over his face and mouths the plea soundlessly from behind its pleats. Please let me prepare you, so your family can see you one more time before you go.

The room is murky and hot. The concrete walls are bare except for three portraits, each of a different girl in a brightly colored graduation gown. Worn blue curtains cover the windows, and the brothers’ shoes squeak on the cement floor. Carlos Stanley is built like a bull, with dark hair, a bulging neck, and thighs that make his jeans look like sausage casings. Juan Carlos is of a similar height but less brawny, with a shaved head, thick black glasses, and a jagged scar that runs diagonally across his face, a childhood souvenir from a vicious dog.

As a thunderstorm cracks and rumbles outside, both men stand for a moment, looking at the body. The light of Carlos Stanley’s smartphone, balanced on the open lid of the simple brown coffin, illuminates a bullet-riddled face and black hair. A bulb flickering on the ceiling shines into a gaping red hole in the corpse’s chest. Neither Pacheco seems fazed by the smell, which hangs heavy in the air like the humid funk of a meat locker. The brothers listen to the sobbing of relatives waiting beyond the door and the rain beating against the windowpanes.