On pg 41 in the middle right after (Hijo Legitimo suyo y de Flaviana Larra....fosa de 3rd Clase por 5 anos en el panteon municipal....)
The following is a link to the record.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GPJY-942G?i=737&cc=191…
I have asked my cousins in Mexico but they don't seem to know what Fosa means. Que quiere decir "Fosa?"
Question what is a fosa?
Fosa means just a deep hole on the ground.
Fosa
thank you for responding.
Fosa vs. fosa común
In Mexican and Spanish municipal cemeteries, they usually do not have space to keep the bodies in the same grave perpetually, especially if the person does not have a lot of money to pay for a grave that is designated "a perpetuidad." So bodies are placed in a "fosa", a marked grave for 5 years. The initial 5 year period allows the body to decompose down to the bones, and they are then transferred to a "fossa común," a large common grave with other bones. Unfortunately, in practice this means that the graves are not marked with names after that initial 5 year period.
Private cemeteries often do have graves that ae perpetual. In essence you buy a piece of land for the body of your loved one.
Hope this helps!
Sergio
Fosa
Thank you both Manny and Sergio for your response. Their burial system seems quite complicated.
This has been a question ever since mom told me Great Grandma Florentina Delgado had her own Fosa (hasta tenia una Fosa). Knowing Florentina had, according to Mom, measurable wealth and part owner of Azogueros in Salinas, San Luis Potosi, I thought it was old Spanish for Crypt. I did not think to ask what that was so it went unanswered these past 17 years.
I have a follow-up question. Knowing that when I asked about my ancestors to mom, many of my ancestors had been buried in the Saucito including her Siblings and parents. I have gone to the cemetery in San Luis Potosi, SLP., many times to pay my respects. My Ancestors are still buried in their same location since the 1950 to the present. So I am a bit perplexed that mom would have been impressed that Great Grandma had her own grave? Was this lease on individual graves stopped at some time for the majority of people? Sorry for all this follow up rambling.
I really appreciate the cultural history both of you sent my way. I realize I will never know the answer of what mom meant unless I go to Azogueros in Salinas to search for Florentina's grave.
Thanks,
Sara (alias Simona)
Cemeteries
Hi Sara,
If your mom thought it was notable that she had her own grave, it may have been one of the ones for perpetuity, which as I noted above, means it is more expensive. Or it may have been a crypt (see below). There are at least six kinds of graves (that I am aware of) in Mexico. Before the cemetery reforms at the end of the 1700s in Spain by Carlos III, people usually buried their loved ones inside the church, under the floor all over the place (1). The wealthier people had graves underground with their own access points on the sides of the church or under the altar which could still be accessed years later and future generations interred. This second kind of grave is what we would call a crypt (2). After the reforms of Carlos III they started actual cemeteries around the church with graves that look more like a park (3). In addition then there is a fourth kind of grave inside the church, or around it in an underground space where the graves are in the wall (4). In Mexico, municipal cemeteries started in the 1860s and became popular because they were cheaper (5). These are the kind I mentioned in my prior post. Finally there are the private cemeteries (6).
Hope this helps!
Sergio
Fosa Followup
Thank you Sergio. I really love the history of why something came about or why it is. You certainly have made a simple boring question into an interesting history lesson. Thank you.
Sara
Fosa
Thank you for the history lesson, Sergio! Interestingly enough, my father was from a region in the mountains of Leon, Spain, called Omaña, and while researching his lines, I would read about ancestors who were buried in the floor beneath the local church. Knowing how small that church was, I couldn’t fathom how, after so many centuries, so many corpses could rest beneath its floors (nor in the adjoining cemetery, which is no bigger than my garden)! I was unaware of the existence of ossuaries.
But just today, I was visiting a facebook group dedicated to Omaña, and someone had posted a story with photographs about how the residents of a local pueblo had recently reconstructed their church’s ossuary (la “gusera,” as they call it), “donde se guardaban los huesos de los difuntos una vez que se llanaba el suelo de la iglesia donde estaban enterrados. Este espacio se señalaba habitualmente con una o varias calaveras o tibias clavadas en el muro”.
Thank you, again!
Manny Díez Hermosillo
Fosa
A simple grave. In countries that have had "desaparecidos," it's what they call makeshift graves.