The Coffin Business Is Booming in Central America Due to Gang Violence
In El Salvador, Jucuapa is home to dozens of small factories that churn out what some locals call the “wooden pajamas.”
A factory on the outskirts of Jucuapa, one of about 30 in the city assembling caskets.
Photograph: Fred Ramos for Bloomberg Businessweek
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.