THE SINIBALDI CLADERA FAMILY’S MAUSOLEUM CHAPEL OF THE GENERAL CEMENTERY OF THE CITY OF GUATEMALA

A SAMPLE OF THE DEPREDATION OF THE CULTURAL, FOLCLORIC, ETHNOGRAPHIC AND ARTISTIC-FUNERARY HERITAGE IN THE GENERAL CEMETERY OF THE CITY OF GUATEMALA

By Luis Alfonso Ortega Aparicio, a member of the Guatemalan Academy of Genealogical, Heraldic and Historical Studies, promoted to that category on 03-14-1996

ON THURSDAY, May 2, 2019, I joined the General Cemetery in Guatemala City and found that the Sinibaldi Cladera family's mausoleum chapel, located in the 3rd. East street, south side, Los Cerritos painting, number 3, of that cemetery, was the victim of the most horrific and criminal destructive pillage ever seen in the sad history of the abandoned General Cemetery.

I met this chapel-mausoleum around 1983 and I realized that it had a first-class black wrought iron entrance door, with Greek-style ornaments, that inside there were marble tombstones, about two meters from long, decorated with the marqueal crowns of the Marquisate of Sinibaldi, and that in its entirety, on the outside, it was also very distinctly lined with marble.

Well, on the appointed day, to my greatest surprise and shocking displeasure, I found it without its magnificent entrance door, without its beautiful gravestones, including that of the altar, with a wooden door inside, rested on the rib niches, located on the inner-eastern wall of the chapel-mausoleum, which are also stripped of their sumptuous tombstones, and for the height of the blatant latrocinio of which the poor chapel-mausoleum of the Sinibaldi family has been victimized, they are leaving it until without its exterior marble coating.

On its front and, as part of the once sumptuous marble exterior cladding, the relief depicting the guardian angel still leading to the presence of God to the soul entrusted to his custody, during the course of the temporal and earthly life of the same, and in the lower part another relief that represents the winged hourglass ("fugæ tempus") whose meaning insists on reminding us of the rapid passage of time from the beginning to the end of life earthly and temporal of man.

On that occasion I obtained some photographs to publish them later, and when I was in that activity, I discovered and photographed, on the left side of the entrance door, this inscription on the marble: "Q. SESTI / Guat.a - Carrara / 1898 ", which shows that the marble, at least that of the outer covering of the chapel-mausoleum, is from Carrara, and that the date of its construction corresponds to the year of 1898.

According to some handwritten annotations made by my maternal grandfather Don Edgar Juan Aparicio y Aparicio, Marquis de Vistabella, supposedly obtained from the elegant marble tombstones with the marqueal crowns, hypothesis founded on the dates that are part of such handwritten annotations, and in the way in which they are written, also published here, in that chapel-mausoleum are buried the mortal remains of people who were known in life by the following names and surnames:

Alejandro de Sinibaldi and Albora n. Rome January 18, 1814 m. Guatemala Nov 26 1873

Dolores Cladera de Sinibaldi n 28 Feb 1838 m 26 Oct 1901

Nicolás Sinibaldi May 18 1889

Clara Sinibaldi de González Dec 21 1929

Jesus S of Barrios June 12 1892

Guadalupe H Miller 1932

Guadalupe S de Tinoco Oct 23 1880

Luisa S of Miller 1897

Buenaventura Batres January 24, 1887

Julia S of B Oct 8 - 1885

Nicolás Sinibaldi May 18 1881 (sic)

Here are the photos that testify to this deplorable and unworthy disaster in which the chapel-mausoleum of the Sinibaldi family is located, located in the General Cemetery of the capital city of Guatemala