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crime. “Those that get killed in gang

shootouts are normally young men with

little resources,” Cárdenas says. “When

it comes time for the funeral, it’s nor-

mally the town hall that pays for the

coffin, and the state always chooses the

cheapest option.” His most luxurious

model, thecolombiana, is larger, more

elaborately decorated, and, he says, 20

times as profitable.

Cárdenas, like several other coffin

factory owners around Jucuapa,

acknowledges discomfort with profit-

ing from his country’s biggest problem,

but says it’s the only thing keeping him

fed. “If all of a sudden the gangs were

to stop killing, our business would be

very affected,” he says, and besides,

16 competitors ensure he’s making a

profit of only $10 to $20 pereconómico.

“We’re not rich here.”

F

ew people are rich in El Salvador,

where the median annual income hov-

ers around $3,600. The country, Central

America’s smallest in terms of land mass,

relies largely on coffee exports, tourism,

and remittances sent home by workers

who’ve gone abroad. It’s easy for things

to get desperate fast, as they did during

the 2010 downturn in the Jucuapa econ-

omy, which led to the establishment of

what’s now called Funerales Pacheco.

There the brothers handle the needs of

the deceased and their relatives for $350

to $3,200. “The most basic service might

include the wake, an affordable coffin,

and the embalming,” Juan Carlos says.

“The top-of-the-range service, well, that

includes everything—transport, food,

water, video recording, photography,

and, of course, a better-quality cof-

fin.” Monthly sales typically run from

$2,000 to $4,000.

The day after the trip to Cárdenas’s

factory, coffins in all sizes and finishes

surround Juan Carlos at a white desk

cluttered with papers and bottles of

water. On the other side of the desk,

two people slump in resignation on

plastic chairs. They just picked out a

plain brown coffin for their son.

As Juan Carlos talks the parents

through their options, a door away,

Carlos Stanley rubs the deceased’s gray

arms with disinfectant. The 20-year-old

died of alcohol poisoning but was linked

to gangs, too, Carlos Stanley says.

No matter how many bodies he’s

embalmed, Carlos Stanley says, he

often struggles to believe that the lump

of skin and cartilage he works on had,

in fact, lived; that he or she had made

people laugh, had woken up in the

morning and eaten breakfast, vomited,

or had sex. Staring down at the bloated,

ashen corpse, he sees life as so improb-

able sometimes. Then again, his own

path seems that way, too. He pauses his

work with the scalpel and nods toward

a large, dusty oven. “That’s what we

used to do,” he says.

Before the bodies, the Pachecos

traded in bread. Their father,

Carlos Sr., had run a bakery on the

same site for decades. When the family

struggled to make ends meet in 2010, as

gangs extorted local businesses for pro-

tection money, it was the middle son,

Carlos Humberto, who suggested start-

ing a coffin factory. With the forests

Bloomberg Businessweek March 11, 2019

Rosa Elena Sanchéz Bonilla, the Pacheco family matriarch, works on the interior details of a coffin at the family’s Jucuapa funeral home