Historic cemetery at center of family’s fight to bury loved one

Fort Lowell Cemetery (Google Earth)

A bitter feud has erupted between an Arizona woman’s family and the neighborhood group refusing to allow the woman to be buried in a historic cemetery, Tucson News Now reports.

The family of Rosa Figueroa, who passed away on Dec. 15 at the age of 98, has petitioned twice to allow her to be laid to rest at the Fort Lowell Cemetery in Tucson, Ariz. Each time, the Old Fort Lowell Neighborhood Association, which owns the land, has reportedly denied the request, claiming that Figueroa does not meet the requirements to be buried in the cemetery. The space is restricted only to direct descendants of the town’s original settlers, “Los Fuertenos,” or “The People of the Fort.”

Figueroa’s family, however, disagrees — and claims that she should be buried there because it is where her grandmother, mother, sisters and other relatives were laid to rest.

“She was born and raised here, she did her first baptismal here. She went through the elementary school here, we have photos to prove that in front of the Old Fort Lowell structures," Bennett Rios, Figueroa’s great nephew, told Tucson News Now. "So, we feel she is as much a descendant as anyone else plotted in the graveside here.”

The Fort Lowell cemetery dates back further than the 1800s, according to their website, and serves as the final resting place for those who cultivated the historic land. It was first built as an Army post in 1873, but was abandoned less than 20 years later. Mexican farmers and ranchers — later dubbed as “Los Fuertenos” — then settled in the area and continued their agriculture practices using irrigation systems built by Mormons. The neighborhood group claims the cemetery is the resting place to only those who descended from the original families — going by the name Díaz, Lujan, Ochoa, Jacobo, Pérez, Martínez, Casteldeoro, Domingo, Villa, Romero, Navarro, Montano, Bennett, Mulé and García.

When the committee denied the Figueroa family’s first burial request, they contacted local news outlets in an attempt to get answers as to why their loved one was being barred from the historic land. They even escorted reporters to the gravesite, which led to a tense confrontation between the family and the Old Lowell Neighborhood Association, whose president ordered the group to leave because they were trespassing on private property.

“This woman is going on three weeks since she passed. She’s sitting in a morgue off of Grant, for godsakes, and she needs to be laid to rest," Bennett Rios said at the time.

Following that altercation, the committee agreed to review again the family’s photos and Census records, along with birth, baptism and marriage certificates. The answer came yesterday, Jan. 5, and they refused yet again on the basis that Figueroa did not meet “criteria for interment.”

Her family now says they will continue to fight for what they believe is a proper burial for their loved one, and are reportedly strongly considering legal action against the neighborhood group.