Guatemala Death Toll Rises

(CBS/AP)  The discovery of more than 130 more bodies pushed the number of dead and missing in mudslides linked to Hurricane Stan to more than 1,000, as Guatemala's Indian communities struggled Monday with the fact they must abandon the dead, give up traditional burial rites and declare many communities graveyards.

The first rescue teams reaching the isolated western township of Tacana, near the Mexico border, confirmed the death toll nationwide had risen to 652 with 384 missing. Mudflows remained dangerously unstable. Another 129 people were killed in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico after a week of deadly rains.

Mayan Indians faced reconciling the conflicting demands of tradition — which demands the recovery of bodies and decent burial — with the shifting fields of mud and rotting corpses, which threatened disease and injury.

Experts "have advised us not to dig anymore because there is a great danger" that the still-soaked earth may collapse again, said Uvaldo Najera, a Tacana municipal employee reached by telephone.

Hundreds of Mayan villagers who had swarmed over the vast mudslides with shovels, picks and axes to dig for victims in previous days gave up their efforts Sunday, overwhelmed by the task.

Vice President Eduardo Stein said steps were being taken to give towns "legal permission to declare the buried areas cemeteries" as "a sanitary measure."

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum will travel to some of the hardest-hit villages, like Panabaj on the shores of Lake Atitlan, to hold consultations with Indian leaders on how to preserve traditional customs while keeping the living from being injured in attempts to recover the dead.

An estimated 250 people are still believed encased in vast mudflows in Panabaj.

Indians leaders say they are exhausted by the days spent digging for victims since the Wednesday mudslides, and they are worried about diseases from the decomposing corpses.

"Panabaj will no longer exist," said Mayor Diego Esquina, referring to the hamlet covered by a mudflow a half-mile wide and as much as 15 to 20 feet thick. "We are asking that it be declared a cemetery. We are tired.

"The bodies are so rotted that they can no longer be identified. They will only bring disease."

Many of the missing will simply be declared dead, and the ground they rest in declared hallowed ground. About 160 bodies have been recovered in Panabaj and nearby towns, and most have been buried in mass graves.

Promised sniffer dogs trained to detect bodies failed to arrive in time, and "we don't even know where to dig anymore," Esquina said.

Hundreds of Mayan villagers who had swarmed over the vast mudslides with shovels, picks and axes to dig for victims in previous days gave up their efforts Sunday, overwhelmed by the task.

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