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Two Mayan villages declared 'mass graves'
(BBC NEWS, October 10, 2005)
Officials in Guatemala are calling for a number of remote communities to be declared mass graves, after they were engulfed by landslides. . . . Rescue efforts were suspended in some areas on Sunday after it was deemed too dangerous to dig for survivors. . . . More than 650 people in Guatemala have been confirmed dead in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Stan. Hundreds more are thought to be missing. . . . At least 100 people have died elsewhere in Central America and in Mexico. . . . Stan slammed ashore as a category one hurricane in southern Mexico on Tuesday. It quickly lost force, but most of the damage has been done by torrential rains lasting days on end. . . . Guatemalan Vice-President Eduardo Stein said rescuers had still not been able to reach at least 90 villages cut off by mudslides. . . . Some estimates said as many as 1,400 people were feared buried. . . . Two Mayan villages in the worst affected area have been completely submerged by a slick of mud. . . . Diego Esquina, the mayor of Panabaj, said his village "will no longer exist". . . . "We are asking that it be declared a cemetery. We are tired, we no longer know where to dig," he said. . . . "The bodies are so rotten that they can no longer be identified. They will only bring disease." . . . Some 77 bodies have been recovered from Panabaj, but about 250 are still missing, the mayor said. . . . Nearby Tzanchaj was similarly devastated. . . . Firefighters said they had had to order villagers to give up their desperate digging on unstable ground. . . . Correspondents say the Mayan villagers are struggling with a dilemma, as local cultural traditions dictate that bodies must be recovered and given a decent burial. . . . "Entire families have disappeared," local official Diego Sojuel told the Associated Press news agency. . . . Taxi driver Gaspar Taxachoy returned from working in Guatemala City to discover his home buried in mud. . . . The bodies of his wife, two daughters and a son have been found. "I'm only missing one more son," he told AP. . . . The BBC's Claire Marshall, in Mexico, says it is the region's poorest people who have been worst hit, with precariously-built hillside communities drowned by the mudslides.

posted by Lorenzo 2:47 PM