The first rescue teams reaching Guatemala's isolated communities reported 133 more confirmed fatalities from mudslides linked to Hurricane Stan, bringing the overall death toll to 652.
A woman carries a chicken while looking for personal items among the destruction left by a deadly mudslide in Panabaj Guatemala.
The new reports of dead and missing - which could raise the death toll past 1,000 - emerged from the first teams to reach the western township of Tacana, near the Mexico border.
The area was largely cut off from the rest of the country by mudslides.
Mayan Indian communities across Guatemala struggled with the conflicting demands of tradition - which demands the recovery of bodies and decent burial - with the shifting fields of mud.
Many now say the vast mudflows will have to be declared graveyards.
"They (experts) have advised us not to dig anymore, because there is a great danger that the still-soaked earth may collapse again," said a Tacana municipal employee.
Indian leaders say they are exhausted by the days spent digging for victims since the Wednesday mudslides and are worried about diseases from the decomposing corpses.
Vice President Eduardo Stein said steps were being taken to give towns "legal permission to declare the buried areas cemeteries" as "a sanitary measure".
Thousands of hungry and injured survivors mobbed helicopters delivering the first food aid to communities that have been cut off from the outside world for nearly a week.
AP