People walk at a school area that is being used as a temporary shelter for residents of neighbouring villages affected by the mudslides, due to heavy rains brought by Storm Eta, in the village of Santa Elena, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala November 8, 2020. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria
CHICUZ, Guatemala (Reuters) - Matilde Ical Chen was toasting tortillas over a wood fire for the midday meal when the landslide ripped through the Guatemalan Mayan indigenous village of Queja, burying her mother, sisters and grandparents in a torrent of liquid earth and rock.
Ical Chen, 49, grabbed her husband and six small children and ran, barely surviving a fall into a ravine, she told Reuters in Chicuz, a hamlet three hours on foot from Queja, where she and hundreds of other survivors are now sheltered in a primary school after Thursday's disaster.
