1917 Guatemala earthquakes

1917 earthquake that destroyed Guatemala City October 2024 1917 Guatemala earthquakes Catedral1918.jpg Guatemala City Cathedral after the earthquakes Central America November 1917 to January 1918 1918-01-04 04:32:43 1918-01-25 01:21:03 913027 913044 iscgem913027 iscgem913044 w6.2 w6.4 10 km 15 km 14.927 90.131 inline, title Guatemala VIII Several 2,650 deadSignificant Earthquake: GUATEMALA: GUATEMALA CITY https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?eq_0=3101&t=101650&s=13&d=22,26,13,12&nd=display https://web.archive.org/web/20180222104838/https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?eq_0=3101&t=101650&s=13&d=22,26,13,12&nd=display dead 22 February 2018 National Geophysical Data Center 5 December 2015 26 December 1917 The 1917 Guatemala earthquakes were a sequence of tremors that lasted from 17 November 1917 through 24 January 1918. They gradually increased in intensity until they almost completely destroyed Guatemala City and severely damaged the ruins in Antigua Guatemala that had survived the 1773 Guatemala earthquakes. History thumb|180px|left|San Francisco church after the earthquakes. The seismic activity started on 17 November 1917 and ruined several settlements around Amatitlán. On 25 and 29 December of the same year, and on 3 and 24 January of the next, there were stronger earthquakes felt in the rest of the country, which destroyed a number of buildings and homes in both Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala. Sometimes the movement was up and down, then sideways. At every new shock a handful of houses collapsed.Prins Wilhelm 1922 167 In most of the houses, walls cracked in two and then roofs fell in; in churches, bell towers crashed down, burying adjacent buildings and their occupants.Prins Wilhelm 1922 168 Among the buildings destroyed by the earthquakes were a lot of the infrastructure built by general José María Reyna Barrios and president Manuel Estrada Cabrera, whose legacy has been forgotten by Guatemalans. The Diario de Centro América, a semi-official newspaper owned in part by President Estrada Cabrera, spent more than two months issuing two numbers a day reporting on the damage, but after a while, started criticizing the central government after the slow and inefficient recovery efforts.Diario de Centro América 1918 Front page One of its articles said that some holy Jesus images from the city had been saved because they had been taken away from their churches after the first earthquake as they "did not want to stay anymore in a city where excessive luxury, impunity and terror were rampant".Diario de Centro América 1918 Front page Likewise, the newspaper reported that the National Assembly was issuing "excellent" laws, but nobody was "going by the law". Diario de Centro América 1918 Front page Finally, on its front page of May 1918, it said that there was "still debris all over the city".Diario de Centro América 1918 Front page The Diario de Centro América itself was printed in the rubble, in spite of which it was able to issue its two daily numbers.Foro Red Boa 2012 2 thumb|180px|left|Mummies that came out of their tombs when they were broken by the earthquakes in La Merced Church. The French magazine L'Illustration in its 12 January 1918 issueCaverbel 1918 48 reported on a telegraph cable from 31 December 1917 that Guatemala city had been completely destroyed: two hundred thousand people were left homeless and there were about two thousand deaths. The city's monuments were lost.Caverbel 1918 48 In 1920, Prince Wilhelm of Sweden arrived in Guatemala on a trip along Central America;Prins Wilhelm 1922 167–179 his journey took him to Antigua Guatemala and Guatemala City where he saw that the recovery efforts were still not complete and the city still lay in ruins. There was still dust whirling in thick clouds, penetrating everywhere – clothes, mouth and nostrils, eyes and skin pores – visitors got sick until they got used to the dust; the streets were not paved and only one in three houses was occupied, as the others were still in ruins.Prins Wilhelm 1922 167 200px|thumb|How the Guatemala City general cemetery appeared before the earthquakes. It was completely destroyed and never fully restored. Public buildings, schools, churches, the theater, and museums were all in the hopeless state of desolation in which they were left by the earthquake. Bits of roof hung down the outsides of the walls and the footway was littered with heaps of stucco ornaments and shattered cornices. A payment of some hundred dollars would ensure that a house that had been marked as insecure with a black cross was then deemed as done with its necessary repairs, allowing the owners to leave the houses empty and in ruins.Prins Wilhelm 1922 169 It was at the Guatemala City General Cemetery that the devastation was most evident: all was demolished on the night of the earthquake and it was said that about eight thousand dead were shaken from their graves, threatening pestilence to the city and forcing the authorities to burn all of them in a gigantic bonfire.Prins Wilhelm 1922 169 The empty tombs were still open in 1920 and no attempt had been made to restore the cemetery to its original condition.Prins Wilhelm 1922 169 Finally, Prince Wilhelm, pointed out that the world had sent help in the form of money and goods, which arrived by shipload in Puerto Barrios, but neither helped the city because millions found their way to the President's treasury and his ministers sent provisions to Honduras and sold them there for a good profit.Prins Wilhelm 1922 168 Aftermath thumb|180px|left|The dead came out of their tombs at the Guatemala City General Cemetery. thumb|200px|Inside of Guatemala City Cathedral after the earthquakes. The earthquakes marked the beginning of the end of the long presidency of lawyer Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who had been ruling in the country since 1898; firm opposition to his regime started after it became evident that the President was incapable of leading the recovery efforts. For instance, in an interview done in 1970, German literary critic Günter W. Lorenz asked 1967 Literature Nobel Laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias why he started writing; to his question, Asturias replied: "Yes, at 10:25 p.m of 25 December 1917, an earthquake destroyed my city. I remember seeing something like an immense cloud covering the moon. I was in a cellar, a hole in the ground or a cave, or something like that. Right there and then I wrote my first poem, a goodbye song to Guatemala. Later on I was really mad by the circumstances under which the rubble was removed and by the social injustice that became really apparent then."Lorenz 1994 159–163 This experience prompted Asturias to start writing when he was 18 years old; he wrote a tale called The political beggars (es Los mendigos políticos), which eventually became his most famous novel: El Señor Presidente.Himelblau 1973 43–78 The Bishop of Facelli, Piñol y Batres, from the Aycinena family, began preaching against the government policies in the San Francisco Church in 1919, instructed by his cousin, Manuel Cobos Batres. For the first time, the Catholic Church opposed the President; additionally, Cobos Batres was able to inflame the nationalist sentiment of conservative criollo leaders José Azmitia, Tácito Molina, Eduardo Camacho, Julio Bianchi and Emilio Escamilla into forming a Central America Unionist party and oppose the strong regime of Estrada Cabrera. The Unionist party began its activities with the support of several sectors of the Guatemala City society, among them the Universidad Estrada Cabrera students and the labor associations, who under the leadership of Silverio Ortiz founded the Patriotic Labor Committee.Ortiz Rivas 1922 After a long struggle, Estrada Cabrera was finally overthrown on 14 April 1920. See also Guatemala 1976 Guatemala earthquake List of earthquakes in Guatemala Manuel Estrada Cabrera Notes and references lower-alpha References Bibliography Arévalo Martínez Rafael Rafael Arévalo Martínez ¡Ecce Pericles! Tipografía Nacional Guatemala 1945 Spanish https://www.scribd.com/doc/190285559/Arevalo-Martinez-Ecce-Pericles#scribd http://biblioteca.usac.edu.gt/tesis/02/02_1658.pdf Restauración y revitalización del complejo arquitectónico de la Recolección 2 September 2013 Barrios Vital Jenny Ivette 2006 Tesis de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala Guatemala Spanish 6 November 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20141106174349/http://biblioteca.usac.edu.gt/tesis/02/02_1658.pdf dead Caverbel Louis L'Illustration Au Guatemala 3906 1918 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No_3906_page_48.jpg French París, France Cobertura del cataclismo Diario de Centro América Diario de Centro América Tipografía La Unión Guatemala 1918 Spanish http://fororedboa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Historia-del-Diario-de-Centro-America.pdf Foro red boa 2012 Historia del Diario de Centro América 12 September 2014 Foro Red Boa Spanish dead https://web.archive.org/web/20140720222558/http://fororedboa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Historia-del-Diario-de-Centro-America.pdf 20 July 2014 Himelblau Jack "El Señor Presidente": Antecedents, Sources and Reality Hispanic Review 40 1 43–78 1973 10.2307/471873 471873 Lorenz Gunter W. Miguel Ángel Asturias with Gunter W. Lorenz (interview date 1970) Krstovic, Jelena Krstovic Hispanic Literature Criticism https://archive.org/details/hispanicliteratu01krst registration Gale Research Detroit, MI 1994 978-0-8103-9375-2 Ortiz Rivas Silverio 1922 Reseña histórica de la parte que el elemento obrero tuvo en el Partido Unionista unpublished Partially reproduced in ¡Ecce Pericles! by Rafael Arévalo Martínez Spanish Guatemala Prins Wilhelm Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland 148–209 https://archive.org/stream/journeycentral00wilhrich Between two continents, notes from a journey in Central America, 1920 1922 E. Nash and Grayson, Ltd. London, UK Recinos, Adrían Adrián Recinos 1922 La Ciudad de Guatemala, crónica histórica desde su fundación hasta los terremotos de 1917–1918 Guatemala Spanish External links Guatemala Earthquake, 1917–1918 Guatemala Earthquake, 1917–1918 Earth 1917–1918 Guatemala Category:1917 in Guatemala Category:November 1917 in North America Category:December 1917 in North America Category:January 1918 in North America Category:20th century in Guatemala City