Disasters such as the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City often focus public attention, at least momentarily, on natural hazards which have potentially broad social, political, and economic implications, but the historical study of such phenomena in Latin America has, in general, been poorly developed. This is somewhat surprising since the natural environment and its dangers so fascinated Fernández de Oviedo and other early chroniclers, and since certain Latin American scholars were precursors of such studies in the nineteenth century. In 1865, for example, the Cuban protometeorologist Andrés Poey produced a still-valuable historical bibliography of Caribbean hurricanes. The remarkable Chilean historian, Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, published El clima de Chile in 1877, long before climate and environment became popular topics among historians. But, in general, modern historians have seen disasters as “natural” events and thus usually beyond the scope of their concern. As historians begin to accept the idea that a natural hazard” becomes a disaster because it impacts on or is conditioned by society, they may be willing to deal with these events in a more systematic way.
Social and natural scientists, however, have long been interested in catastrophes and disasters and have often included Latin America in their studies. Their research has usually concentrated on the themes of predictability, relief organization and delivery, and how people cope with the stress of disaster. By and large, this literature has been ahistorical.
The volume under review, ably introduced by Louisa Hoberman, suggests that historians and social scientists are beginning to turn their attention to natural hazards and disasters in the past. The articles included fairly represent the major trends and approaches to the study of natural hazards in Latin America. The pieces are grouped by type of hazard into sections (disease, earthquakes, weather) but they might have been arranged just as well by the type of approach they represent. Lawrence Feldman’s list of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Central America before 1840 and Robert Claxton’s careful compilation of weather conditions in colonial Guatemala are first-step research and provide useful lists derived from a variety of sources. Claxton, in fact, goes beyond his list to suggest a number of ways, such as variation in tithes, in which the effects of weather can be gauged, or how petitions for exemption from tribute can be used to reconstruct the climatic history of a region. His suggestions that modern theories of disaster response might be applied to the historical events in colonial Guatemala, while provocative, are too abbreviated to be of much use. James Shirley’s “Temporal Patterns in Historic Major Earthquakes in Chile” also compiles a list based on historical materials, but his goal is prediction. He argues that the times and dates of these seismic movements can be correlated with the gravitational stresses caused by the moon’s position. While I found his argument convincing, I do not have the scientific background to determine its validity. Prediction and the delivery of relief are the objectives of the study by Josephine Malilay et al. concerning data collection on social stress in Bolivia during floods and droughts caused by variations in the El Niño current in 1981-82.
As an extension of demography and social history, the study of disease is perhaps the best developed aspect of “natural hazards” history. The articles of Murdo MacLeod and Sam Adamo are good examples of the genre. MacLeod examines the 1737-38 matlazáhuatl epidemic in villages near Guadalajara, Mexico. He shows that this disease (typhus?) was ethnically selective, hitting Indians the hardest, but suggests that this may have been a result of cultural and social rather than immunological characteristics. MacLeod’s emphasis on the social context of a disaster, as a way of understanding it, is a point well taken. Adamo follows this approach in demonstrating that morbidity in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro reflected, not surprisingly, the lower status and poor conditions of people of color.
The article by anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith summarizes the results of his research on the effects of the Peruvian earthquake of 1970 in the Callejón de Huaylas. It is rich with suggestions for historians. Oliver-Smith argues that disasters are usually external to recurring processes, but they are history; they disrupt a society and then generate a series of responses based on the predisaster situation that often themselves bring about social change. Disasters then, one can argue, are like rebellions—moments of stress and change that can reveal the dynamics and structures of a society. The author examines markets, government, and compadrazgo in the city of Yungay and demonstrates how each of these was modified by the disaster. The changes in wage structures, ethnic relationships, and even godparent selection all suggest lines of research that historians might wish to follow. Oliver-Smith’s article makes it clear that the somewhat isolated approaches and literatures of natural and social scientists, relief agencies, and historians should be overcome. This volume is a good step in that direction.
