Mexico City earthquake

Earthquake

Date: September 19, 1985

Place: Mexico City, Mexico

Magnitude: 8.1

Result: 10,000 estimated dead, 30,000 injured, 2,850 buildings destroyed, 100,000 units damaged

Mexico City, the nation’s capital, is located in the Valley of Mexico, situated between two towering mountain ranges, the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental, in the south central part of the country. The city itself is situated on a plateau surrounded by a series of mountains that include a string of volcanoes. The valley proper has an altitude ranging from 6,800 to 7,900 feet above sea level. Its floor, on which the modern city has been built gradually over the past five hundred years, is not geologically stable. Beneath the massive concentration of high-rise buildings, extensive freeways, and the marginal dwellings of the poor lies a weak foundation of watery shale rather than a firm base of bedrock, for the city was extended over areas that in precolonial times were lakes.

Contributing to the lack of stability has been the continuous pumping of water from the city’s subterranean underpinnings, resulting in a constant shifting and weakening of its buildings’ foundations. Structural engineers have developed techniques utilizing permanent hydraulic jacks to keep new high-rises level, but much of the older construction must be subjected to constant adjustment and realignment of its foundations in order to keep buildings from sustaining serious damage. The same is true for transportation and communication facilities—the freeways and the power and water lines.

Hundreds of earthquakes have been recorded in the past five centuries, since the Spaniards first entered Mexico. However, many of the low-lying edifices, built during the colonial era, have managed to survive the recurrent quakes better than the multistory buildings constructed in later times. In the case of relatively new construction, only the high-rises built in accordance with the latest scientific knowledge on quake resistance have weathered the tremors to which the city is constantly exposed.

The People. Archaeologists state that primitive tribes lived in the Valley of Mexico as early as fifteen thousand years ago. The area’s appeal can be traced to the availability of fresh water, attracting humans and animals alike. The surrounding mountains also acted as a natural trap for game, making their capture less difficult to the prehistoric hunter. As the number of humans increased, the availability of this wild game dwindled. The shortage led ultimately to the evolution of an agricultural society, one that grew its sustenance from planned crops rather than depending entirely on the vagaries of the hunt.

The area’s rich soil, combined with regular rainfall, led to the development of a substantial society, capable of building impressive stone structures for use as palaces, temples, and granaries. Civilizations such as the Teotihuacán and Toltec empires flourished for centuries, followed by that of the Aztecs, who held sway throughout central Mexico until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. The precolonial city constructed by the indigenous peoples dazzled the Spaniards on their arrival in the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs had organized the city’s functions in a manner superior to that which the Europeans had experienced at home. The treatment of sewage, for example, far exceeded in sophistication that found in European cities at the time.

In the process of their conquest of the Aztecs, the Spaniards laid waste to much of what was precolonial Mexico City, but they retained the location as the capital of what they called New Spain. A European-styled city rose from the ashes of the Aztec empire. Despite frequent fires and earthquakes—more than 340 quakes had been registered in the capital since the beginning of the colonial era—many examples of the initial Spanish colonial architecture can still be found throughout the city.

The Spaniards intermingled with the indigenous population from the beginning of their occupation. The conquistadores married into the noble families of the native peoples or made the Indian women their concubines. Today Mexico City’s population is an amalgamation of European and Amerindian strains, giving the society a heterogeneous character.

More than 20 million people lived in greater Mexico City as early as 1986. This area includes the city itself and also the surrounding federal district. More than a quarter of the country’s total population is crammed into the Valley of Mexico and its environs. Because the capital contains Mexico’s economic and political seats of power, a constant influx of citizens seeking political advantage and employment opportunities pours into Mexico City in a continuous stream, many condemned to eke out a precarious existence.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Mexico’s society became more urban than rural. Living in the cities became the goal of the country’s rural poor. As a result, virtually any open space within greater Mexico City became home to economic refugees. These poverty-stricken families from the countryside seized small plots of land wherever they could, built shacks from any material they could find, and fought the local authorities to retain custody of them. The new arrivals sought work of any type in order to sustain themselves; thus, factories throughout the crowded city and its surrounding area often employ workers under illegal and unsafe conditions. These poorly paid workers are crowded into poorly constructed commercial buildings that constantly threaten their health and well-being. Congestive traffic conditions and the accompanying pollution have made the capital a poor-quality residential area for many, if not most, of its inhabitants. Moreover, only roughly one-third of its citizens can afford to rent or own homes in its formal real-estate market.

The Quake. At 7:18 on the morning of September 19, 1985, Mexico City experienced a devastating earthquake. Technical experts described the event as a clash between two opposing seismic forces, the Cocos and the North American tectonic plates. The epicenter was determined to be deep in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 250 miles west of the Mexican coastline. Mexico City sits on what has been termed the “Ring of Fire” surrounding the Pacific Ocean and extending to Australia, Japan, Alaska, the western United States, Central America, and the western coasts of the countries of South America.

While some general damage occurred throughout Mexico’s smaller southern cities and its rural areas, the capital itself experienced the greatest destruction. The quake measured 8.1 on the Richter scale. The tremor itself lasted over three minutes, shaking the city to its core. The damage was concentrated in the north, central, and eastern parts of the city.

The very nature of the ground beneath the city, with its lack of a solid rock base, resulted in extensive damage throughout its many districts, but especially in its very center. Dozens of the older hotels that lacked earthquake protection in the city’s center collapsed, killing and injuring thousands of visitors. The Regis, the Diplomático, the Versailles, the Romano (all of its occupants were killed), and the De Carlo were among those most seriously affected. While the upscale Del Prado survived the quake itself, it was rendered uninhabitable.

The Regis, formerly a luxury hotel but over time one that had deteriorated to second-class status, was 90 percent occupied when the quake struck. A few guests managed to jump to safety from the second floor. The stairway between the first and second floor as well as the front of the building had collapsed in the initial tremor. A few minutes later the rest of the edifice blew up as a result of accumulated gas within its ruins.

Both the Navy ministry nearby, as well as a secondary school, the National College of Professional Education, suffered major damage. Navy personnel dug with their hands to try to free their fellow sailors. Several hundred students at the school were entombed in the ruins of their classrooms. They had been in class for only twenty minutes.

The poorly constructed, overcrowded factories in the city suffered major damage as well. Four hundred production centers were destroyed, over 800 garment workers were killed, and thousands were left without work once the tremors had ceased. The factories proved to be particularly vulnerable to quakes for two reasons: the poor construction of the buildings in which they were housed, and the fact that the floors of the buildings themselves were stressed by the heavy loads of machinery and rolls of material that they bore.

Several major high-rises in the Tlatelolco complex failed to survive the first tremors. In 1968 Tlatelolco had been the scene of the massacre of an estimated 300 students by the army at the instigation of the government. This 103-building housing development, containing the living quarters of many government workers, suffered major damage, leaving the hundreds that survived the initial quake without shelter. Forty-three of the 103 buildings were rendered immediately uninhabitable.

The development’s thirteen-story Nuevo León Building ended up in ruins, with more than half of its 3,000 residents trapped in the wreckage. The remaining rubble alone stood four stories high. Prior to the quake, many of its occupants had complained to authorities about the poor condition of the building. Some of the accusers claimed that the builders had paid bribes to government inspectors to overlook the inferior quality of the materials used in its construction. Survivors from the surrounding buildings dug with their hands in an effort to free the Nuevo León’s victims.

Famous tenor Placido Domingo had relatives trapped on the sixth floor in one of Tlatelolco’s high-rises. He led a brigade of volunteers that banded together to pull people from the rubble and provide food and water for survivors and volunteers.

When aid workers using public and private vehicles took the victims of the Tlatelolco disaster to the National Medical Center they were turned back. All of its major buildings had been devastated. Seventy of the center’s physicians, nurses, and other employees had been killed. Several hundred patients had been crushed at the site as well. Some experts maintained that the medical buildings themselves were of substandard construction and that building regulations had been ignored during their erection. Five major hospitals within the city were destroyed, and an additional 22 were heavily damaged. The loss of hospital beds alone numbered 4,200, about 30 percent of the city’s existing capacity. Following the quake, a number of complaints arose about the marginal construction of many of the recently built government structures. The material used proved to be inferior to what had been specified in the contracts between the government and the builders.

The headquarters of the television station Televisa suffered immense damage. More than 77 of its employees perished in the building’s collapse. Nevertheless, the station managed to get back on the air after five hours of broadcast suspension. The station could not send filming units into the streets since many were blocked by debris, but the station did manage to report on the quake utilizing helicopters flying over the city.

A second—less severe, but still powerful—earthquake occurred less than thirty-six hours after the initial temblor. Technicians rated this subsequent quake 5.6 on the Richter scale. The tremor resulted in the postponement of rescue efforts. Further loss of life occurred among injured and trapped victims from the first disaster. The Pino Suárez high-rise building at Tlatelolco, damaged in the earlier quake, collapsed in the second, killing many rescue workers.

The statistics at the end of the first day showed the following: The quake had contaminated the city’s water supply, and it had severed both electrical and telephone service. The telephone center on Victory Street was destroyed, effectively closing down telephone communications from and to Mexico City. Initially, news concerning the quake could be transmitted only by some of the city’s 1,800 licensed ham-radio operators. More than 250,000 citizens found themselves temporarily without shelter. Adequate food supplies still existed, but getting them to the needed areas presented serious logistical problems. However, groups of citizen volunteers set up kitchens and tents in the streets next to excavation sites and began preparing food and drink for both victims and volunteers.

Five days after the initial quake, officials at Mexico’s national university began to assemble a list of the missing, because the computers there were more sophisticated than those available to the government. Nevertheless, the delay in initiating a program seeking to identify the missing, dead, and injured led to a great deal of confusion for friends and relatives trying to locate those whose whereabouts were unknown. No program had been prepared for the government’s computer facilities to be utilized in such an emergency.

The Government. After 1929 Mexico’s federal, state, and regional governments were controlled by a single political entity, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). The party has been accused of maintaining continuous control of the government by engineering elections, not only at the federal level but also in state and regional political contests. At the time of the 1985 earthquake, it was left to the country’s president to personally appoint Mexico City’s mayor, who was also named to the presidential cabinet. The responsibility for governing the city and providing for the welfare of its citizens lay with the office of the president.

Despite its claim to have a disaster plan for Mexico City to be implemented in the event of an emergency, when the earthquake struck, the Mexican government officials, initially at least, seemed to be helpless in the face of the tragedy. The extensive nature of the damage rendered previous planning inoperable. The city had an insufficient number of firefighters to meet the emergency. It also lacked the heavy construction equipment needed to begin removal of the thousands of tons of masonry rubble. The police and the army did little more than cordon off the damaged areas; they did not respond to the plight of the injured or aid in the removal of the dead. Some police were accused by onlookers of looting the damaged structures or taking bribes to allow businessmen to recover their records without addressing the need for first aid for injured employees. The police expelled a reporter on the scene who had observed the pilferage and who planned to expose the corruption.

More scandals involving the police surfaced with the unscheduled release of some prisoners held in local jails damaged by the quakes. They testified to the use of torture by their captors during interrogations. Corpses of prisoners killed by the quake also bore evidence of systematic brutalization after the rescuers exhumed the bodies from a building occupied by the office of the attorney general.

When the manual laborers assigned by the government to aid in rescue efforts arrived on the scene, their equipment proved to be totally inadequate to meet the formidable task of removing the huge piles of debris resulting from the demolished buildings. Only when private contractors moved their own bulldozers and tractors to the sites could any meaningful shifting of the debris be accomplished.

Immediately following the quake, Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid announced publicly that Mexico had adequate resources to meet the emergency and that foreign aid would not be needed. In one instance, a team of French rescue workers with trained dogs was prevented by Mexican officials from beginning search operations at a devastated building. The president reversed his decision two days later; the delay cost the lives of many of the trapped and injured who could have been rescued by the many teams of foreign workers who then entered the country. President de la Madrid, essentially a bureaucrat, lacked the necessary leadership characteristics needed in the president of a stricken country facing this type of catastrophe.

Ultimately, 60 foreign countries aided in the rescue effort. Thirteen specialty brigades from outside the country, with tools and bloodhounds, worked tirelessly at the sites of devastation to find both the injured and the dead. The Israelis sent a team of 25 along with 17 tons of equipment. Because of the constant threat of quakes in their own country, they had developed special equipment for locating and recovering those who had been trapped. In total, some 250 foreign governments, international relief agencies, and nongovernmental organizations of various types offered their services to Mexico. To complement these high-profile efforts, a group of young students from El Salvador drove several hundred miles from their Central American country in a battered passenger car, seeking to help in whatever capacity they could. Airplanes from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Algeria, Switzerland, Colombia, Canada, Peru, Italy, Cuba, Spain, and Panama brought in tons of relief supplies for distribution to the injured and homeless.

Rescue. The citizens of Mexico City themselves became the major participants in the rescue effort. Forming brigades of volunteers similar to the one led by Placido Domingo, working with a modicum of tools acquired from local hardware stores, and sometimes with only their bare hands, the teams sought to save the lives of their trapped and injured fellow citizens. They formed human chains and passed debris and broken concrete from hand to hand. In most cases the brigades consisted of friends or coworkers. Some slightly built rescuers, nicknamed moles, crawled through tiny openings in the ruins, risking their own lives, in an effort to aid the living and to recover the bodies of the dead. One of these heroes, Marcos Efrén Zariñana, slightly over 5 feet in height, became known as “the Flea.” Observers credited him with personally saving a number of lives. The diminutive rescuer edged his way through tunnels too small for other workers to enter in order to pull out victims.

Citizens formed their own committees to distribute food, clothing, and blankets directly to the survivors. They did not trust government officials to carry out even these tasks. They continued to upbraid the police and the soldiers for failing to take a positive role in the rescue efforts. The army defended itself vociferously, maintaining that it had been given orders only to secure the afflicted areas and to prevent looting.

Consequences. There were many economic and political consequences of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The government immediately began a rapid updating of building codes. It established for the first time a centralized national civil defense system. Nongovernmental organizations such as the Mexican Red Cross and the Catholic Church began to coordinate with one another their plans for addressing major emergencies such as the Mexico City earthquake.

The quake dealt Mexico a serious economic blow. The final estimate of the country’s financial loss amounted to the equivalent of at least 4 billion U.S. dollars, possibly as much as $10 billion. The city lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in its normally lucrative tourist revenue. Moreover, hundreds of millions of dollars in wages literally disappeared when local businesses ceased to function. Reconstruction and rehabilitation costs were equivalent to 6 percent of the whole country’s annual gross national product. The World Bank alone provided over half a billion dollars in reconstruction loans. The paid insurance losses exceeded any previous earthquake catastrophe except for those occurring in San Francisco in 1906 and Tokyo in 1923. The heavy concentration of industry in the capital further demonstrated that the nation’s economic structure was ill served by allowing the bulk of its industry to locate in such narrow confines.

Some events developed after the catastrophe that the government had not foreseen. The PRI, although still the foremost political organization throughout Mexico, lost the support of many citizens of Mexico City. The general public saw the party as closely aligned with the government itself. Initially at least, the two together were seen as to have failed to contribute effectively to the rescue effort.

Eventually a citywide organization of ordinary citizens was formed to protest the manner in which the country’s political leadership responded to the quake. Named the United Victim Network, its leaders pressured the office of the president to meet the needs of the homeless. The government, in an effort to regain support, and faced with a series of street demonstrations by this disaffected group of citizens, sometimes numbering in the thousands, took over some 600 acres of downtown real estate and, with the financial help of the World Bank, constructed dwellings for some 70,000 local citizens who were without housing. It added some small parks and playgrounds as well. Despite this highly publicized program, the government failed to win back the allegiance of most of the city’s population.

The PRI’s presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, barely won the national election held in 1988, three years following the quake. The opposition accused the government of fraud in tallying the votes. No questions of closeness arose in the case of the Mexico City vote, however—75 percent of the capital’s voters backed his two opponents, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the leftist Partido Democratico Revolucionario (PDR) and Manuel Clouthier of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

In the years immediately following the quake, Mexico City’s citizens continued to demonstrate their opposition to the existing political system. They had come to resent the country’s president unilaterally selecting their mayor, a resentment kindled by the ineffectual handling of quake relief by the mayor’s office. Finally, under pressure from an aroused and increasingly vociferous citizenry, the federal government capitulated and acquiesced to legislation enfranchising the city’s residents.

Over a decade later, a further example of the rejection of the government’s direct control of the reins of city government occurred when, in 1997, its citizens elected Cárdenas of the PDR its first popularly elected mayor over Alfredo del Mazo, the candidate chosen by the government and the PRI. The 1985 earthquake had changed forever the way that Mexico City was to be governed.

Bibliography

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Díaz Cervantes, Emilio. The Placido Domingo Brigade: A Manual Against Disaster. Mexico City: Ediciones Castillo, 1995.

Foweraker, Joe, and Ann L. Craig. Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990.

Gil, Carlos B., ed. Hope and Frustration: Interviews with Leaders of Mexico’s Political Opposition. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1992.

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