State and societal responses to natural disasters in Latin American and Caribbean history

Abstract

AbstractNatural hazards—earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, volcanoes, famines, epidemics, and climatic events such as El Niño–Southern Oscillations—have repeatedly struck Latin America and the Caribbean since pre‐Columbian times. The natural disasters that result provide historians an optic into political, social, economic, and cultural structures under stress and stripped of their everyday façades during the colonial and modern periods. Catastrophes reveal the ability of governments and administrators to efficiently and adequately respond, highlight embedded mentalities and social relationships, contribute to political and economic transformations, underscore scientific and technological advances, and the persistence of religious perspectives of calamities. States and societies that repeatedly experience natural hazards develop a culture of disaster to adapt and cope with catastrophic events by creating institutions and building codes, architecture, and mentalities. A historical perspective of contemporary calamities examines the political decisions, social and economic structures, and cultural milieu over time that created the natural disasters.