A rather large and imposing ‘object’ of knowledge, Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano looms over the country’s central highlands. Situated near the former seat of the royal court of the Kingdom of Guatemala, now known simply as Antigua, it is a potent symbol of the region’s geological and cultural dynamism. Indeed, a chain of dozens of active volcanoes of which Pacaya is part have shaped Guatemala’s landscape and life for hundreds of years. A key moment in this long history occurred in 1773 when a massive earthquake destroyed Antigua Guatemala (Old Guatemala), provoking not only an assessment of the damage wrought but also a more general inquiry into the nature of volcanoes and natural risk. The city was still reeling from the effects of the 1773 quake when Pacaya erupted in 1775. In the wake of the 1773 disaster, the government in Guatemala had decided to move the capital to a new site in a nearby valley, called Nueva Guatemala (New Guatemala, today Guatemala City). Although the reasons for the move were as political as they were geological, the 1773–5 period of crisis represents an enlightening window onto the ways in which Spaniards, Creoles and Indians studied and responded to volcanos and their associated seismic risks.

Historians of science normally trace the emergence of seismology and volcanology to 19th-century Europe, and in particular to Italian volcanoes and the scientific work of Austrian and Swiss geologists. Middle and South American volcanoes are acknowledged, albeit only as an influence on those European scientists who travelled to them to collect data. Such textbook accounts tend to marginalise the cumulative knowledge of native and colonial actors in the Americas who had no choice but to consider these phenomena closely and, more pressingly, learn how to coexist with them both in moments of crisis and over the long run.

Following the 1775 eruption of Pacaya, for instance, functionaries based in Guatemala City collected over a hundred pages of reports from eyewitnesses. As in Europe, many of these eyewitness reports emphasised the frightening nature of the phenomenon. Based on documents culled from the government’s archives, booklets were later printed explaining the great natural dangers of the region. For instance, the booklets listed the 14 major earthquakes that had befallen the city between 1531 and 1773 and major volcanic eruptions going back to the 16th century.

While the government’s priority in this case was to establish the extent of damage to people and property, and to identify any ongoing danger, it was also clearly interested in understanding the natural phenomenon more deeply. During the 1775 eruption, for example, functionaries examined the relationship between Pacaya and other nearby volcanoes, especially Fuego. Were the two volcanoes connected? That is, if one of them erupted, was the other also likely to erupt? After all, new and frightening craters seemed to be opening up on the slopes of Pacaya by the day. The relationship between volcanoes and whether they were connected under the earth’s crust by solid or molten flows of lava was at the time a key question that preoccupied European savants as well. José Maria Alejandre, an engineer who wrote the most in-depth report on the Pacaya eruption, answered the question thoughtfully. He could not be sure whether the volcanoes were connected below the surface, but the presence of hot springs between the two volcanoes certainly suggested that underground heat might connect the two. He had read the works of the Spanish polymath Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (1676–1764), who had written about the eruption of the Sicilian volcano Etna. Although our author could not recall exactly in which part of Feijóo’s learned works the reference to volcanoes was, he was certain that the phenomena he was observing were the same.

In addition to having read books on the matter, the engineer Alejandre could consider himself a specialist because he had empirically observed more than one of these eruptions. He was thus able to compare similar situations. Historians of science often make a distinction between sciences of the field and sciences of the cabinet and laboratory. Clearly, volcanic observation did not invite laboratory experiments. As in other field sciences, travel to compare different sites was very important. Over the course of his service, the engineer had travelled across Central America. There were, he pointed out, different types of volcanic eruptions across the region. This one at Pacaya, Alejandre assured his superiors, was of the type in which lava flows would eventually become solidified into something like the slag that smelting iron produced. He could be sure of this because he had observed a similar eruption of the Nindiri volcano in Nicaragua six years previously and because he knew of another similar volcanic landscape near the city of San Salvador.

Mexican scientist José Mariano Mociño also reported on a series of earthquakes in San Salvador. Mociño had studied the origins and consequences of a volcanic eruption at San Andrés Tuxtla in 1793 and was therefore considered an expert. Both Creoles emphasised the importance of not being blinded by fear. The ‘secrets of nature’ could be understood, but that did not necessarily mean that destructive events could be prevented. Nevertheless, volcano knowledge was ‘very useful’.

The close study of the Pacaya volcano’s eruption resonated across the Atlantic. The governor of Guatemala used the 1775 eruption as further evidence at Madrid to justify his support for the removal of the capital of the kingdom from its old site, Antigua Guatemala, to the new one, called simply Nueva Guatemala. One purpose of the report was to persuade King Charles III and the Council of the Indies that the new site for the capital was safer because it was further away from the Pacaya and Fuego volcanoes and separated from them by deep ravines. The decision to move the city was not just about risk assessment, however. Merchants who wished to upset the entrenched power of the old commercial families pushed for the change. Some individuals, such as the native engineer who built the new city’s aqueducts, were able to build careers that might not have been possible in the old capital. Many poor people who could not afford to uproot their lives, by contrast, were left behind. Then as now, natural disaster could not be separated from social inequities and patterns of landownership. Indeed, the decision led Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz to generate a discussion about the relationship between poverty and the effects of natural disaster.

Despite the political undertones, an awareness of natural risk came to influence various aspects of governance. Archbishop Cayetano Francos y Monroy, after travelling around his Central American parishes, suggested that churches should not be built in the same way that they were built in Europe. Heavy stone building materials were used for vaulted ceilings and columns, and as a result, church buildings across the bishopric regularly collapsed in earthquakes. The bishop recognised that (mostly indigenous) parishioners then spent years rebuilding them, only for the new church to be destroyed again. In a letter to the king, the bishop sought to shape policies that would foster more sensible building practices; at the same time, he also appealed to the crown’s fiscal sensibilities. The tax money and tributary labour that currently went into rebuilding the churches, he pointed out, could be used far more productively for other purposes. The archbishop suggested that churches should be of moderate height. They should have coffered rather than vaulted ceilings and use earthquake-resistant wooden pillars. This vanguard advice was not followed everywhere, but it did nevertheless represent a change of attitude that would soon resonate across the Atlantic world.

New building ordinances were put in place across Latin America and Europe in the 18th century to cope with potential natural disaster. In Lima and Guatemala City, wide streets and low buildings would prevent edifices collapsing onto each other. Buildings so adapted to their natural surroundings, as historians and archaeologists have pointed out, were not a novelty in Latin America. Aztec, Maya and Inca architects tended to design and construct buildings with fewer stories and lighter adobe or thatched roofs and very strong and wide walls, which were less prone to earthquake damage, and this clearly influenced colonial building practices, which in many ways were more environmentally sensitive than their European counterparts. Lima’s building ordinances, for instance, were put in place ten years before Lisbon was rebuilt following its devastating 1755 earthquake. Although further research is required, given the circulation of knowledge between Iberia and the Americas, it is likely that the native and Creole volcano knowledge and experience of living with natural risk influenced the way that Lisbon and other earthquake-prone cities in southern Europe were rebuilt.

FURTHER READING

Brockmann, S. (Forthcoming) Visions of Useful Nature: Science, Landscape and Enlightenment in Central America, 1784–1838 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Dym, J., and C. Belaubre (eds.) (2007) Politics, Economy and Society in Bourbon Central America (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press).

Oliver-Smith, A., and S. Hoffman (eds.) (2000) The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective (New York, NY/London: Routledge).

Sellers-García, S. (2014) Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).

Walker, C.F. (2008) Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).