The Earthquake That Moved a Capital

On the afternoon of July 29, 1773, the feast day of Saint Martha, the ground beneath Santiago de los Caballeros began to shake violently. The city, which is known today as Antigua Guatemala, was then the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala, a colonial territory that stretched from Chiapas to Costa Rica. Within minutes, churches, convents and houses that had taken two centuries to build were reduced to rubble. The Santa Marta earthquakes, as they came to be called, had been preceded by smaller tremors earlier that year, and aftershocks continued until December.

Hundreds of people were killed in the main earthquake, and it is estimated that at least as many again died in the months that followed, from hunger and disease. Water channels were broken, food became scarce, and many families were forced to sleep in the open while the rainy season went on around them. After a strong earthquake in 1717, the authorities had already discussed whether the capital should be moved, but in the end it had been rebuilt where it stood.

This time, the question divided the city into two camps. On one side were the people who came to be known as the "traslacionistas," led by Captain General Mayorga. He was convinced that a capital surrounded by volcanoes and shaken again and again could never be made safe. On the other side were the "terronistas," a nickname usually linked to the Spanish word for a lump of earth, because they refused to abandon their land. Their leader was the archbishop, who firmly opposed the move and believed that the city could and should be rebuilt. For the families who owned houses, workshops and farmland around Santiago, leaving meant losing almost everything they had.

Mayorga did not wait for the argument to be settled. Within weeks of the disaster, he had moved the government to a temporary seat in the Valley of La Ermita, several hours' journey to the east. The Spanish Crown eventually sided with him, and on January 2, 1776, the city council of the new capital held its first meeting. Some religious orders were so reluctant to leave that, in 1778, Mayorga had a much-loved statue of Jesus moved from one of the old churches, partly to force its friars to follow. The new city, officially named after Our Lady of the Assumption, is the one we now call Guatemala City.

Historians still disagree about how the decision should be judged. Some argue that moving the capital was the only sensible response to a city that had been ruined more than once. Others point out that the dispute was also about power, money and who had the right to decide. What is beyond doubt is that not everyone left. A number of families stayed on among the ruins, and the abandoned capital slowly came to be called simply "La Antigua," the old one. Ironically, the broken churches that were once seen as proof that the city had no future are exactly what saved it. In 1979, Antigua Guatemala was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and today visitors come from all over the world to walk among its ruins.