Just weeks after Venezuela's double earthquake, the shock is beginning to give way to the most urgent tasks, as well as the most mundane. As the aftershocks subside, the rubble is cleared, and the urgency fades from our mobile phone screens, we are approaching, unwittingly, the greatest and most decisive challenge: preventing the memory of the disaster from losing its intensity. This is the source of the greatest concern, because we must accept that the risk remains present in fault lines, in the soil, and in vulnerable buildings, and that we are exposed to it.
Science helps us understand this process. The concept of "collective disaster amnesia" describes the erosion of social memory that occurs when testimonies cease to be passed on and lessons learned are left outside of institutions. More than a clinical diagnosis, it summarizes a process studied in the memory of risk. Paola Fontanella Pisa's research on the intergenerational transmission of disaster memory, Hirokazu Shirado, Forrest Crawford, and Nicholas Christakis's experiments on collective communication in the face of uncertain threats, and Neil Weinstein's classic studies on unrealistic optimism allow us to understand why a society can historically remember a catastrophe and, at the same time, underestimate its future vulnerability. The 1812 Caracas earthquake is a striking example of this for us.
The Chinese city of Tangshan offers a valuable lesson. The great earthquake of 1976 destroyed or rendered unusable nearly 85% of its buildings and caused more than a quarter of a million deaths, according to the official count. Its ruins, the museum, the park, and the memorial wall have transformed the loss into an intergenerational lesson and preserved the physical imprint, turning it into education and norms that have proven effective during subsequent events, both in that province and throughout its vulnerable geography.
As Plutarch said, “It is not within man’s power to avoid making mistakes, but the wise and good man learn wisdom for the future,” so our country can effectively benefit from these experiences through a pact of active remembrance. Every instance of damage must be transformed into data, open inventories, risk maps, photographic records, independent assessments, seismic microzonation, earthquake-resistant ordinances, budgets, reinforcements, and community preparedness. Independence is also achieved from the yoke of our recurring forgetfulness, so June 24th could be the date for a national day of learning about multiple hazards.
Science provides irrefutable facts, maps, and criteria; the State, continuity and resources; and communities, territorial memory and solidarity. When these capacities converge, memory ceases to depend on fear and becomes a civic infrastructure. To remember means to rebuild with wisdom and protect the future before the ground shakes again.
@betancourt_phd
Very true; the Circle of Oblivion should today be a simple arc, or a geodesic line. June 24, 2026, at approximately 6:04 AM, is a profoundly reflective date for Venezuela. That cry of the Liberator is present today; independence is not only territorial, it goes beyond what we are accustomed to thinking, studying, and learning in a linear sense (only history). It gives us the capacity to invest knowledge in technology and science to foresee the impact of natural phenomena; that, too, is independence. In the 1800s, power was demonstrated by subjugating others to obedience; today, knowledge can give us the power to face natural phenomena with minimal casualties. That was the message of our Liberator back then, applying action to the great risk that his intuition and knowledge alerted him to when ignorance could be more lethal than an earthquake. Today we must continue (with that wake-up call) and apply what we now know to anticipate or minimize the impacts of natural phenomena that can affect more than just life itself, which is already precious. The application of knowledge and organization will be the new elements in our "preventive and first-aid kit."