Three earthquakes

1

Earthquake, a sudden resolution of the tensions that accumulate within the earth. According to Friedrich Engels's Dialectics of Nature and contemporary catastrophe theory, opposing forces accumulate quantitatively until their contradiction breaks the apparent equilibrium and generates a qualitative leap. The Andes and the Coastal Range are young systems, emerging by fracturing archaic strata, worn down by the elements and the ages. Our ephemeral existences are shaken by these planetary paroxysms, which, incidentally, have been repeated insistently in recent days in Chile, Japan, the eastern United States, western Venezuela, and now in Caracas and the state of La Guaira. They are a reminder of our insignificance and an opportunity to understand it. “Oh, mental earthquake/ I once felt in my skull/ like the sudden fall/ of a crystal Babel,” testifies Rubén Darío.

2

The Caracas valley is a seismic zone, and according to colonial travelers, the city built there therefore had only one-story houses. The history of its earthquakes would be endless; let us refer to three of the most recent. In the small city, independence had been declared on April 19, 1810, perhaps without a clear awareness of the trials that every declaration entails. The supporters of the empire were numerous and powerful; the republicans weak and sometimes incompetent. Nature perhaps has no purpose; to each of its phenomena, men assign an interpretation that favors their interests. On March 26, 1812, Caracas was shaken by an earthquake that devastated the homes of both laypeople and religious figures, among the latter the San Jacinto convent. Upon its ruins, the Franciscans preached that the earthquake was God's punishment for the rebellion against imperial power. On that site, the young Simón Bolívar rebuked them with words that unleashed an intellectual earthquake: “If nature opposes us, we will fight against it and make it obey us.” Man is not a passive subject of immeasurable forces, but the author of his own destiny and that of his society.

3

The fool is taken by surprise; the wise man learns from them. Bolívar will not cease to reflect on the effects of the destructive earthquake. While intellectually preparing the Admirable Campaign, on December 15th of the same year, he stated in the Cartagena Manifesto: “After the earthquake, the Church played a very considerable role in the uprising of the subordinate towns and cities, and in the introduction of the enemy into the country; sacrilegiously abusing the sanctity of its ministry in favor of the promoters of the civil war. However, we must naively confess that these traitorous priests were emboldened to commit the execrable crimes of which they are justly accused because the impunity for their offenses was absolute; which found scandalous protection in Congress; this injustice reached such a point that of the insurrection in the city of Valencia, which cost nearly a thousand men to pacify, not a single rebel was brought to justice; all remained alive and, most, with their property.” As important as the catastrophe itself is the handling of those who abuse it, and the purpose of correcting it.

4

Later, the young man who would later become the Liberator added: “The earthquake of March 26 certainly disrupted both the physical and moral aspects; and it can properly be called the immediate cause of the ruin of Venezuela; but this same event would have taken place, without producing such deadly effects, if Caracas had been governed at that time by a single authority, which, acting with speed and vigor, would have remedied the damage without obstacles or competition that, by delaying the effect of the measures, allowed the evil to increase so greatly that it became incurable.”

5

And now for the second catastrophe. On July 25, 1967, the 400th anniversary of the founding of Caracas, I was correcting the manuscript of my first novel in an attic on the second floor of my family's house in Sordo a Tablitas when the world began to spin around me. I ran, hearing a cascade of sound that I later learned was the wall-mounted bookcase collapsing behind me. When I got out into the street, I saw the house across the way crumble; amidst the dust, a young man emerged with a towel around his hips, caught in the shower. The earthquake swept away hundreds of lives and buildings in the capital and along the coast. Popular opinion attributed the catastrophe to the excess of commemorative events. The Italian fortune teller Alda Marotta had prophesied great misfortunes for a city "that held too many parties." Pedro León Zapata caricatured her crushed by a wall canvas of her own prophecy. Around that time, Jacobo Borges premiered his masterful *Imagen de Caracas*, a supreme cinematic expression of the integration of the arts. The cataclysm was prolific in masterpieces, but not in prohibitions on building on tectonic faults, studies of materials, or designs for earthquake-resistant architecture like that of the indestructible Imperial Hotel built by Frank Lloyd Wright in Tokyo. The geological earthquake barely served as a prologue to the socioeconomic earthquake of Black Friday in 1983.

6

And so we arrive at the brutal catastrophe that has struck us. It cost hundreds of lives and incalculable riches. Let us reflect upon it. Did we heed the warnings of its imminence? Did we take measures to prevent it? Did we build strong structures or institutions to withstand it? Did we use firm materials and structures? Did we design architecture with sound and resilient foundations? Did we avoid empty foundations on shifting ground? Did we discard fragile ornamental parapets and designs without function? Did we entrust the work to industrious builders, or to speculators eager to destroy it from within? And above all: if catastrophe strikes, will we resign ourselves to our lives remaining perpetually plundered ruins, or will we fight against it and expel the plunderers to build another existence—more perfect, purer, more impregnable, indestructible, and truly our own?

PS: My Cantv fiber optic internet hasn't worked for four months. Some institutions collapse without an earthquake.