Although September 19, 1985 will go down as one of the darkest days in modern Mexican history, the emergence of a more organized and effective civil society was a positive legacy of the devastating earthquake that rocked Mexico City on that day, ending the lives of thousands of residents.
The nation will observe the 30th anniversary of the earthquake this weekend with solemn ceremonies, retrospective exhibits, academic seminars and a concert directed by Placido Domingo, the renowned Spanish/Mexican tenor who rolled up his sleeves and helped sift through the debris of fallen buildings in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
Just over 5,000 bodies were recovered after the 8.1 quake, which hit the capital just after 7 a.m. in the morning, fortunately before most children had entered schools that were unable to withstand the massive tremor. Many people reported as missing were never found and even the most conservative estimates put the final death toll in excess of 10,000.
Hospitals, apartment blocks, hotels, and factories collapsed. Citizens pitched in without reservation to assist the beleaguered emergency services search for survivors even when hope of finding anyone alive seemed remote. One of the most heartwarming stories at that time was that of the “miracle” newborns who were pulled alive from the wreckage of the fallen Hospital Juarez five days after the quake.
The nation went into mourning for the victims but the capital soon began to change radically. The authoritarian veneer of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) quickly faded as citizen and community groups gained the self confidence to challenge the decisions made by officials charged with running the reconstruction and rehousing programs.
Residents of Mexico City blamed much of the destruction on lax building codes and decades of corruption by the PRI. An increasingly discredited party thus handed the initiative to an opposition that saw an opportunity to fill a growing political void and connect with an electorate that, unlike its provincial cousins, was liberal at heart. (Since the 1985 earthquake, the PRI has failed to win a majority of votes in any election in the Distrito Federal, as Mexico City is commonly referred to.)
A major casualty of the negative fallout from the earthquake was President Miguel de la Madrid – and to an extent all the men who have held that office ever since. Criticism of the president and his policies – with help from an emboldened media – started to grow and, unusually, crowds began to heckle him on his travels. The once regal reverence for the office of president was beginning to wane.
And with the eyes of the world watching, a packed Azteca Stadium whistled loudly when he declared open the 1986 World Soccer Cup. De la Madrid’s public appearances in the final 18 months of his presidency became few and far between.
While some analysts wonder whether the rise and subsequent dominance of the left-wing in Mexico City politics could have happened without the 1985 earthquake, the ramifications for the rest of the country were less pronounced but nonetheless significant. Thousands of residents abandoned the capital and moved to the provinces, many settling in Guadalajara where the traditional dynamic of some neighborhoods was dramatically altered, often provoking conflicts. The early morning quake had rattled this city but caused very little damage. The scene in Ciudad Guzman, situated in a zone of considerable seismic activity two hours south of the metropolitan area, was altogether different. More than 60 percent of properties there suffered damage, 50 people lost their lives and over 1,000 were injured. The towers of the cathedral were toppled and never rebuilt to their original height.
A positive consequence of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake was the creation of brigades of specialist emergency teams that are now able to react to natural disasters with consummate speed and professionalism. Some of their current members were untrained young men in 1985 who, ignoring any thought of personal harm, heroically burrowed their way into collapsed buildings to search for – and in some cases find – survivors of the earthquake. They are now routinely called upon, along with their trained sniffer dogs, to help in international rescue efforts, most recently in Haiti in 2011.