Earthquakes Have Often Shaken Latin American Politics
How governments respond to natural disasters can shape their political trajectories, an expert writes.
On the night of December 23, 1972, an earthquake measuring 6.2 destroyed most of Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, and killed somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people. What happened next is now a textbook case of how a government can turn a disaster into its own undoing. Anastasio Somoza Debayle and his National Guard diverted international relief aid, turning a humanitarian catastrophe into a personal enrichment operation. The earthquake did not bring Somoza down right away. But it pushed business owners, labor unions, and the Catholic Church into the same anti-Somoza camp for the...
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