The translation of the city of Guatemala (1773-1779)
After the earthquake of 29 July 1773 the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala was not rebuilt but moved. The decision was taken by two open assemblies, the second voting by plurality for the Valle de las Vacas; the Crown confirmed it and assigned ten years of one tax to pay for it; and a bando of 1777 ordered the old city emptied within a year. It is one of the few relocations of a capital in the Americas that can be followed decision by decision.
Why this wins its question: The move of Guatemala City is usually told as a fact with a date — the 1773 earthquake destroyed Antigua, the capital moved to the present site — and occasionally as a story of an archbishop and a president quarrelling. What is almost never given is the procedure, which is the interesting part and which survives: a junta six days after the earthquake that decided only a provisional move and commissioned a survey of two valleys, a second assembly eighteen months later that heard the surveyors and decided by plurality of votes, royal confirmation of what the vecindario had already voted, ten years of the alcabala revenue assigned to pay for it, and then a bando ordering the old city emptied within twelve months. This object is written from the pages of a priest who lived through the earthquake and printed both sides of the argument the city had with itself, including the case for rebuilding that lost. It carries the costs from the same pages: the petequial fever that ran until May 1774, the smallpox of 1780 with its three new cemeteries, and the absence of any death toll in the record. It also fixes a date the vaccination literature tends to skip — the first inoculation practised in Guatemala, in 1780.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The shocks were sustained, not single. Juarros records small tremors from May 1773, a long and violent one on 11 June that damaged houses and churches, then on the afternoon of 29 July, about four o'clock, a violent lurch followed by "el terremoto, que arruinó á Guatemala", with further large shocks on 7 September and a greater one on 13 December. He writes as a witness: the duration and variety of the movements are not easy to describe "aun á los que fuimos testigos de esta tragedia".
The city argued with itself first, and the losing case is printed. To the calamity "se siguió otra no menos penosa: esta fue un gran cisma, que se formó entre su Vecindario": one faction wanted the city moved somewhere less exposed and further from the volcanoes; the other, "apoyados en la constante experiencia, de que no hay sitio en todo el Reyno, en que no se sientan por tiempos, notables movimientos de tierra", held that since the city would be exposed anywhere it was better to rebuild and not lose its good water, its mild climate and the convenience of using its own ruins for the repair.
The first decision was provisional and was taken in assembly. A junta held on 4 August 1773, six days after the earthquake, presided by the president of the Audiencia and attended by the archbishop and "todas las personas visibles, que se hallaban en la Ciudad", determined a provisional translation of the capital to the Burgo de la Hermita while the valleys of Jalapa and las Vacas were surveyed and the king was consulted. The survey was entrusted to a commission of one minister of the Real Audiencia, two prebendaries of the cathedral chapter, a regidor and one ordinary vecino.
The permanent decision was taken by vote. The president and the royal tribunals moved to la Hermita on 6 September 1773; once the explorations were finished the vecindario was convoked again, met in the provisional city from 12 to 16 January 1774, heard the surveyors' proceedings read out, and "á pluralidad de votos, se determinó la formal traslacion de la Ciudad de Guatemala al Valle de las Vacas".
The Crown ratified the local decision and paid for it out of a tax it gave up. His Majesty confirmed the resolution on 21 July 1775, and by cédula of 21 September following approved most of the projects put to him for carrying the move out, "concediendo liberalmente el producto de la renta de Alcabalas, por 10 años, para subvenir á los gastos de la citada traslacion".
Consent ended where the move began. The ayuntamiento was installed on the new site on 1 January 1776, and on 29 July 1777 — the fourth anniversary of the earthquake — a bando was published in Antigua Guatemala ordering that within one year everyone move, "y quede aquel suelo desierto". The assemblies had been open and the vote plural; the emptying of the old city was an order.
Disease followed the ruin. "No pararon en esto las fatales resultas de los referidos terremotos: prendió en este miserable vecindario una peste de calenturas Petequiales, que quitó á muchos la vida, y no calmó hasta el Mayo de 74." Juarros gives no figure for the dead, either of the earthquake or of the fever, and none for how many refused to move.
The new capital's worst year was 1780, and the response was organised by district. Smallpox spread through the whole kingdom and killed so many so quickly that the dead were not buried in the churches for fear of the corruption, and three cemeteries were blessed outside the city for the smallpox dead; the viaticum was carried to the sick not only from the parishes but from the churches of the regular orders; each regidor took charge of one quarter of the city, one of them was always on duty at the hospital, and a hospital for the infected was established in a country house.
That epidemic is also where inoculation enters Guatemala. "Esta fue la vez primera, que se practicó en Guatemala la inoculacion: y á la verdad, con muy feliz excito, pues habiendo sido tantos los que perecieron del contagio; pocos ó ningunos fueron los inoculados, que murieron." The date is 1780, twenty-three years before the Balmis expedition reached America. The claim of success is the author's own summary and carries no numbers of inoculated or dead, which is why the confidence here is not higher.
The new site did not end the misfortunes, and the book lists them rather than suppressing them: a water spout that formed at the edge of the city and was feared would wreck it, a hailstorm heavy enough that the roofs were expected to give way under the weight, and frequent deaths by lightning — "como con la mudanza de suelo no se desnudasen de la calidad de hijos de Adan, los siguieron al nuevo sitio las desgracias, infortunios, y tribulaciones".