Historical earthquakes in Mexico. Past efforts and new multidisciplinary achievements

Abstract

The 1985 Mexican earthquakes demonstrated that knowledge concerning their history was still scarce and precarious. In fact those earthquakes acted as triggers, because it was then when a new field of research began to develop: disaster historical research. An initial task was to retrieve the history of earthquakes in Mexico in order throughout to produce an exhaustive inventory. The main result was a paradigmatic catalogue, published some years ago as the book Los sismos en la historia de México (Earthquakes in Mexican History). It contains information about every event along 450 years of Mexican seismological history. This paper will focus on the background of this seismological compilation and its characteristics, addressing mainly methodological items concerning sources, qualitative and/or quantitative data, the importance of joint and multidisciplinary efforts, and the research they have inspired on historical earthquakes investigation in Mexico.