On May 4, 1910, at 6:50 PM, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 6.4 struck the city of Cartago, causing one of the greatest tragedies in Costa Rica’s seismic history. With a death toll of nearly 800 people and the almost total destruction of the city, the disaster forever transformed the urban landscape, the lives of its inhabitants, and the country’s collective memory.

…the proud old town (of the city of Cartago) is a total ruin instead of being the flourishing city of yesterday. It was totally destroyed!

Amelia and Philip Calvert in A Year of Costa Rican Natural History (1917)

As aftershocks continued to shake the region, scientists, journalists, and photographers arrived in the city to record the effects of the disaster. Their notes and, especially, the photographs taken in the following days, constitute a valuable historical testimony today that allows us to understand not only the magnitude of the destruction, but also how the tragedy became part of the national psyche.

A city reduced to rubble

At the beginning of the 20th century, Cartago retained deep historical and symbolic value. As the former colonial capital and seat of important religious and civil institutions, it represented one of the country’s main urban centers.

The earthquake toppled churches, public buildings, homes, and businesses, completely altering daily life. Adobe constructions, very common at the time, collapsed easily, though the residences of the wealthiest families did not escape the destruction either. The catastrophe showed that, in the face of nature’s force, social differences offered little protection.

The streets were covered by mountains of debris, and a dense cloud of dust enveloped the city. The ruins ceased to be merely material remains and became symbols of human fragility and the vulnerability of all built works.

Ruins and the experience of the sublime

Beyond its material consequences, the Cartago earthquake has also been an object of analysis from the perspective of art history and aesthetics. Art historian Tiziana Serena argues that disaster photography turns ruins into an object that oscillates between historical document and artistic representation. The images not only record reality with marked realism but also awaken emotions and generate an almost silent contemplation of the disaster.

The photographs of Cartago taken in May 1910 condense precisely that paradox: they show the horror of a devastated city, but at the same time convey a powerful aesthetic dimension that has endured for more than a century.

Photography as a memory of the disaster

The images captured after the earthquake serve a dual function. On one hand, they document the magnitude of the destruction and show the state in which the city was left. On the other, they build a visual narrative about the tragedy and about Cartago’s own identity.

Photographers favored shots dominated by ruined churches, collapsed public buildings, and extensive fields of rubble. The monumentality of the ruins reinforced the perception that the city had almost completely disappeared.

Historian Gennifer Weisenfeld, in studying the visual representation of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake in Japan, explains that images of catastrophes function as cultural devices capable of shaping collective memory. A similar phenomenon occurred in Cartago: the 1910 photographs transcended documentary records and helped build the historical narrative of the tragedy, in addition to supporting the urban reconstruction and modernization processes that followed the disaster.

Ruins, reconstruction, and power

Although the photographs mainly highlight destroyed buildings, they often leave the suffering of the people in the background. However, the catastrophe paved the way for public policies of assistance, reconstruction, and urban transformation that profoundly modified the city.

The 1910 experience prompted changes in construction systems and strengthened the concern for incorporating safer architectural standards against future earthquakes. In this way, the ruins represented not only the lost past but also the beginning of a new era for Cartago.

An event that transcended geology

The earthquake of May 4, 1910, did not just destroy a city; it transformed the way Costa Rica understood its relationship with natural disasters.

The ruins photographed during those days ceased to be simple vestiges of a tragedy and became symbols of fragility, resilience, and memory. More than a century later, they continue to remind us that all human construction is exposed to the force of nature and the passage of time.

The disaster was also surrounded by popular tales. Among the comments circulating in San José after the earthquake, the belief stood out that the tail of Halley’s Comet, visible that same year during its historic pass by Earth, had passed through the crater of the Irazú Volcano and triggered the quake. Although science ruled out any link between the two phenomena, this idea reflects how the population sought extraordinary explanations to understand a tragedy that seemed impossible to assimilate.

Today, the preserved photographs and testimonies allow us to reconstruct not only the history of the Cartago earthquake but also the way in which that catastrophe became part of Costa Rica’s historical and cultural memory. The ruins of 1910 remain as one of the most powerful symbols of national history and as a permanent reminder of society’s ability to rebuild itself after devastation.

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