Earthquake on the periphery: vulnerability to the telluric event of the year 1684 in Cumaná

Abstract

This article reconstructs and analyzes the socio-historical context within which the earthquake of May 4, 1684 took place, revealing the lacks that accompanied the life of the inhabitants of Cumana, a northeastern city of the current Venezuelan territory. Lacks that built the material basis of conditions of vulnerability that, when articulated with the earthquake, deepened the generalized poverty of a peripheral and unattractive place for the Spanish crown.