Venezuelan documentation in the analysis of the 1875 Cúcuta earthquake

Seismic Threat

Abstract

This essay addresses the results obtained from a documentary investigation for the period of the Cucuta earthquake of May 18, 1875, which affected the North Santander Departmentm Colomia of and the Tachira´s state, Venezuela, also damaging other Colombian and Venezuelan localities. Tachira´s data has been used without it being treated unequally, since the geographical border doesn´t represent any historiographical border. The Cucuta population in 1875 there are relationships whose task is to expand the seismological information, improve the understanding of the event and its impact at the end of the 20th century and following. Its historical-geological-geophysical treatment has been used so far this century, responding in a novel way from the perspective of Venezuelan research institutions. The analysis uses eighteen letters from 80 pieces of the La Opinion Nacional newspaper, are contained in 68 official files in one volume; number 906, Ministry of the Interior and Justice, 1875, General Archive of the Nation distributed between the History National Academy and the Venezuelan National Library, linked to the study of Tachira. The
material handled is extensive in data corresponding to the Tachira State more any of the Andean states, without any detriment to San Jose de Cucuta, its macroseismic epicenter.