19/02/2024
SERIES: “UNPUBLISHED AND UNKNOWN MELAQUE” by Dr. Roberto Pimienta Woo
CHAPTER I: This series of articles is related to the life, history and majesty of the population called Melacca - today Melaque - in the municipality of Cihuatlan in the State of Jalisco, Mexico.
EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 27, 1563 IN THE BARRA-MELAQUE BAY.
The Puerto de la Natividad was shaken by an earthquake on the night of May 27, 1563, devastating and collapsing most of the houses built, leaving “La Casa Real” very damaged, a supply and ammunition depot, where the Viceroy arranged the support of 150 indigenous people from the surrounding área, sent to the shipyard manager Captain Juan Pablos de Carreon to raise the buildings damaged by the earthquake (order received by Antonio de Turçios).
The buildings that had been built in Melacca to support the construction of the fleet of ships, which by instructions from the Spanish Crown were built there for the expedition to the Philippines, were destroyed by the strong earthquake and the accumulation of aftershocks that for one night and one day they shook the population. The first records of this great earthquake were recorded in old viceregal manuscripts, being the first earthquake recorded and cataloged as magnitude 8, on the Richter scale to this day.
The hands of the Franciscan chronicler Fray Diego de Muñoz describe it as a large earthquake which had considerable aftershocks for nine consecutive days. (IX General Archive of the Nation (Mercedes branch, volume 84, folios 129 verse–130).
On June 25, 1563, by orders of Viceroy Luis de Velasco, everything related to the earthquake damage in Puerto de la Natividad and its shipyard was ordered to be repaired. This document, preserved in Mexico City (Muro, 1975; Castillo-Aja and Ramírez-Herrera, 2017), provides information on the damage caused by the earthquake.
The earthquake in Melacca (Melaque) on Thursday, May 27, 1563 occurred in the subduction zone in front of the Puerto de la Natividad located in the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt. It was one of the first earthquakes in northwest Mexico documented in historical sources. The 1563 earthquake destroyed the Spanish shipyard located in the settlement of Melacca within the Puerto de la Natividad on the Jalisco Coast on the borders of New Spain and New Galicia, causing serious damage to several material structures along 100 km of the coast of the Pacific Ocean.
The 1995 Melaque earthquake was an earthquake that occurred at 9:35 AM on Monday, October 9, 1995, which reached a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was located on the coast of Colima-Jalisco and caused the death of 49 people and thousands of victims, affecting 200 km of coastline. This earthquake occurred in the area where the Rivera Plate sinks beneath the North American Plate as a result of movements between the North American Plate, the Rivera Plate, the Cocos Plate, and the Jalisco Plate.