Word: chileanizing
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Temblors in the Ring of Fire are so common that a 7.0-magntitude quake hit Japan's Ryuku Islands yesterday. Today's Chilean quake occurred on one of the more powerful fault lines in the region, where the underwater Nazca Plate in the Pacific gradually submerges beneath the westward moving South American plate. The border between these two plates is known as a thrust fault, and the sudden rubbing of the plates against each other resulted in an earthquake that ripped across an estimated 400 miles of the fault. With a Richter scale magnitude of 8.8, the Chilean quake...
Chile, however, is no stranger to major earthquakes. In 1960, a 9.5-magnitude temblor - the strongest quake ever recorded by scientific instruments - hit the Chilean city of Valdivia, killing nearly 2,000 people. And although today's quake is the strongest in the last half-century to hit Chile, the country has had 13 quakes of 7.0 or higher on the Richter scale since 1973. That geologic history helps explain why building codes are far tougher in Chile than they are in Haiti, which should help limit the number of casualties from today's quake. So far, 147 people have...
...fact that the Chilean quake occurred six weeks after the catastrophic temblor in Haiti could lead many to wonder if we're entering a new era of seismological disaster. But the two quakes are unrelated, occurring on different faults. The reality is that Chileans live in one of the most seismically dangerous regions in the world, and an earthquake as powerful as the one that hit this morning was just a matter of time. The question is how Chileans - and the rest of the world - can better prepare for geological calamity...
...America's conflicts, she is a social conservative, opposing abortion rights as well as gay civil unions and efforts to remove a clause in Costa Rica's constitution that makes Roman Catholicism the state religion. She's also earnestly pro-business, calling on Costa Rica to shoot for a Chilean level of development via increased free-trade accords and ramped-up export of goods like microchips...
Meanwhile, dozens of Mapuche communities have joined forces to create the Mapuche Territorial Alliance, which among other demands calls for the group's political independence from the Chilean state. Whether or not that's a viable proposition, the coalition may well prod the government to a more serious dialogue over the land issues. "Otherwise," says Caifal, "we are creating a [Mapuche] generation that has grown up in a climate of violence, and that offers a bad future for the country." Especially if it means raising ghosts from the past...