Risks and Disasters in the History of the Mexico Basin: Are they Climatic or Social?

Abstract

Using primary information coming from the two published volumes of Desastres agrícolas en México. Catálogo histórico (Agricultural Disasters in Mexico. Historical Catalogue), this article explores floods that occurred from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries in the Mexican Basin, including Tenochtitlan—later Mexico City—and the Valley of Mexico. Through their description and contextualisation it is possible to confirm the social character of disasters associated with natural hazards, be they climatic or environmental that occurred in the core of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexico.