ABSTRACT
A perspective emerged in the social scientific study of disasters in which an overall reconsideration of disasters as “extreme events” was undertaken. That is, disasters began to be interpreted less as the result of geophysical extremes such as storms, earthquakes, avalanches, droughts, and much more as functions of an ongoing social order, the structure of human environment relations, and the larger framework of historical processes that shaped these phenomena. In order to assess the relationships between disasters, human vulnerability, and the conditions of underdevelopment in the Andes, it is necessary to survey very briefly the array of natural hazards which characterize the region. The Andes are and have always been a very hazard-prone region of the world. In general the natural bases for this precarious condition lie in two dimensions: climatology and geology. The Spaniards were both ignorant and largely uncaring about Andean notions of territoriality and settlement patterns.
