The aftermath of Guatemala's 1976 earthquake – in photos

In ear­ly 1974, James Hay­man was trav­el­ling through Cen­tral Amer­i­ca with a friend. He’d com­plet­ed a degree in pho­to­jour­nal­ism at a uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C. a few years before – but, after pulling shifts at a local news­pa­per, decid­ed that cap­tur­ing the sto­ries of the day wasn’t for him, and that he want­ed to see the world out­side of his home country.

“We were hop­ing to get all the way down to South Amer­i­ca and we were way­laid in Mex­i­co for a while,” Hay­man says. ​“Then, just as we were trav­el­ling to Guatemala, the earth­quake hit.”

On Feb­ru­ary 4, 1976, around 3AM local time, a dis­as­trous 7.5 mag­ni­tude earth­quake hit the coun­try. With its cen­tre locat­ed about 100 miles north­east of Guatemala City, its effects led to an esti­mat­ed death toll of more than 22,000 peo­ple, left 76,000 injured and over a mil­lion home­less as hous­es, entire vil­lages and almost half (40%) of the country’s hos­pi­tals were reduced to rubble.

Hear­ing about the tragedy, Hay­man decid­ed that he and his friend would con­tin­ue onwards with their jour­ney, pass­ing through the coun­try swift­ly and leav­ing as light a foot­print as pos­si­ble. Hitch­ing a ride with some stu­dents, the pair were dri­ven across the bor­der, past miles of destruc­tion, and dropped off in Guatemala City where they spent a night at a hos­pi­tal. It was there they received a pro­pos­al that would upend their plans.

“Some stu­dents from the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty came by and said: ​‘Are you inter­est­ed in doing any vol­un­teer work for the UN?’” Hay­man recalls. ​“So I said ​‘yeah, absolute­ly’ and I spent the next four months work­ing for the UN and also photographing.”

Near­ly half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, a num­ber of his black-and-white pho­tographs, tak­en from his time help­ing with the country’s rebuild­ing and response effort are now pre­sent­ed in his series Guatemala, 1976. Trav­el­ling around the country’s wild ter­rain, Hay­man would help pro­vide com­mu­ni­ties with food, cloth­ing and build­ing mate­ri­als. ​“We were going out to the mid­dle of the jun­gle or up in the moun­tains and ask peo­ple what they need­ed because of the earth­quake,” he says, with a gen­tle smile. ​“They would laugh at us and say: ​‘We need every­thing we need­ed before the earth­quake – we have nothing.’”

The pic­tures hint at the severe scale of the dam­age, from a cross atop a church knocked from its posi­tion to a makeshift bar­ber shop erect­ed among wrecked build­ings. ​“The major­i­ty of build­ings in Guatemala were made out of brick and mor­tar,” Hay­man explains of how appar­ent the dev­as­ta­tion was. ​“There was no such thing as being test­ed for earth­quakes, so they just crumpled.”

“The major­i­ty of peo­ple had [then] built hous­es made out of wood and thatched roots,” he adds. ​“For one because that was all they had but also there were always after­shocks and if the roof col­lapsed it was [less like­ly] to kill you in the way a con­crete roof would.”

While the sit­u­a­tion was bleak, the shots also demon­strate a lev­el of com­ing togeth­er and com­mu­ni­ty as peo­ple rebuilt their vil­lages, towns and lives. With can­did close-up por­traits of fam­i­lies and shots tak­en among tight­ly hud­dled crowds – a human­i­ty and spir­it of resilience shines through. For Hay­man, see­ing and being part of that process dur­ing the four months he spent in Guatemala would be deeply for­ma­tive for him, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly as a photographer.

“I was over­whelmed by the destruc­tion – peo­ple that were forced to live in a tarp tent or under a thatched roof next to their destroyed home,” he says. ​“Peo­ple not hav­ing elec­tric­i­ty, or potable water, and then that led to [me think­ing] I need to do what­ev­er I can to help people. 

“It became a polit­i­cal thing for me, I became polit­i­cal­ly aware of the inequities in the world,” he con­tin­ues. ​“It sent me on a path that I con­tin­ued on today.”

Guatemala, 1976 and oth­er pho­tog­ra­phy by James Hay­man can be seen on his web­site and Insta­gram.

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