Humanitarian Aid as Global Governance: The Architecture of the Red Cross’s Relief Operations after the 1976 Guatemala Earthquake

Abstract

This paper analyses the disaster relief operation that was set in motion immediately after the 1976 Guatemala earthquake through the activities of the Guatemalan Red Cross Society. Already in the emergency phase, “Guatecruz” built field offices in the disaster region to manage both the relief efforts as well as to set up forty-three tent cities. By taking a seat in the disaster zone, as opposed to coordinating from a distant headquarters, Guatecruz became the main governing body in a large network of different national and international state and non-state actors. This paper sets out to elucidate the non-governmental logic behind the making, financing, building, and operation of Guatecruz’s field offices and introduce it as an early example of contracting out services that were previously controlled by the government to non-governmental organisations. Untangling a large-scale humanitarian crisis from these field offices, this paper introduces a specific institutional history that uses decentralisation as a method to plan, develop, and build an “architecture of global governance.”