[2] In most of the houses, walls cracked in two and then roofs fell in; in churches, bell towers crashed down, burying adjacent buildings and their occupants.

[3] Among the buildings destroyed by the earthquakes were a lot of the infrastructure built by general José María Reyna Barrios and president Manuel Estrada Cabrera, whose legacy has been forgotten by Guatemalans.

The Diario de Centro América, a semi-official newspaper owned in part by President Estrada Cabrera, spent more than two months issuing two numbers a day reporting on the damage, but after a while, started criticizing the central government after the slow and inefficient recovery efforts.

Bits of roof hung down the outsides of the walls and the footway was littered with heaps of stucco ornaments and shattered cornices.

"[9] This experience prompted Asturias to start writing when he was 18 years old; he wrote a tale called The political beggars (Los mendigos políticos), which eventually became his most famous novel: El Señor Presidente.

For the first time, the Catholic Church opposed the President; additionally, Cobos Batres was able to inflame the nationality sentiment of conservative criollo leaders José Azmitia, Tácito Molina, Eduardo Camacho, Julio Bianchi and Emilio Escamilla into forming a Central America Unionist party and oppose the strong regime of Estrada Cabrera.