The epicenter was located in a sparsely populated region in the Amazon jungle, about 200 miles from La Paz.

South America also experienced the then second and third largest earthquakes at focal depths greater than 300 km: Colombia, 1970; and northern Peru, 1922.

[2] The rupture was located within the Nazca plate where it is being subducted beneath the mantle of the South American continent.

[4] Pressures and temperatures at the depth of 200 to 400 miles are so great that rock should not undergo frictional sliding processes that produce earthquakes on faults at lesser depths, and the physics of deep-focus earthquakes remains a field of research investigation.

The 1994 Bolivia earthquake was notable in that it excited a wide variety of Earth normal modes due to its large magnitude and depth, which were among the first to be recorded by digital very broadband global seismographs.