A magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook southern Peru this Thursday, ten days after a 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia. The closeness in time —and the fact that both countries share the same tectonic plate— reopened a question that had already been raised after the Chocó earthquake: can two earthquakes occurring thousands of kilometers apart be connected to each other?
The movement this Thursday in Peru, according to the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), had its epicenter 35 kilometers north of Coracora, in the province of Parinacochas, Ayacucho region, and a depth of 108 kilometers. It was felt in Arequipa, Ica, Cusco, Apurímac, and even on the upper floors of some buildings in Lima. The report was recorded at 1:00 p.m. and so far no fatalities have been reported, although there were landslides in rural areas near the epicenter.
The head of the IGP, Hernando Tavera, stated that “so far nothing critical has happened,” while evaluation work continues in the areas most affected by the movement.
Two processes, one same tectonic belt
The Chocó earthquake, on August 10, had its epicenter in San José del Palmar and a depth close to 100 kilometers. The Colombian Geological Service (SGC) classified it as the most intense recorded in the country so far this century. According to the entity, it originated from the subduction of the Nazca plate beneath the South American plate, the same process that explains much of the seismicity of western Colombia.
And that same plate runs along much of the western coast of South America. This was explained by Colombian seismologist Darío Rivera Vargas, who specified that “the Nazca plate covers what is Chile, Peru, Colombia,” that is, all the countries located on that stretch of the Pacific.
That belt corresponds precisely to the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region that crosses about 30 countries — including Colombia and Peru — and concentrates about 90 percent of the world’s seismic activity. Several oceanic plates interact there, constantly sinking beneath the continent, releasing energy in the form of earthquakes and, in some cases, volcanic eruptions.
Do they share a plate, but are they related?
Sharing a belt and plate does not mean that two earthquakes respond to the same cause. That was the argument presented by several geologists consulted after a similar episode occurred a few weeks ago, when Venezuela and Colombia recorded large magnitude earthquakes just six weeks apart.
Argentine geologist Andrés Folguera, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and researcher at Conicet, explained at that time that the rupture mechanisms of each earthquake depend on the plate involved, the depth of the earthquake, and the type of fault activated, variables that are usually different even between neighboring countries.
Regarding the possibility that distant seismic events are connected, Folguera was emphatic: it is a matter that is just beginning to be studied academically and will probably be the subject of research in the coming months, although his personal hypothesis is that there is no direct relationship between them.
Colombian geologist Adriana Ocampo, who worked for several decades at NASA, agreed with that diagnosis when consulted by this newspaper after the Chocó earthquake: the seismic activity recorded this year in countries such as Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico responds to the tectonic dynamics specific to each region, not to an anomalous phenomenon nor to a chain of cause and effect between distant events.
What does explain the coincidence
What can explain the perception that “everything shakes at the same time” is the natural frequency of seismic activity in the belt. Peru, for example, records between two and three seismic movements per day, according to the IGP, and has already accumulated 569 earthquakes so far in 2026. Colombia, for its part, averages 2,500 seismic events monthly, most imperceptible to the population, according to the SGC.
In that context, two large magnitude earthquakes occurring days or weeks apart in different points of the same belt do not constitute a statistical anomaly, but rather another expression of the usual behavior of one of the most active zones on the planet.
As Folguera recalled, science does not yet have the final word on whether there are long-range links between earthquakes separated by thousands of kilometers. But, for now, the available evidence points in only one direction: each earthquake responds to its own geological history.