"Guerra social": social war. Barrio Brasil, Santiago. Photocredit: Fiona Scott/Periscope Post

A second earthquake, this one measuring 6.3, rocked Chile this morning, striking close to the epicenter of the massive 8.8 earthquake that devastated the country on 27 February.

There were no immediate reports of further damage, death or injury, The New York Times reported this morning, although this quake hit near Concepcion, Chile’s second largest city that bore the brunt of the damage from the first quake and ensuing tsunami.

This quake comes just after some good news for Chile: Chilean authorities announced yesterday that they had significantly overestimated the death toll from the first quake after the names of missing individuals erroneously appeared on lists of the dead. Emergency officials lowered the figure from 805 to 279.

The Chilean earthquake did more than destroy buildings and lives – it may have destroyed the Chile’s perceptions of its social progress. As looters ransack clothing boutiques and electronic shops, attempt to rob ATM machines and generally steal things that have little to do with immediate survival, some are questioning whether Chile’s image as a safe, democratic nation is accurate. The Washington Post reported today that while there were some middle class looters taking advantage of the general lawlessness following the quake, most of those pillaging were poorer Chileans. Though Chile boasts the lowest poverty rate in Latin America, at 14 percent, The Post reported that inequalities between the wealthy and the poor are stark.

“I think there are very big resentments on the part of those who are poorest and marginalized,” Piero Mosciatti, a lawyer and director for Radio Bío-Bío, an influential news station that covers this region, told the reporter. “Chile is a country that is tremendously unequal, scandalously unequal. The statistics show it.”

Armed security forces – themselves a symbol of tension for a country that lived under General August Pinochet just 30 years ago – have brought much of the looting under control. But the image of looters shoving fistfuls of prescription drugs into bags and carrying off plasma TVs remains, just as the words “guerra social” scrawled across a wall in Santiago will. The question now is whether Chile can rebuild both its damaged buildings and its social structure.

And midst the stories of reconstruction and social upheaval, the BBC reported one of the stranger to emerge from the Chile earthquake: A family of Haitian who, having left the chaos of Haiti following the devastating earthquake there two months ago, moved to a new life in Chile. Where another earthquake promptly struck. “I thought we were going to die, because we had left Haiti with so much destruction behind, and came here thinking we were safe, but we ended up living through something worse. I thought this was the year I was destined to die,” Stanley Desarmes, who moved to Chile with his mother, father, brother, and daughter, told the BBC.