The paper traces out the relationships between three sets of actors--workers, factory owners, and government--before, during and after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and places those relationships in the broader context of Mexico's political and economic development, as well as the spatial structure of Mexico City and the garment district. The paper concludes that although victims respond to the crisis by attempting to restore and repair previous social and physical conditions, as social theory predicts, disasters have different effects on different classes of people, who respond according to their needs, vulnerabilities, perceptions, values, and their socially prescribed powers. Where there is no consensus among social classes as to what the normal or desirable social system is or ought to be, conflict between sectors of the population, which was embedded in the social and spatial system, takes a new form as a result of new conditions caused by the disaster.