MEDELLIN, Colombia – Twin earthquakes devastated Venezuela, but it may be the social and political aftershocks in months to come that determine where the country goes from here.
For many Venezuelans, the government-led response under interim President Delcy Rodriguez has been anemic and disorganized. Information blackouts and poor communication in the hours after the disaster — in part due to the absence left by hundreds of media structures dismantled by the previous regime — led to confusion, misinformation, and a lack of coordinated emergency response.
The first quake, registering 7.2, struck June 24 around 6PM in Guaira, an area just 30 miles west of the capital, Caracas. A second 7.5 magnitude quake struck the same area less than a minute later. As of June 29, the death toll stands at 1,450 with hundreds of collapsed buildings in the affected areas.
In the immediate aftermath hundreds of thousands of citizens began to search for loved ones buried beneath the rubble, amid infrequent statements from senior officials and as state television channels played Colombian soap operas.
A growing number of Venezuelans are now taking to social media, posting their phone numbers online in hopes of finding lost relatives. Estimates put the number of missing at more than 46,000.
International help has also been slow to arrive. The United States — which removed former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, installing Rodriguez, then vice president, in his place — didn’t have rescue crews on the ground for more than 48 hours. Even now as aid begins to trickle in reports suggest much of it is centered in the capital and surrounding areas, leaving more isolated regions to fend for themselves.
Some analysts speculate the earthquake may represent the end of “Chavismo,” the socialist political movement started by Maduro’s predecessor, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
It would not be the first government in Latin America whose demise was written in a poor response to an earth-shaken capital: Nicaragua’s Somoza regime following a 1972 temblor that killed 10,000 and left the capital, Managua in ruins; and Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after an 8.1 quake leveled large swaths of Mexico City in 1985.
In both cases, civilians, much like in Venezuela, largely took disaster response into their own hands. The tragedies also created a frustration that united disparate and previously divided sectors of civil society which eventually led to those governments being toppled.
Just as important as the state’s immediate response is the reconstruction that comes after. In Venezuela, that is going to be extremely difficult.
Venezuela was already suffering from a staggering economic collapse — one the worst peacetime contractions in global history — which led to an 80% drop in GDP and hyper-inflation that rendered the currency effectively worthless in 2019. International sanctions, imposed over human rights violations and democratic backsliding, made an already catastrophic economy worse.
Over the last two years, before the removal of Maduro, Venezuela began a slow, if fitful recovery. President Trump then began to roll back restrictions on Venezuela’s oil and mineral exports shortly after the U.S.’s legally questionable military operation that ended with Maduro’s extradition.
The country has the largest known petroleum reserves on the planet, as well considerable deposits of gold and rare earth minerals. The US has since claimed large quantities of both. Oil imports to the US amounted to roughly 100 million barrels in the first 4 months of the year, according to the Council on Foreign Affairs.
So even as Venezuela slowly increases oil production, much of that revenue is held by the US in “trust,” first in a Qatari account and later by the U.S. Treasury Department, according to statements by the White House.
“By the way, we have made a fortune with their oil…more money than they have made in the last 10 years,” Trump bragged in May.
Prior to the quake, Venezuela had also been preparing to restructure its national debt —close to $240 billion, held mostly by the IMF and China. That number is now sure to rise yet higher. The United Nations estimates $6.7 billion in direct damages caused by the earthquakes. The full economic toll — as with the cost to human life — will likely not be known for months, possibly years.
For its part, the US initially promised $150 million in disaster relief, according to the U.S. embassy in Venezuela, barely enough to cover immediate disaster response, much less reconstruction. That amount has since risen to $300 million, with additional moneys going to partner relief organizations.
Yet as Venezuelans continue to dig through the rubble in search of loved ones, and as time passes — diminishing the likelihood of finding survivors — there is mounting anger and frustration over the perceived lack of response by the state.
“The government decided to close the streets,” a man named Wilber told the BBC, noting the decision hampered relief efforts. “Yesterday we waited from 6am to 4pm to get a special permission to come here. We wasted hours.”
To date, DC has stood firmly behind its hand-picked leader, Rodriguez. The administration has gone so far as to dissuade figures like Maria Corina Machado, leader of Venezuela’s opposition and now living in the US, from returning to the country for fear of fomenting political unrest.
That may change, however, if the Rodriguez government destabilizes in the months ahead amid mounting public anger and as confirmed casualties continue to increase.
If human rights and humanitarian needs were ever factors in the US’s intervention in Venezuela, this latest tragedy that has befallen the country offers the Trump administration an opportunity to demonstrate that its interests go beyond the purely monetary.
The alternative, that the Trump White House continues to view Venezuela purely through the prism of business deals, of oil profits to be extracted rather than lives saved and improved, then darker days may yet lie ahead for the country.
Joshua Collins is a freelance journalist based in Medellín, Colombia where he runs the Substack page Pirate Wire Services.
