Nearly 2,000 people are dead and over 10,500 injured after twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela on June 24, but for survivors like Angelica Mundrain, the disaster's true toll is the state's abandonment. Thousands more remain missing as the chances of finding survivors alive diminish with each passing hour. Mundrain, whose son, niece, and nephew are trapped beneath the rubble of her flattened beachfront apartment in La Guaira, has waited six days for heavy machinery to clear the debris. “We’ve been abandoned. We feel helpless. What we have seen is a lack of organization, a lack of empathy, a lack of everything,” she stated.
State Apparatus Paralyzed
The earthquakes have exposed the profound inability of the party that has governed Venezuela for 27 years, now under acting President Delcy Rodriguez, to perform basic governmental functions. In the critical 72 hours following the collapse of residential buildings, pharmacies, hotels, and stores across La Guaira state, Caracas, and surrounding regions, the state's response primarily involved directing traffic. Police officers, intelligence agents, and armed forces personnel manned intersections while the dispossessed searched for loved ones among the wreckage.
Civilians, often working alone or with foreign rescuers, undertook the grim task of sifting through rubble. Ambulances were trapped in miles-long traffic jams. Hospitals, already struggling, were undersupplied and understaffed. Emergency personnel responded with little to no equipment. A week later, many coastal residents in La Guaira reported that most rescues and recoveries were still being carried out by fellow Venezuelans and foreign teams equipped with thermal cameras, sound detectors, and trained dogs. Meanwhile, men and women in Venezuelan uniforms often stood by, watching, with state workers reportedly taking selfies.
Tulane University professor David Smilde, a three-decade observer of Venezuela, noted that the disaster underscored the state's systemic decay, linking the poor response to the mass exodus from the public sector. He cited extremely low pay and pervasive corruption as reasons why many government employees haven't worked in months or years. Smilde described the situation as “like trying to have a baseball team with three people on the field,” highlighting the absence of specific duties and emergency protocols.
Privilege Dictates Survival
Wealth and government connections directly shaped the rescue efforts, creating a stark divide in who received aid. At one collapsed building, the presence of police and military school students suggested that officials or politically connected individuals resided there. Officers from a neighboring state searched for a captain, while students and national guard members sought a major general. A telescopic crane, parked for hours, was rented by relatives of the well-off families who lived in the building. Angelica Mundrain, however, could not afford such a luxury.
People's Anger Rises
The palpable anger over the state's inadequate response led to direct confrontations between residents and machine operators. In one instance, when a government-provided excavator attempted to leave the site of a flattened public housing building, people blocked traffic to prevent its departure and forcibly removed the operator from the cab. Electrician Daniel Castillo, who pulled his mother and son alive from their second-floor public housing apartment in La Guaira hours after the quake, waited another day to retrieve his brother’s body.
Waiting for a free bag of hygiene products from a tent staffed by the Venezuelan armed forces, Castillo observed the stark contrast between the state's representatives and the working people. “You see the guards, and their uniforms are spotless, not dirty at all,” he said, comparing the pristine uniforms of Venezuela’s National Guard members to the dust-covered civilians and foreign rescuers who had toiled for days. “The government did nothing.”