‘my Mom’s Trapped In There’: Quakes Shake Confidence In Venezuela's Trump-backed Regime

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Cristian knows that his mother lies lifeless beneath the rubble. The only question is where.

The boyish 22-year-old uses his hands to show how the 12-story building where he used to live collapsed when a double earthquake struck Venezuela in late June.

First, it tipped sideways. Then, it folded in on itself, “like a flower closing,” he says, curling his fingers inward.

He was less than an hour’s drive away in Caracas when it happened. By the time he arrived on the scene, both the building and his mother were gone. With no rescuers in sight, he started to dig.

He’s still digging.

“My mom's trapped in there. And nobody has helped me get her out, you understand?” Cristian said. “There’s been no help.” Like some other survivors, he did not want to give his last name for fear of reprisals for criticizing the government.

For many Venezuelans, the disaster has been a crystallizing moment, reminding them that despite the U.S. capture of former dictator Nicolás Maduro more than six months ago, they are still living under the same inept regime that they blame for decades of decline.

The disaster marks a “before and after,” said Trino Márquez, a sociology professor at the Central University of Venezuela. “From here on out, it'll be much harder to contain public discontent.”

According to the government’s latest figures, more than 5,500 people were killed and 16,700 more were injured in the June 24 quakes; many people believe that is likely an undercount. NASA satellite data suggests some 58,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed. A World Bank report released last week estimates the damage to physical assets at nearly $20 billion. Together, those tallies make the earthquakes the deadliest and most economically damaging disaster in Venezuela since the Caracas earthquake of 1812.

Hardest-hit has been the state of La Guaira, which is dense in government-built housing as a result of another deadly disaster: catastrophic mudslides in 1999 that killed an estimated tens of thousands of residents. Survivors were eventually moved into apartment blocks built under a flagship housing project touted by the government as a symbol of the socialist revolution. But many see the extensive damage those buildings suffered in the quake as evidence of something else altogether: corruption, poor oversight and a disregard for individuals’ lives.

Five weeks after the twin quakes, the coastal area still resembles, in the words of one resident, “a warzone.” The dust of pulverized concrete hangs in the air; the decomposing bodies trapped in the wreckage have drawn swarms of flies.

A former golf course has been turned into a makeshift camp, with tents of different sizes — some bearing the logos of USAID and Samaritan’s Purse, a U.S.-based charity — linked by narrow, muddy footpaths. At meal times, long lines form at the stand of World Central Kitchen, one of several foreign NGOs that remain in the area after most international search-and-rescue teams returned home.

The overwhelming scale of the foreign aid has had the unfortunate effect for the government of eclipsing their own efforts. Uniformed Venezuelan personnel, particularly members of the military, are a presence but often appear to be carrying out largely passive duties, such as manning checkpoints or waving through traffic.

At the camp, soldiers assigned to maintain security watched a soccer match on a screen while volunteers continued to work their way through the rubble nearby. Only a relatively small number appeared to be actively involved in clean-up efforts.

“They come to help with the search for half an hour, then they leave,” one man grumbled. Behind him, one of his adult sons slept on a bare mattress, his leg bandaged after falling into a hole while clearing rubble. His other son, the man said, had continued the daily search for missing relatives.

The landscape is punctuated by what look like giant molehills, each mound a composite of concrete, rebar, personal belongings and human remains.

Scores of volunteers, mostly men, pick through the wreckage, many equipped with little more than gloves and shovels — if that. Stumbling upon a corpse is considered a cause for joy.

“Even though they're no longer with us, they deserve to come out of there,” says Lorena Laya, 24, who managed to retrieve the remains of her stepmother and younger sister from the debris but is still searching for her father and 15-year-old brother.

“I've seen some ‘professionals’ toss the bodies around or handle them without proper care. They may be dead, but they deserve to be treated with respect. And so do those who survived.”

Coming more than six months after U.S. forces captured Maduro, the quake is the biggest challenge yet for the U.S.-backed interim government of acting president Delcy Rodríguez.

Its response has been twofold. On one hand, it has opened the country to scores of foreign journalists, aid organizations and U.S. troops. The deference shown to the visitors — with Rodríguez personally awarding medals to rescue dogs from countries including the United States — marks a sharp break from decades of hostility towards the Western world.

On the other, it has occasionally reverted to what one Western diplomat jokingly called its “empire-strikes-back” habits.

When, at a press conference, a Spanish journalist pressed the president to address accusations that government help after the quake had been slow to arrive, a visibly irritated Rodríguez lashed out at those allegedly trying “to politicize” the tragedy, calling it “disgraceful.”

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello separately has taken to Instagram to denounce journalists critical of the government’s earthquake response as “paid propagandists” spreading “disinformation.” Cabello and state media have seized on comments made by Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations resident coordinator ⁠in Venezuela, who has said there were no barriers to aid entering the country, to defend the government response.

But in La Guaira and elsewhere, bitter resentment towards the government is still widespread, even among some traditionally considered staunch supporters of the Chavista government. Among the complaints are that official rescue efforts were virtually nonexistent during the crucial first 72 hours, that they were woefully under-equipped once they did arrive and that officials have been more interested in photo opportunities than in owning up to past mistakes.

“In this area alone there are thousands of police and other security organs,” said one volunteer who took leave from his job in the Venezuelan National Guard to join the search effort.

“If each of them spent even two hours helping out here, we wouldn't be in this situation,” he said, adding he risked losing his job.

Several residents recounted with satisfaction how they heckled the local mayor during a visit, one of several displays of public anger toward officials in recent weeks. A video shared widely online shows residents shouting “Get out!” at Rodríguez during a visit to one of the affected areas in late June.

“People have lost their fear,” Márquez, the sociologist, said. “This could be the Delcy government's Malvinas moment,” he added, referring to the 1982 war known in the UK as the Falklands war that accelerated the collapse of Argentina's military junta by exposing it as incompetent in the eyes of its own population.

The U.S., however, appears set on dragging her through the crisis. Shortly after the quake, U.S. chargé d’affairs John Barrett, the highest ranking American on the ground, told Venezuelan media he had “a great deal of confidence” in how the authorities were handling the disaster.

“I have seen total transparency and a concern for taking care of the people,” he added.

Visiting senior U.S. officials have publicly shaken handswith Cabello despite the fact that he is still on a U.S. wanted list and his former close ally Maduro sits in jail.

To many Venezuelans, those actions have sent an unequivocal message that Washington, which they see as actually running the country, is throwing its weight behind the current government, no matter how unpopular it may be.

Seemingly eager to turn a page on domestic tensions, the White House instead has shifted attention onto planned talks in August between the interim government and opposition-minded former lawmakers, with the eventual goal of holding new national elections. Notably, the talks will not include Venezuela's most popular opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who, according to multiple reports, was thwarted in her efforts to return to Venezuela by the White House.

While many Venezuelans said they welcomed any step towards free elections, however modest, they also voiced concerns about the U.S. commitment to democracy and real change. The Trump administration’s anointment of Rodríguez and focus on profiting economically from the intervention has been especially discouraging to victims of Maduro’s repression.

“After January, we were hopeful, but seven months later it’s all about oil negotiations and nothing else,” said one woman at a rally organized by the Alliance for the Freedom of Political Prisoners rights group in Caracas.

Since the government passed a new amnesty law earlier this year, some 700 prisoners have been released but hundreds of others remain behind bars.

“U.S. diplomats are sitting down with the exact same people that are keeping our loved ones hostage… It feels like we’re being mocked,” the protester said bitterly. She asked to remain anonymous out of fear that speaking out would have repercussions for her incarcerated husband.

“People expected that Maduro's departure would usher in a quick democratic transition,” Márquez said. “It didn't happen because it wasn't part of Trump's plans, but that comes at the price of discrediting the U.S. leadership,” in the eyes of many Venezuelans, he said. The Rodríguez government’s faltering earthquake response further undermines U.S. standing.

Since January, “the perception of the U.S. has shifted from being the hero of the story to increasingly being questioned by the public,” said Ricardo Ríos, a Caracas-based public opinion expert.

Preliminary polling data for July suggests Venezuelans are grateful for U.S. aid following the disaster — which Barrett has said exceeds $310 million — but also that the politically active segments of the population are troubled by Washington's undisguised support for an increasingly unpopular government.

“The poor handling of the disaster has destroyed Rodríguez’s ratings. Roughly 90 percent of the population now rejects her,” added Ríos, who heads the polling and consulting firm Poder & Estrategia. “From an electoral standpoint, that's irreversible.”

A survey conducted for Bloomberg by the Brazilian pollster AtlasIntel in June found that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's approval rating in Venezuela had fallen 15 percentage points since February, dropping below Trump's, which has fluctuated beneath 50 percent.

In La Guaira, as a middle-aged man sitting beside a makeshift shelter let out a piercing wail, Cristian, the student, said it could mean only one of two things.

“He's either overwhelmed by the scope of the search, or he's found the person he was looking for,” he remarked matter-of-factly.

With every passing day, as the bodies further decompose in the sweltering heat, the searchers’ chance of stumbling upon anything remotely resembling the person they once knew gets smaller. After weeks of looking, one mother finally found her son in the rubble — but only his head.

“At some point, after all this, I'll have to see a psychologist or something,” said Cristian.

A day earlier, he recognized a mattress among the debris and felt a surge of hope. It meant he was getting closer.