As of this writing, 68,000 people were missing after the devastating June 24 earthquakes in Venezuela. We are well past the 72 hours that are commonly considered the amount of time after such a catastrophe that those who are trapped and/or injured under rubble can be assumed to still be alive.
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The carnage from this brutal act of nature was amplified by decades of neglect, corruption, and political ideology:
Rescue workers sifting through the rubble made a grim discovery: entire apartment complexes, many erected under Hugo Chávez’s “Grand Housing Mission,” were little more than facades held together by Styrofoam and thin concrete shells. Video from the scene shows rescuers pulling apart walls with their bare hands, the interior material crumbling like packing foam. “No wonder everything crumbled like cardboard,” one rescuer remarked, as colleagues openly criticized the regime’s failures.
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From 1998, when Hugo Chávez first assumed the presidency, until the U.S. extracted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026, Venezuela underwent a slow, inexorable shuffle down a communist rathole — otherwise trumpeted by Chávez as the Bolivarian Revolution.
Chávez proudly referred to himself as a Marxist, and his ruthless assault on the private sector bore that label out. Under the tutelage of his mentor Fidel Castro, Chávez did what he could to spread his Bolivarian Revolution to Central and South American countries, with some limited measure of success. And now, the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Venezuelans can be added to Chavez’ and Maduro’s loathsome legacy.
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Image: Voice of America