Venezuela’s earthquakes struck a society already in crisis

Shireen and Anderson: On June 24, two back-to-back earthquakes hit Venezuela. As of now, the death toll has surpassed 6,300 people, and tens of thousands are missing. The earthquakes devastated the northern coastal areas of the country. Can you talk about the days and weeks since the earthquakes hit? What have working-class Venezuelans been experiencing since the earthquakes?

Gonzalo: The earthquakes struck a country already devastated by a prolonged social crisis. The death toll continues to rise, and thousands of people affected by the earthquakes remain in camps, without a clear prospect for their future. The destruction of homes, basic services and workplaces—across parts of the capital, Caracas, and other urban areas, but especially in La Guaira—added a massive natural disaster to the pre-existing social crisis, vastly compounding the scale of the resulting humanitarian catastrophe.

The coastal strip of La Guaira, which was most affected by the earthquakes, is an entire state in Venezuela that covers about 170 km of coast on the Caribbean, and is about 30 km north of the capital, Caracas. There are still no definitive estimates of the scale of the destruction, but apart from the dead and missing, there are about 50,000 people who lost everything or who cannot return to their homes. The death toll that has been confirmed is not definitive yet either—many are still under the rubble and their removal has barely begun, even over a month since the earthquakes. In La Guaira and Caracas, along with some other areas in the central-northern-coastal region, there are about 30,000 uninhabitable homes, hundreds of buildings and houses converted into mountains of rubble. Tens of thousands of people remain in dozens of emergency camps and in improvised street shelters, too, in town squares or in the ruins of collapsed buildings. There are people who, given the insufficiency of official aid, have had to use picks and shovels to remove debris, or have had to pay to carry out debris removal or repairs. Many are recovering from wounds and injuries.

There are numerous testimonies and news stories from people reporting delays or even bureaucratic obstruction of aid from the immediate response to the earthquake through today. The military and police blockaded access to La Guaira, ostensibly for the direction of government aid. This does not seem justified. Hundreds of people had decided to drive to the region on their own accord to provide aid that was not arriving from the state level up to that point.

The slow and insufficient response of the state has made things much worse. For working class survivors, the impact of the earthquakes has also been twofold: They were already struggling with loss of income and near total absence of conditions necessary for a normal life, and now they must also endure the destruction of their homes, the death of family members, and serious injuries, all in a situation of profound abandonment by the state.

In the face of state abandonment, we must highlight how solidarity emerged from below, from the neighborhood and from citizens: spontaneous groups carrying out rescue work, initiatives collecting aid for food, medicine, and supply distribution. This self-organization helped compensate for the absence of the state during the critical early stages of the disaster, especially since the government responded to these grassroots efforts with bureaucratic obstacles and police and military interference. Although these initiatives cannot substitute for the state’s responsibilities, for days they were the only source of assistance available to many people. The grassroots efforts continue to form the basis for demanding democratically monitored aid, and for aiming toward a reconstruction process subject to social oversight in the context of a state that is inefficient and corrupt.

One of the most striking manifestations of the social tragedy that everyday people have endured for years is that the minimum wage has effectively been reduced to zero, amounting today to just a few U.S. cents per month. This violates Article 91 of the Constitution which mandates that the minimum wage cover the cost of basic needs including basic food, goods, and services. Working-class people have had to face the consequences of the earthquakes without wages, savings, or social protection, living in extreme precarity and appalling poverty. Raising the minimum wage to meet constitutional standards is a matter of pressing urgency—one that the tutelary1Tutelage is “protective control,” originally signifying the relation between a lord and a serf. government, the business sector, and their political parties refuse to address. This issue stands alongside other fundamental concerns; the tragedy must also be measured by the collapse of living conditions for workers, retirees, and working-class communities who have lacked, and still lack, access to essentials like public health care and social services needed to address their needs.

The international aid of rescuers and the logistical assistance of some NGOs has been very important in this context. More than fifteen countries sent rescuers and aid to Venezuela after the earthquakes. Among them were the Mexican rescue team known as the Topos, who gave their expertise and dedication to the rescue effort.

But the U.S. government, which already had a presence in Venezuela, rushed to send military personnel rather than quality aid. The U.S. has taken advantage of the situation to advance the military occupation of Venezuela and to bring Zionist Israeli army members to Venezuela under the pretext of “aid.” This is with the forced consent of the tutelary government.

S & A: Natural disasters cannot be disconnected from politics. This is particularly clear in Venezuela, where the Trump administration kidnapped president Nicolás Maduro in January, and then backed Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president. The U.S. then took control of Venezuela’s oil—worth approximately $8 billion. In July, a New York Times report stated that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken control of Venezuela’s finances and is working closely with Delcy Rodríguez. And yet, while the earthquakes have caused an estimated $37 billion in damages to Venezuela, the U.S. response to the earthquakes has been to send only $300 million in aid, and to maneuver to put more U.S. troops on the ground. Could you talk about how the Trump administration’s imperialist interventions have affected the aftermath of the earthquake?

G: As I have already alluded to, the emergency situation after the earthquakes cannot be separated from the tutelage imposed by the Trump administration and the “viceroy” of Marco Rubio since January 2026. Washington’s capture of the Venezuelan government and oil revenues created a dependency that today brutally limits the capacity for reconstruction, while many of the economic sanctions continue to be applied to Venezuela. It is evident that its priority is to take billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil, not to help the Venezuelan people. The other thing the U.S. is doing is taking advantage of the tragedy to expand its military presence under the guise of “aid.”

The U.S. now controls the sale of Venezuelan oil, and the resulting revenues are deposited into U.S. Treasury accounts. Whatever funds are transferred back to Venezuela are allocated in an opaque and discretionary manner, to a government that is itself composed of many of the same corrupt officials who participated in the long-running plunder of the country. The scale of that plunder alone would be enough to rebuild the country more than fifteen times over after the earthquake.

Furthermore, Trump claims that what he has taken—or, we should say, stolen—from Venezuela’s oil has allowed him to cover the costs of the military intervention that kidnapped Maduro and has, in his words, made him a lot of money, and given him more fuel and resources for his war on Iran.

On top of all that, the restructuring of the foreign debt—which should be considered corrupt and illegitimate—which Delcy Rodríguez took on, multiplying it from $172 billion to around $240 billion, demonstrates clearly the advantage Trump is gaining and the pettiness of his “aid.”

Marea Socialista’s position has been to firmly reject this intervention from day one, without defending Maduro and his government, whose authoritarian, bureaucratic and anti-worker drift had already destroyed salaries and trampled on rights. The “international aid” that the U.S. offered to “restore democracy” to the country and combat “narco-terrorism” has been fully exposed as a pretext and mechanism to undermine the country’s sovereignty and deepen its occupation, utilizing an “interim” government that is hostage to Trump and lacks constitutional legitimacy—much like the Maduro government from which it originated.

Even the right-wing opposition led by Maria Corina Machado, which called for imperialist intervention, has been sidelined by Trump’s antidemocratic schemes, which show no respect for the Venezuelan constitution.

The material and social recovery of Venezuela, together with the restoration of democratic rights, requires simultaneously reclaiming national sovereignty over the country’s resources, ending the U.S.’s imperial tutelage, and ensuring that all humanitarian assistance is administered transparently under the democratic oversight of the affected communities and the working class as a whole. The working class must recover democratic control over what happens in the country—it is the victim of the social and political catastrophe of the counterrevolutionary monstrosity to which Madurismo, and all that emerged from it, became.

Marea Socialista has put forward a series of proposals for an emergency and recovery program, many of which are shared with other political groups from the left-wing opposition and with activist movements fighting for working-class rights.

Marea Socialista supports the proposal—made by Venezuela’s May Day Union Current, which we are a part of—for an Independent Truth and Justice Commission to look into the government’s response to the earthquakes.

We have also been calling for a Public and Citizen Audit to carry out an independent and reliable audit of the expansion of Venezuela’s debt, and of state expenditures more broadly.

S & A: In the days and weeks after the earthquakes, anger in Venezuela has been directed against Delcy Rodríguez for her government’s inept response. What has the state’s response to the earthquake shown about Delcy Rodríguez and her government?

G: The ineptitude and capitulation of Delcy Rodríguez’s government is no accident. Her government represents the PSUV bureaucracy, allied with the military and the lumpen-bourgeoisie2I define the lumpen-bourgeoisie as a type of bourgeoisie whose mode of capital accumulation is based on the corrupt appropriation of income, on speculative financial operations and criminal economies. It emerged from the state bureaucracy due to the degeneration of the Bolivarian revolution that has accelerated under Maduro and further in the current period. spawned by the degeneration of the Bolivarian process—and it reflects the continuity of the bureaucratic and authoritarian model of Madurismo, now combined with open subordination to Washington and to interests such as those of Israel. Israel, as mentioned above, was invited by the Delcy-Trump government to “rebuild” Venezuela following its genocide and destruction of Gaza.

The Venezuelan government has shown and continues to show its inability to coordinate unions, communities, universities and social organizations at the service of those affected by the earthquakes. Its hyper-centralized and opaque structure has prevented popular participation and prioritized the preservation of power over care for victims. And the fact is that all the apparatuses of the bureaucratic state are at the service of its predatory leadership, which is now subordinated to Trump’s blackmail in a bid to save its own skin.

Widespread indignation and complaints against Delcy’s government reflects that the tutelage government cannot live up to the needs of this emergency. Reconstruction cannot be left in the hands of a bureaucracy accustomed to plunder, nor should it be in the hands of private contractors, or at the expense of imperialist piracy. Reconstruction should be under citizen control and public audit, which would require the development of consciousness, organization, struggle, and the creation of alternatives for workers and the people more broadly.

S & A: With the Venezuelan government’s response inadequate, how have regular Venezuelans participated in the recovery process? Has Marea Socialista taken part in these efforts?

G: The most powerful response came from the people. Communities organized rescue efforts, shelters, food provision and searches for missing people. This solidarity could be the seed of a popular organization capable of influencing reconstruction and exercising social control over resources, which would then give way to another level of consciousness and create capacity to fight for something better.

Marea Socialista has welcomed these efforts and participates in them to the best of our ability. We propose the creation of autonomous, community-based committees for aid and reconstruction. Together with solidarity movements, these committees should demand inspections and repairs for damaged buildings, and insist on compensation and sufficient state resources for other needed tasks. The committees should also serve to monitor aid and funding, expose corruption, and coordinate with public services while demanding efficiency, as water, electricity, telephone, and internet services in Venezuela are failing, and the healthcare system is in a dire state. It is worth noting that a worker’s wage, or even an average salary, is insufficient to cover the cost of daily transportation.

Marea Socialista is also collaborating with other organizations belonging to the National Gathering for the Defense of the People’s Rights (a coalition of united left-opposition groups), in spearheading campaigns demanding that the state dedicate all necessary resources to addressing the emergency and to manage reconstruction transparently. This includes the demand that the Trump administration stop stripping Venezuela of its economic resources as part of the spoils of an imperialist war following its intervention. We maintain that not a single cent of the foreign debt be paid: not only are these resources needed to address the social and humanitarian catastrophe, but the debt itself is corrupt and illegitimate.

Grassroots self-organization is necessary to compel the state to act, and to guarantee that the state will serve the public’s interest rather than bureaucratic or private interests. Still, this cannot be fully achieved under an antidemocratic, capitalist government, or under domination with the imperialist boot on Venezuela’s neck.

S & A: The current government in Venezuela is markedly different from the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez in the 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to its entanglement with the U.S., how has Venezuela’s government shifted since Chavez in ways that are affecting the recovery process?

G: The government’s deterioration did not begin in 2026. During the Maduro era, a bureaucracy consolidated; it was enriched through corruption, the looting of oil revenues, and the destruction of workers’ rights. The “lumpen-bourgeoisie” of the state replaced any emancipatory project with management that was patrimonial, authoritarian, and corrupt. Calling itself “left-wing,” “anti-imperialist” and “socialist” became mere rhetoric. Chavez’s government was something quite different, as it had many advanced and progressive elements. At the same time, however, it already carried within it the seeds of the degeneration that would later fully crystallize under Maduro. After the death of Chavez, a regressive stage began, paving the way for an imperialist onslaught, accompanied by the moral rot and betrayal of the Rodríguez siblings [Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez], and [Interior Minister] Diosdado Cabello. If any remnants of the best phase of the Bolivarian Revolution remained, it should be preserved and redirected. But what followed was nothing less than a counterrevolution.

The U.S. intervention in January only crowned this process: the old discourse of anti-imperialism ended in direct subordination to Washington. On this point, the Venezuelan government now aligns with the traditional right wing, which shares the same neoliberal program and commitment to opening the country to transnational capital that is now being implemented by the post-Maduro tutelary government.

In this context, reconstruction is hampered by destroyed wages, stolen sovereignty, and the absence of the slightest democratic control over the national wealth stripped by the bureaucracy and the imperialist colonial “protectorate.” The way out of this quagmire is not choosing between elites or leaders who are expressions of capital, but to build a real alternative that is genuinely socialist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, anti-bureaucratic and democratic, and emerging from the working class and popular sectors in Venezuela. It must also be in synchrony with the struggles of peoples across Latin America, and with working-class Americans who are resisting Trump’s abuses and their imperialist state.

S & A: There are more aspects to the U.S.’s detrimental involvement in Venezuela that are impacting the recovery process. For example, extensive sanctions that Trump imposed on Venezuela beginning in 2017 have only been partially lifted. How are U.S. sanctions affecting the recovery process? Also, it should be noted that the U.S. deported over one hundred people to Venezuela just hours before the earthquake, and the majority of them were killed in the earthquake.

G: The U.S. sanctions have aggravated the crisis, making it difficult to access supplies, technology, and financial resources to address it. Marea Socialista rejected the sanctions from the start because they punish the Venezuelan population and strengthen authoritarian tendencies of the state. And it is not a matter of slightly “easing” or “relaxing” the sanctions today. The U.S. government is playing with the hunger and suffering of the Venezuelan people, and the sanctions have served as a pretext for the Maduro and Delcy administrations to justify authoritarianism and cutbacks—and for their failure to meet working-class people’s demands.

But it would be wrong to attribute the crisis fully to the sanctions: before 2017, when Trump’s sanctions began, there was already massive corruption, the destruction of the PDVSA (the state-owned oil company), capital flight and a pattern of looting oil revenues. The sanctions added to and aggravated the situation of a country already devastated by lumpen-capitalist bureaucratic management.

We demand the suspension of all economic sanctions, which fall on the people and hinder reconstruction, but we also call for a struggle to recover sovereignty over oil revenues, to carry out public audits and confront the gigantic national embezzlement. Furthermore, Trump must return all the resources stolen from Venezuela.

Trump has tried to justify all of this in the name of “democracy” and as help to “liberate” Venezuela, but very early on we saw how he treated Venezuelan migration to the U.S. with ICE arrests and deportations. We see that while he extracts oil and minerals and tries to promote his businesses, Trump is keeping an illegitimate government in power while maintaining authoritarian structures and worsening the conditions of the Venezuelan people.

Although the final blow came with the earthquakes, the situation in Venezuela worsened significantly after January 3 under a government that has remained repressive and undemocratic, has made no concessions to the working class, and threatens further hostile maneuvers—such as undermining labor laws and eliminating social benefits. In the months following the military intervention, the government has enacted unconstitutional laws that dismantled oil sovereignty, among other regressive measures.

S & A: From the perspective of Marea Socialista, is the anger against Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela coalescing into significant opposition, or mobilizations? Is there a sense of exhaustion, or of renewed activity? Will the discontent with her government continue to grow?

G: Today, social exhaustion coexists with some signs of renewed social and political organization. The community response shows that there is a reserve of forces that can be organized and potentially transformed into a political force, if it is articulated democratically and independently on the part of the working class. However, the traditional Right is trying to capitalize on this potential (what is left of Chavismo today has become another right-wing force, though not the traditional right wing). On the other hand, before the earthquakes, workers’ struggles had been revived. While they have lessened since the earthquakes, we believe that momentum will be progressively recovered and that there is potential for a class reorganization at the socio-political level. Sectors that still retain a degree of loyalty to Madurismo have begun to mobilize alongside others who are in opposition or critical of the government from the Left. On July 24, the birthday of Simon Bolivar, some of these forces gathered in Bolivar Squares in certain Venezuelan cities to shout anti-imperialist slogans and to denounce the presence of Zionists in Venezuela.

The way out of the authoritarian tutelage imposed by imperialism is not a return to the Madurismo that helped bring about this situation. Nor is it the right-wing neoliberal option that promoted U.S. intervention, the consequences of which we are now witnessing. And the way out is certainly not to resign ourselves to the “transition” plans that rely on the current government remaining under foreign tutelage. The Venezuelan people see this reality and are reformulating their understanding of the situation. The polarization between elites in leadership is preventing any solution that would benefit the majority of the population, as both factions are equally beholden to the dictates of imperialism.

Resistance and recovery are not merely a matter of willpower—they must be forged through organization built by struggle, guided by a class-based program, and driven by a political alternative and alliances independent of those capitalist elites.

We must become as organized and deeply rooted as possible with the working class and people. The formation of class-based alliances or united fronts of action between anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic organizations and movements is very important.

Marea Socialista, who at an international level are linked to the International Socialist League (ISL), in Venezuela currently participates in a union current called Corriente Primero de Mayo. We also mobilize with other left-wing opposition organizations. We are part of what is known as the National Meeting for the Rights of the People, which fights for wages, against repression, for democratic freedoms, against corruption, and in international efforts of solidarity with Palestine and now the fight against imperialist intervention and the puppet government in Venezuela. Within this political space, we have joined forces with the Communist Party of Venezuela, the PPT-APR (Patria Para Todos-Alternative Popular Revolucionaria), the PSL (Partido Socialismo y Libertad), and other organizations—an alliance formed nearly four years ago to oppose both Madurismo and the traditional right. The alliance as a whole now radically opposes the tutelary government of Trump and Marco Rubio, that of Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez alongside Diosdado Cabello, a government used as a tool by the imperialist invader that must be driven out of Venezuela.

Discontent will continue to grow as long as hunger persists, the lack of sovereignty and reconstruction guided by external interests continues, and the dearth of democracy and repression continue. The challenge is to convert this discomfort into a conscious organization and a socialist, democratic and anti-imperialist alternative built from below.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Allison White; modified by Tempest.