VENEZUELA PERSPECTIVE

Caracas, July 9, 2026. Two weeks after the double earthquake on June 24 — two tremors of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck Caracas and its outskirts —, the official toll continues to rise without stabilizing. According to the latest official report released by the government and relayed by Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, 3,685 people have died and 16,740 have been injured; 6,462 have been rescued from the rubble. At the same time, 17,907 residents have been left homeless, 856 buildings have been damaged, and 190 have completely collapsed. The authorities claim to have deployed 29,567 personnel, 28,362 volunteers, and 4,388 international rescuers, as well as set up 87 temporary camps and distributed 9,603 tons of food and 8.3 million liters of water.

However, the independent Venezuelan press, via Efecto Cocuyo and Runrun.es, points out inconsistencies in these successive reports: certain figures, such as the number of temporary camps, disappear from one report to another without explanation. Runrun.es mentions, based on non-official journalistic sources, more than 31,000 missing people — a figure much higher than the government's data. An editorial published by Efecto Cocuyo goes further, estimating that "the government seems to be devoting more energy to controlling the narrative than to coordinating relief efforts," and presenting the state's response as a symptom of more than two decades of institutional weakening.

An investigation conducted with Bellingcat has also located mass graves at the La Esperanza cemetery, near La Guaira, where AFP and Deutsche Welle report the burial of 150 unidentified bodies in individual numbered graves "by plot and by code".

On the international level, Venezuela's government has been the focus of efforts to provide aid, with the United States affirming that it has mobilized more than $386 million in humanitarian aid and set up an air bridge from Miami, coordinated with the Red Cross, Unicef, the World Food Program, as well as Airlink and Amazon, to help approximately 70,000 affected people.