‘God is punishing the politicians’: anger at earthquake response grows in Venezuela

Public anger at what many perceive as the Venezuelan government’s botched response to twin earthquakes that killed nearly 4,500 people is growing, with one grieving mother caught on camera berating the son of former president Nicolás Maduro.Maduro’s politician son received a hostile reception while visiting a semi-destroyed social housing project named after his father’s late mentor Hugo Chávez.“I didn’t lose a kitchen! I lost a daughter!” the woman, named as Damely Yaneth Díaz, can be seen shouting at congressman Nicolás Maduro Guerra in scenes captured by the Norwegian broadcaster TV2 last week.“The lot of you should be arrested,” said Díaz, a resident of Catia La Mar, one of the worst-hit areas along Venezuela’s north coast. “This was recklessness and you must pay!”Bystanders cheered on the dissenter, urging the European journalists to continue filming the altercation after officials apparently tried to interrupt their work.Díaz’s comments, which went viral on social media, captured widespread rage at what many see as the government’s inept response to the 24 June quakes, which levelled scores of buildings in the northern state of La Guaira and caused major damage in the capital, Caracas. On Sunday, the government raised the official death toll to 4,490, but that number is expected to rise significantly, with many bodies still being pulled from the wreckage of large buildings.Venezuela’s US-backed acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has dismissed criticism as the product of a nefarious media campaign cooked up in propaganda “laboratories”. Last week, Rodríguez, a close Maduro ally who took power in January after the US president, Donald Trump, ordered the abduction of her leader, insisted her administration and armed forces were working “tirelessly” to help victims. She sought to partially justify the slow response by arguing that many of La Guaira’s top officials had been killed.But Rodríguez has so far avoided high-profile interactions with the families of the deceased and missing who were on the frontline of the crisis, in seaside towns such as Caraballeda and Catia La Mar. On Friday, she visited a military base in the region to address some of the thousands of troops she says have been deployed, but did not mingle with members of the public. During her televised speech, Rodríguez told the soldiers that “wretched” critics of the government and armed forces “will be buried”, in comments that further angered families who have yet to recover the bodies of their loved ones.Amid the wreckage of La Guaira’s fallen buildings, there is outrage over how, in the crucial hours and days after the quakes, victims felt they were left to fend for themselves, digging trapped relatives out of the rubble with basic tools and their bare hands.Maduro’s 36-year-old son – whose father is being held in a New York prison on drug trafficking charges, which he denies – tried to calm the bereaved mother after she challenged him over her child’s death. Asked if he understood the woman’s fury at the government, the politician told TV2’s reporter: “Yes, I understand and I support [her]. I can’t imagine the pain she feels.”Questioned about suspicions that collapsed government housing estates had been shoddily built, Maduro Guerra pointed out that private developments had also collapsed. Asked if the government projects had been built properly, he replied: “I don’t know, I’m not an architect. I’m an economist.”Public indignation and the possibility of social unrest threatens to derail Trump’s efforts to control oil-rich Venezuela after January’s military intervention to seize Maduro turned the South American country into what many consider a US protectorate. The disaster has amplified longstanding opposition to a nominally socialist regime that many blame for leading Venezuela into years of economic and humanitarian crisis and dictatorship.There is palpable anger, even in traditionally pro-government working-class areas, where many died. But the White House has so far stood by Rodríguez’s unpopular administration, sending nearly 1,000 military personnel to reinforce the emergency response. On Saturday, the New York Times claimed the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was now in effect running Venezuela from Washington, having become the country’s “de facto vice-roy”.Francisco González, a removal man hired to rescue belongings from apartments in a wrecked housing project called OPPE 25, was among those appalled by what he considers his government’s bungled response.As he loaded his truck with furniture and clothes, González claimed its actions contrasted with Hugo Chávez’s energetic response to the last major natural disaster to hit La Guaira, deadly landslides in 1999. “[Back then] the first person who was down here in his wellington boots getting stuck in was Chávez. He had his flaws, like every human does, but he loved the people,” González, 60, said of Chávez, who anointed Maduro as his successor before his premature death in 2013. “Not like these scoundrels we’ve got now.”“I think God is punishing the politicians,” González added of the earthquakes, as volunteer rescuers continued to dig for victims in nearby rubble.