Imperialist-Induced Fault Lines: The Venezuelan Earthquake
Collection drives for food, clothing, medicine, and other essential goods have sprung up across Venezuela. Here, members of Provincial Trujillo Commune organize donations for families displaced by the earthquake. (Gobernación de Trujillo)
There is no such thing as a purely natural disaster, especially in a country under siege. Likewise, the response to any disaster is always mediated by social, political, and even geopolitical factors. Following the devastating 1812 earthquake that occurred during the independence struggle, Simón Bolívar said: “If nature opposes us, we will fight against it and make it obey us.” Today, this remark can sound jarring—like a strange anti-ecological outburst—but what Bolívar meant was that the strategic project of emancipation must remain in the forefront and guide our actions, even when confronting a natural challenge.
This should be kept in mind when we think about the earthquakes that recently struck Venezuela. The natural fact is straightforward: there was a double movement of the earth, first a magnitude 7.2 tremor followed seconds later by another measuring 7.5. In its wake, the destruction followed along natural fault lines, such as the San Sebastián Fault that runs along the La Guaira coast, but it also spread along imperialist-made ones. Foremost among these were the fractures in the country’s infrastructure, emergency rescue capacity, and health system caused by more than a decade of crippling sanctions.
These sanctions, which still number more than 1000, are not merely words and hostile intentions. Mark Weisbrot’s research at CEPR in Washington estimated that they contributed to some 40,000 excess deaths in just one year. For those unacquainted with the international finance system, the impact of a sanctions regime of this kind may be hard to understand. However, the net result is that every international transaction becomes difficult. Ordinary trade and credit lines collapse, while companies, banks and governments avoid transactions, even when they may be technically legal under the sanctions regime, because they lack certainty and fear future reprisals.
The consequences affect every aspect of disaster preparedness and response. In Venezuela, millions of people began to migrate shortly after the Obama Executive Order was published in 2015, including doctors, medics, civil engineers, and other trained professionals. Heavy rescue equipment became harder to repair because spare parts cannot be imported. Hospitals struggled to replace specialized medical equipment. Public utilities postponed maintenance because financing dried up and suppliers fear secondary sanctions. Even when transactions are technically legal, banks and manufacturers frequently overcomply, refusing to participate and leaving institutions to improvise under conditions of permanent scarcity.
A second set of fault lines was opened by the January 3 imperialist attacks on Venezuela, in which democratically-elected President Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped in a military operation that killed more than one hundred people, and left many more injured and traumatized. Although the Bolivarian Revolution succeeded in retaining political power—essential to any revolutionary process—it lost control over Venezuela’s oil sales and was forced to introduce “reforms” to the country’s highly advanced legislation governing its natural resources, especially oil.
All of this means that the earthquake in Venezuela, heartbreaking by every measure, has been made far more lethal—both in its immediate impact and long-term consequences—by factors directly attributable to U.S. imperialism’s ongoing, multi-level assault on the country and its people. Nearly 1500 deaths have now been officially recorded, and that tragic toll will continue to rise in the days ahead. The overall number of casualties will be felt on many levels, and the struggle to mitigate them through an effective, sovereign, and coordinated response is now a battleground, in which the contradiction with U.S. imperialism is at the center.
Radically Different Responses
When the double earthquake struck, it was experienced as an eerie combination of thunderous sound, prolonged and severe movement of the earth, and an oddly colored sky. One observer described it as “wind without wind.” People screamed and dogs went mad with fear. Entire buildings collapsed into rubble, while cracks opened up in the beach where many had gone to spend the national holiday. Days later people remain trapped beneath the debris. The situation is especially grave in the cities and towns that line the La Guaira coast. On social networks, hundreds of photographs and names circulate as families desperately search for missing loved ones.
In such a situation, it is natural to offer aid without first thinking of one’s own interests. This is precisely what people throughout Venezuela and neighboring countries have done. Acting president Delcy Rodríguez’s government has also responded swiftly and forcefully, deploying the means at its disposal in the people-centered manner that has characterized the Bolivarian Revolution over the last three decades. Alongside this official response, there have been massive spontaneous contributions: motorcycles piled high with supplies streamed toward the affected areas, while volunteers joined the huge, state-led rescue effort, and aid teams from Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil arrived quickly with concrete assistance.
If compassion drives the Venezuelan government’s and the Latin American peoples’ response, the same cannot be said of U.S. imperialism, for which concern for humanity has been displaced by the motives of profit, expropriation, and domination, and which has so often sought to turn the misfortune of others to its own advantage. The day following the earthquake, Secretary of State Marco Rubio coolly announced that the Department of War, SOUTHCOM, and the marines would be central to the U.S. “aid” effort.
We have seen this playbook before. Following Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, the barely disguised Trojan horse of U.S. “humanitarian assistance” arrived in the form of an aircraft carrier and some 20,000 troops on the ground. The consequences of that de facto occupation in the Haitian case included an obvious loss of sovereignty, documented cases of sexual assault and exploitation, and the cholera epidemic brought by the occupying forces.
In the face of imperialism’s designs, the voice of the Venezuelan revolutionary people is united around three demands: the U.S. must lift the sanctions completely, unfreeze all Venezuelan assets, and return President Maduro and Cilia Flores to Venezuela. If these steps are not taken, the U.S. presence looks quite a bit like a simple military occupation—an integral part of the recolonizing ambitions expressed by Donald Trump’s MAGA imperialism, with its grotesque revival of the Monroe Doctrine.
In Caracas, while people wait for their homes to be assessed, people are either going to shelters or camping in the streets. Photo: Andrew Drum.
The Battle over the Narrative
The struggle to defend the Venezuelan people, their future, and their projects in an integral manner is also unfolding as a struggle in the media and the social networks. False and malicious claims are circulating alleging that the government is not responding or that it is blocking relief. At the same time, videos from unrelated disasters, including earthquakes in Turkey, have been passed off as footage from Venezuela, alongside a flood of AI slop. Much of this comes from Maria Corina Machado’s disgruntled opposition that feels left out of the post-January 3 deal-making.
What is true is that the large number of well-meaning drivers attempting to reach La Guaira caused the main highway from Caracas to become congested, temporarily preventing heavy machinery and ambulances from arriving. Likewise, so many people, cars, and motorcycles converged around the rescue sites that the voices of those trapped under the rubble were difficult to hear, hampering rescue efforts. National and international rescue teams asked for space to work. The government responded by setting up a coordination center in the sports complex called Poliedro de Caracas, where civilian aid is collected and sent in trucks to where it may be needed. In the center, people who volunteer are evaluated to determine where they can be most useful.
If the COVID pandemic taught us anything it is that only a state-directed response can be effective. Nongovernment operators and individuals are welcome but need to be part of a coordinated effort that only a sovereign state can lead. The most common Big Lie being deployed now by foreign media is essentially the same one which has always been employed against the Bolivarian Revolution: that a level of state authority comparable to—and likely weaker than—that exercised by governments in the Global North is “authoritarian” whenever it is exercised in a Global South country. Meantime, some argue that there is no government response, opening the path for forceful external intervention.
Revolutionary Preparation
The double earthquake hit a country weakened by sanctions but strengthened by the 27-year-old Bolivarian Revolution that has profoundly shaped all aspects of Venezuelan society. If sanctions have systematically weakened Venezuela’s material infrastructure, the Bolivarian Revolution spent more than two decades cultivating a new social metabolism. Though still in formation, it has already become the country’s greatest source of resilience. Communal councils, communes, the civic-military union, and public housing programs all became part of the country’s capacity to respond collectively to the crisis.
The revolution has consistently strengthened the country’s housing stock. Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, Hugo Chávez’s housing project initiated in 2011, has produced millions of “dignified homes” all across the country. Most of these buildings, built by a range of Chinese, Brazilian, Belarussian, and Venezuelan firms, have fared well in the earthquake. In the cases where a building was made unliveable—which happened mostly along the coastal fault line—they tended to tilt rather than collapse. Concentrating people in apartment blocks rather than having them dispersed in precarious hillside settlements is also safer, both because of higher construction standards and because it facilitates collective action and the delivery of state assistance.
A second factor is the civilian-military alliance that Chávez promoted. This model, now internalized by the whole population, became the framework for the government’s combined state-and-volunteer response. The civilian-military alliance, which Maduro wisely expanded to include the police, has always been both an institutional arrangement—expressed in the six-million-member militia—and a more widespread political attitude rooted in the class consciousness of civilians and military personnel alike. Its first testing ground was the Vargas tragedy of 1999, precisely where the current hit harder. The civilian-military alliance rose to the occasion then, just as it is doing now.
Finally, it is in the country’s socialist communes that the most far-sighted response is taking shape. Teams from the network called Unión Comunera went to help with rescue efforts in La Guaira. In Caracas’ El Panal Commune, in addition to assessing the condition of the barrio’s buildings, communards set up several collection centers and are creating a shelter for those who have been left houseless by the earthquake.
As in the challenges faced by the food shortages of the mid-2010s, people around the country are turning to communes to collectively solve the medical and existential problems they face and to find a way forward. Given the power of the country’s communal movement and its solid ideological formation, it is possible that the communes could once again become a catalyst for renewed political consciousness. In these difficult times, they may prove decisive in rallying the Venezuelan people around the socialist project, temporarily under the shadow of the January 3 attack.
Years of blockade and imperialist aggression have no doubt left Venezuela materially weaker. Yet the Bolivarian Revolution has produced a new social metabolism that cannot easily be undone: an organized people and a set of institutions capable of responding to crises. If the earthquake has exposed the country’s vulnerabilities, it also revealed where its real strength lies: in the revolutionary people and in deep-rooted social and institutional transformations.
Unión Comunera Brigade in La Guaira. Photo: Brigada Argentina Permanente.
This first appeared in Monthly Review.
The political, social and economic impact of Venezuela’s twin earthquakes (plus: Despite quakes, US still withholds 70% of Venezuela’s oil revenues)
Translation by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. See also further below, “Despite earthquakes, US still withholds 70% of Venezuela’s oil revenues”.
Natural disasters have the uncomfortable ability to reveal the harsh truth of a situation. They do not cause crises on their own; they simply strip away the facades concealing them. The two major earthquakes that recently struck Venezuela, with epicentres in Caracas and La Guaira, not only shifted the tectonic plates of the Caribbean and South America, but also completely shattered the political, social and economic normality in a country already struggling, with great effort, to get back on its feet. This tragedy also unfolds against an already complex backdrop marked by the January 3 military aggression and imposition of US tutelage over the nation.
US sends troops and equipment: Aid as a control mechanism
Forty-eight hours after the most powerful earthquakes to hit the country in 125 years, the US has exploited the humanitarian catastrophe to accelerate its military control over a country it invaded just six months ago.
US Southern Command announced the deployment of about 100 airforce personnel to take over managing Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar International Airport, now operating at reduced capacity due to structural damage. About 130 marines arrived at La Guaira port to assist authorities in the terminal’s reopening, helping deliver humanitarian aid and heavy equipment.
Several US military helicopters have already transported State Department personnel tasked with leading the aid mission. Meanwhile, US Southern Command has confirmed that the US Space Force is providing satellite imagery to assess damaged infrastructure.
To date, Venezuela has welcomed more than 1600 international rescue workers. As for on-the-ground coordination, US General Kevin J Jarrard arrived in Caracas on June 25 to lead the humanitarian response. On behalf of the Venezuelan government, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez appointed General Juan Ernesto Sulbarán as the sole authority for the emergency, placing the La Guaira region under strict military administration.
Economic impact: Reconstruction figures
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) preliminarily estimates damage caused by the two earthquakes at US$6.7 billion (about 6% of GDP), concentrated mainly on homes and property in La Guaira and Caracas, and not counting the enormous long-term reconstruction costs.
The president of Fedecámaras [Venezuela’s big business chamber] ruled out widespread shortages and said the economic impact would be limited because the private sector continues to function. But the tragedy threatens to bring Venezuela’s fragile economic recovery to a sudden halt, following a decade of deep recession. In response, the government announced an initial reconstruction fund of US$200 million drawn from IMF reserves, a figure analysts consider wholly insufficient given the scale of the disaster.
Compounding this crisis is a sovereign debt which various estimates put at $240 billion. This staggering figure greatly complicates the state’s ability to finance a huge reconstruction effort without relying on external support.
Government under the microscope
The double earthquake has placed the executive’s operational capacity and nature of its institutional control under intense public scrutiny. Far from being a simple logistical challenge, the emergency exposes the state’s weaknesses: the constant friction between military control of security and the free flow of aid, the pre-existing collapse of healthcare infrastructure, and an information blackout that breeds mistrust through inconsistent casualty figures.
The interim Delcy Rodríguez government is staking its survival and political capital on its handling of the crisis. This will determine whether it can consolidate power or whether a misstep, corruption scandal or perceived neglect will catalyse mass protests by a society unwilling to tolerate further mistakes.
Elections on hold and the centrality of power
Disasters of this magnitude redefine national priorities, altering the relationship between social classes and those in power. In the current climate, the crisis caused by the earthquakes provides the perfect pretext to postpone any electoral process or discussion of political transition until the end of 2026. It also puts wage demands on hold under the unifying banner of national reconstruction.
However, amid disasters, social solidarity often flourishes outside of the government’s political apparatus: neighbours clear rubble with their own hands, students transform into rescue workers, doctors improvise field hospitals, and churches, universities and community organisations coordinate relief centres.
In just a few days, a social force has emerged whose significance will far transcend the current emergency. This phenomenon not only reveals the strengths and weaknesses of official institutions, but also the enormous capacity of a society to organise itself, care for the most vulnerable and build responses from the grassroots up — a popular energy that will undoubtedly shape the country’s political future.
Sanctions and confiscated oil revenue
The double earthquake has forced the international community to adopt a pragmatic shift. The US announced a $150 million humanitarian aid package and temporarily suspended some economic sanctions to facilitate the flow of emergency funds. Meanwhile, the European Union increased its aid to victims but refused to amend its restrictive measures.
Washington’s move reveals a stark paradox: the nations now providing temporary support are the same ones imposing the sanctions that have strangled Venezuela’s economy and hampered its independent capacity to respond to disasters.
Estimates of the value of Venezuelan assets frozen abroad vary, but are calculated to run into billions of dollars. Economist Asdrúbal Oliveros estimates the total as about $22 billion, although a formal audit has not been conducted. Of these assets, about $8 billion from oil sales are under the US Treasury Department’s direct control.
A workers’ emergency plan
Venezuela’s reconstruction must not follow free-market logic nor become a source of profits for financial elites or the traditional bourgeoisie. It is crucial that the people and the working class develop a national emergency plan based on active solidarity, sovereignty and popular control. To prevent resources being misappropriated and the crisis worsening, we raise three urgent demands:
- IMF emergency funds, international aid and resources from sanctions exemptions must be allocated exclusively to repair homes and schools, ensuring they are not lost to bureaucracy, corruption or the Central Bank of Venezuela’s (BCV) foreign exchange auctions.
- Housing and logistical solutions must come from organised communities. The state must facilitate aid without imposing bureaucratic hurdles, military cordons or accepting foreign interventions that compromise national sovereignty.
- Repatriating frozen funds is vital. We must demand the immediate return of Venezuelan assets held in foreign banks due to oil sanctions. It is unacceptable that, while the country faces a severe shortage of funds for machinery and medicines, its own resources remain frozen. Likewise, the suspension of debt renegotiation is unacceptable.
The working class must not allow itself to be distracted amid the crisis. The traditional right and conservative sectors will try to divert public debate towards artificial and self-serving discussions, but today the absolute priority is addressing people’s material needs, who demand a dignified life and have taken to the streets not only to save lives, but to demonstrate that they constitute the country’s true social majority.
Despite earthquakes, US still withholds 70% of Venezuela’s oil revenues
By Autonomous and Independent Workers’ Committee. Translation by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
While La Guaira state struggles to rebuild out of the ruins of the double earthquake, one financial factor is worsening the humanitarian crisis. Technical reports and expert statements say the US administration’s sanctions policy ensures most of the foreign currency Venezuela generates from oil sales remains under US control, drastically limiting the funds available for reconstruction.
Oil engineer, Einstein Millán Arcia, who is also a former manager at Venezuela state oil company, PDVSA, says since January Washington’s control over Venezuela’s trade decisions has been “growing and sustained.” International buyers, via a network of Treasury Department licenses, are having to deposit oil payments into US-supervised accounts.
The figures to May reflect the magnitude of this discretionary control:
- Total production: Between January–May, Venezuela exported about 152.38 million barrels of oil.
- Frozen cash: This generated a gross value of $11.673 billion. However, 70% of this remains frozen in US Treasury-managed accounts.
- Authorised trickle: Washington only allowed a small fraction of these funds to flow into Venezuela. The US State Department reported to Congress that it had authorised the disbursement of some $3.5 billion (via intermediaries such as Qatar), primarily for the public payroll and foreign exchange market. The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has not formally confirmed this figure.
Impacts: Fewer cranes, more inflation
This has direct consequences on the state’s ability to respond to the natural disaster, which has caused damages totalling $6.7 billion (about 6% of Venezuela’s GDP) according to preliminary United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez, author of The Collapse of Venezuela, warns the structural impact of this policy is severe, especially in the area of infrastructure:
During Venezuela's long economic implosion, the sector that most contracted was construction — with its GDP falling by a whopping 95.9% between 2013 and 2020…
We should not forget that for more than 7 years, US sanctions barred the Venezuelan government from purchasing the heavy machinery that is needed to dig people out of the rubble today.
Added to this is the problem of macroeconomic instability. As most oil revenue does not enter the country in a sovereign and regular manner, the BCV has fewer tools to stabilise the exchange market, driving up prices and devaluing budgets allocated to humanitarian aid. Even the US Treasury Department admits that, prior to the earthquake, there were operational obstacles to coordinating international assistance and acquiring disaster relief equipment.
Financial crossroads
The scale of the destruction, which has left more than a hundred buildings collapsed along the country’s central coast, exceeds the country’s current liquidity. Analysts agree the lack of transparency and discretionary management of Venezuela’s funds abroad adds a layer of uncertainty to the tragedy. According to UN experts, the financial urgency is so profound that addressing the housing and infrastructure crisis could require immediate relief, and even the complete lifting, of financial restrictions on Venezuela’s energy industry.
In response to the crisis caused by the recent earthquakes, the Autonomous and Independent Workers’ Committee takes a clear stance: we join the national and international demand for the US Treasury Department to give back Venezuela’s financial resources.
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