{"id":736,"date":"2026-06-30T05:39:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2026-06-30T05:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:39:30","slug":"the-ruins-of-chavismo-as-seen-in-venezuelas-earthquakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=736","title":{"rendered":"The Ruins of Chavismo As Seen in Venezuela\u2019s Earthquakes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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O<\/span>n June 24, two severe earthquakes within the span of a minute shook northern Venezuela, completely collapsing dozens of buildings and damaging others. Families of residents in the Belo Horizonte apartment complex in the city of La Guaira <\/span>searched<\/span> for 41 hours through the rubble without official rescue support. \u201cHonestly, there wasn\u2019t a single Civil Guard officer, rescuer or police officer there,\u201d recounted one citizen in a missing-persons WhatsApp group last Friday morning. Only half an hour later did firefighters and emergency personnel finally arrive at the complex.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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For much of the first few days, power outages, loss of water, and jammed roads into the disaster zones slowed the arrival of the heavy machinery needed to reach survivors. Many families and communities were left to dig <\/span>by hand<\/span> as the crucial first 72 hours for rescuing survivors quickly closed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Five days later, the scale of the devastation remains grim. Venezuelan officials <\/span>currently<\/span> estimate the death toll near 1,450, with more than 3,000 injured and more than 12,000 displaced. The number of missing remains uncertain, but leading estimates put it in the tens of thousands.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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An indicator of the health of a country is whether its response in the aftermath of a natural disaster minimizes or exacerbates the problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

An indicator of the health of a country is whether its response in the aftermath of a natural disaster minimizes or exacerbates the problem. In Venezuela, the aftermath has exposed the decades-long decay of public institutions and infrastructure under Chavismo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former presidents Hugo Ch\u00e1vez and Nicol\u00e1s Maduro spent years hollowing out Venezuela\u2019s institutions for the sake of making socialism look viable, from the medical system and power grid to state media and public works. But the most relevant failure today is housing. In 2011, Ch\u00e1vez promised to solve \u201cthe housing drama inherited from capitalism\u201d through a <\/span>program<\/span> that would see two million homes built over the next seven years. In March 2018, Maduro <\/span>claimed<\/span> to have fulfilled his predecessor\u2019s promise and pledged to construct an additional three million homes by 2025. Many apartments built under the \u201cGreat Housing Mission\u201d were <\/span>constructed<\/span> in the state of La Guaira after mudslides devastated the area in 1999.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The apartments were also built. But like so much of the Chavismo platform, it turned a genuine social need into empty political pageantry. Units were distributed through the state, built at speed, and presented as proof that socialism could provide what the private initiative of markets supposedly could not. What went unadvertised by the socialists was the weak oversight and questionable <\/span>compliance<\/span> with safety codes and construction in areas noted for soil instability.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Soft soil in parts of northern Venezuela, combined with the tall concrete apartment model favored by the Great Housing Mission, was always a recipe for disaster. \u201cThe risk was known,\u201d said Eduardo <\/span>N\u00fa\u00f1ez <\/span>Castellanos, a Venezuelan structural engineer and professor. In 2023, <\/span>N\u00fa\u00f1ez coauthored a <\/span>study<\/span> that found buildings higher than 20 stories and built to minimum code requirements had more than an 80 percent chance of collapse when shaken violently in an earthquake.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The victims of Venezuela\u2019s earthquakes deserve rescue, aid, and mourning. But they also deserve accountability. The Chavista regime spent decades promising to protect the poor. It <\/span>delivered<\/span><\/span> a sys<\/span>tem with virtually no functional emergency response and infrastructure riddled with shortages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Natural disasters test whether a country\u2019s institutions are strong enough to protect its people when things go awry. In Venezuela, the earthquakes revealed in seconds a collapse decades in the making.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image licensed under <\/em><\/strong>Creative Commons\u00a0Attribution 4.0 International<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A most wonderful article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsfeed"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Ruins of Chavismo As Seen in Venezuela\u2019s Earthquakes - National Logistics Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=736\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ruins of Chavismo As Seen in Venezuela\u2019s Earthquakes - National Logistics Post\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A most wonderful article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=736\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"National Logistics Post\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-30T05:39:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/af6e6ad9b3cf5bfe495dc5541ee6a5cc\"},\"headline\":\"The Ruins of Chavismo As Seen in Venezuela\u2019s Earthquakes\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-30T05:39:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736\"},\"wordCount\":651,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/eb005552bccc52ce1b19bdd68c135c66.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Newsfeed\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationallogisticspost.com\\\/?p=736\",\"name\":\"The Ruins of Chavismo As Seen in Venezuela\u2019s Earthquakes - 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