It’s common practice for specialized rescue teams to travel to other countries to help local authorities recover bodies or survivors after a disaster such as an earthquake. This is why those teams have such international missions as part of their profile. However, in the case of Venezuela in 2026, the population is mostly on its own. 

Aymara Lorenzo recorded a mother searching for her two children and her husband, unable to hear them calling from inside the ruins, deprived of any help from the State. It’s the same thing we see over and over in the area. Time goes by, and people agonize under the rubble.

Beyond places like Chacao municipality, where local resources are more available, and one can see Mayor Gustavo Duque on the site, only a few soldiers of the National Guard and police officers are seen in the myriad of videos that cellphones are distributing since the aftermath of the earthquakes on Wednesday afternoon. 

The armed forces were mostly absent during the day after. On Friday, they took over La Guaira, restricted access to that state (the area was actually overwhelmed by volunteers and relatives looking for survivors), and started to constrain the work of journalists and civilians. We are going to see a lot of propaganda saying that FANB is saving people and imposing order, but the animus on the ground is more like what can be seen in this video: when a bunch of soldiers found a stack of US dollars, the crowd made them break it to avoid them stealing it.  

Foreign hands to replace a national government

There’s one matter where the Rodriguez interim government and the Venezuelan military are doing something useful, in perfect coherence with what they have done since January 3: getting help from abroad and delegating command on the US armed forces. Vice Minister Oliver Blanco (in practice, the number 2 of the foreign service, after Felix Plasencia, in charge of the Caracas-Washington relationship) said that around 1,600 rescue workers have so far landed in Venezuela. Those Venezuelan diplomats and the Air Force are doing something: following the protocols to accept foreign help and manage its arrival to the country through the airbases in Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, given that Maiquetia airport was damaged and has limited capacity.

However, this post by the Argentinean armed forces shows who is the first person in charge of coordinating the emergency response: the US Marine Corps Major General Kevin Jarrad, who leads the American deployment.

The U.S. Southern Command is working with the Department of War and the State Department to deploy personnel and technical capabilities in what might turn into an escalation of the military presence this country has been building in Venezuela. As well as it’s quite obvious to everyone that the influence the Trump administration has on the Rodriguez regime allows this cooperation and aid to happen. Just remember how Hugo Chavez refused American aid during the disaster of December 1999.

According to a press release, “SOUTHCOM is deploying a Contingency Response Element (CRE) to assist Venezuelan government and aviation authorities with airport surveys, assessments, and airfield management to safely restore air traffic and aviation operations in affected areas. Five U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft are scheduled to transport the CRE to Venezuela beginning today (June 27). The CRE will expand the ongoing assistance provided by a U.S. military Airfield Assessment Team already working with local Venezuelan officials and the U.S. interagency response team to help the country resume its critically needed airport operations.”

Part of the US naval deployment used to pressure the chavista regime and capture Maduro is now being used to help with the disaster. After their show on that day when they landed in the US embassy in Caracas, the MV-22 Ospreys are back on Venezuelan soil, bringing personnel and equipment. At sea, the USS Fort Lauderdale is sending helicopters. CH-47 Chinooks like the ones that landed in Fuerte Tiuna on January 3 are transporting crews to Venezuela. And the U.S. Space Force is now providing satellite imagery of the devastated areas “to disaster relief planners to aid them in assessing where immediate life-saving and aid efforts are needed most and identifying what capability requests to prioritize”.

In one of the most intriguing political developments of this crisis, which we must attribute to the Trump administration’s involvement in Venezuela since January 3, El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele talked to Delcy Rodriguez and sent a considerable team of military experts and technicians, with heavy equipment, including excavators. Another conservative president, Luis Abinader from the Dominican Republic, sent military officers and equipment. Civilian and military rescuers came from Turkey, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, the European Union, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Even Syria sent its first international mission since the end of its civil war, in partnership with Qatar. 

There are United Nations agencies on the ground, and help from many global non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross and Caritas. Cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Sao Paulo, and Madrid sent their rescue squads (aside from other Venezuelan cities that did the same as much as they could). A Jewish international aid organization and Los Topos Aztecas (one of several groups with similar names, this one for some reason sponsored by Scientology) are also there. Other teams are still in airports like Barajas in Madrid, waiting for a plane that might take them to Venezuela, a country that already had few flight connections before the earthquake that compromised the main airport.    

The challenge

The specialists are now facing the bluntness of the reality on the field. Time and heat are killing people that has not been salvaged and corrupting the bodies.  Some buildings are pancaked, and rescuers are unable to dig in to find bodies. In La Guaira, the noise of so many people in the streets and so many bikes is disturbing the search. 

This video shows a team of the Mexican army begging to make silence to hear if anyone is calling for help under the rubble:

This other video shows a Colombian crew trying to reach a child who’s alive inside a mountain of debris:

We are actually using the social media accounts of those teams, like the Spanish military UME, to understand what they are doing and which are the conditions:

Hard questions arise. The first ones are of a practical order. How much can these teams do, three days after the earthquakes? How much time can they spend in Venezuela? How much could they do in the hospitals and refuges, where many survivors will end up staying? How would the incapable and corrupt security forces of Venezuela help them?

More questions touch the economic and political dimension of this tragedy, as any other, always have. How can the Venezuelan people trust that the financial aid that is also coming will be spent where it needs to be, and not be stolen by the regime? Which of the resources, like medical supplies, that the rescue teams are bringing to the country will stay in Venezuela?