Rad Geek People's Daily

What I’m Reading: Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, I’m in Venezuela. Things Are Worse Than They Look (New York Times Opinion, 30 June 2026):

The twin earthquakes struck just days after I arrived. I held my mother’s hand for what felt like an eternity as the ground shook violently beneath our feet. When we emerged, it was to a changed world — one of collapsed buildings, downed phone lines and missing loved ones. It’s still hard to make sense of the dimensions of the tragedy we are living in.

But in the days since, one thing has become clear: The earthquakes have exposed the toll of years of corruption, institutional dismantling and the abandonment of Venezuelan citizens by their state. This crisis is as much a tragedy of authoritarian rule as it is a tragedy of nature. Venezuela’s natural disaster was unavoidable, but the devastation it has left in its wake was not.

These earthquakes, the deadliest to hit Venezuela in decades, have killed at least 1,700 people, injured thousands more and heaped new devastation onto a country already buckling under a protracted economic and humanitarian crisis. . . . Nearly eight million Venezuelans, including doctors, nurses and other essential workers, have fled the country in recent years. The long collapse of public services — sporadic running water, periodic blackouts and dilapidated, poorly supplied hospitals, to name a few — left Venezuelans utterly unprotected when the earthquakes struck. So did years of government attacks on civil society, which demolished the nonprofits and civilian rescue networks that might have aided the response. . . .

. . . Although the Venezuelan government insists it is doing all it can, it has shared little information and deployed the armed forces in a manner that has often been chaotic, insufficient and, in some cases, an obstacle to other relief efforts. Local rights organizations have warned about the risks of human rights abuses should the response be left in the hands of the military. Ordinary citizens and courageous local and foreign journalists are recording volunteers desperately searching for survivors in the rubble, rescue teams working without proper equipment and relatives fighting to save their loved ones with their bare hands. . . .

— Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, I’m in Venezuela. Things Are Worse Than They Look
New York Times Opinion, 30 June 2026.