When the U.S. seized Venezuela’s autocratic president in a raid in January and demanded allegiance from his successor, President Trump was probably imagining all the upsides of turning Venezuela into a protectorate — control over the country’s oil, for instance, and the chance to rid the territory of rivals like China.
What he probably didn’t foresee was a pair of devastating earthquakes that have resulted in the worst natural disaster in Venezuela in decades. Today I’m writing about how Venezuela’s tragedy has become America’s problem, too.
What does America owe Venezuela now?
It’s never a good time for natural disaster to strike. But for Venezuela, last week’s back-to-back 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes came at a particularly fraught moment.
Venezuela has had a disastrous past few decades. Falling oil prices, economic mismanagement, corruption and sanctions have turned a formerly rich country into one with a cratering public health system, a creaky electric grid and the world’s highest inflation rate.
It has also had a chaotic past six months. In January, the U.S. captured President Nicolás Maduro. In the months since, Venezuela has effectively been transformed into a vassal state — the Trump administration controls most of its export revenues from a Citibank account in New York — under a leader who depends on the U.S. to stay in power but who is also, eventually, supposed to hold free elections.
The result has been a complicated disaster relief process, shaped by politics and slowed by an ineffective state with few resources. The earthquakes have killed more than 1,700 people — a death toll that’s very likely to rise substantially over the next few days. They have become a test of the country’s new government, and its new relationship with the U.S.; the next few weeks will reveal a lot about where this strange new arrangement is headed.
“What comes next is harder”
The Trump administration has consistently held up Venezuela as one of its great foreign policy successes. It removed Maduro overnight; oil began flowing; Venezuelans were “happy.” (Even after the quakes hit, the U.S. president mentioned Venezuela’s oil in a speech, noting that “we’ve taken out millions of barrels of oil, and we’ve paid for the war many times over.”)
And in the aftermath of the earthquakes, it was quick to promise support. Secretary of State Marco Rubio swiftly pledged what he called a “whole-of-government response.”
“It’ll be big; it’ll be fast; and it’ll be effective,” he said.
The administration organized a disaster assistance response team with more than 250 people, including three search-and-rescue teams. It has deployed a naval ship to provide medical support. And it has promised a total of $300 million in aid efforts so far.
I spoke to my colleague Anatoly Kurmanaev, who is in Venezuela.“The bottom line is, Trump now has to put his money where his mouth is,” Anatoly told me. “He’s been going on and on about what a great success Venezuela has been for the U.S.” That story, he said, is about to get a lot more complicated.
The U.S. is offering just a fraction of the post-earthquake funds Venezuela needs. As my colleague Simon Romero reports, estimates of economic losses from the quake range from $10 billion to $100 billion. To put those estimates into context, $10 billion is the equivalent of 10 percent of Venezuela’s total annual economic output, Simon writes.
At the moment, the disaster response is still in the search, rescue and recovery stage. It has been grim, but it’s also politically straightforward, Anatoly told me.
“Everyone has the same goal: Save lives,” he said. “What comes next is harder. How do you rebuild? Who do you work with? Who do you empower?”
In Venezuela, the fight for who eventually ends up running the country is ongoing. And the aftermath of the earthquakes is bound to play into it.
A hollowed-out state
My colleague Frances Robles reported a revealing anecdote last week.
Venezuela’s opposition party had mobilized volunteers to collect donations like diapers, bottled water and used clothing for earthquake survivors when it encountered an unexpected obstacle: the National Police.
Police officers tried to shut down a donation center in the state of Portuguesa, one opposition leader told Frances, saying that all donations had to be channeled through the government. Elsewhere, too, charity drives organized by the opposition could not display signs reading “Donation Center,” because those words were reserved for government-authorized drop-off sites — a sign of how politicized earthquake response efforts had already become.
Venezuela is, if not a failed state, very much a hollowed-out one. And the earthquakes have exposed that, Anatoly said. The government’s response has been dire. People are angry.
President Delcy Rodríguez, who took over with America’s blessing after Maduro was toppled in January, was never popular and is even less so now.
The U.S. has never seemed that interested in restoring democracy in Venezuela. Rather than demanding regime change, imposing elections or supporting the exiled opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, it backed continuity and stability under Rodríguez.
In the aftermath of a humanitarian crisis that has unleashed new anger at the government, though, it might not even get that. Or it might — but it may have to pay.
The latest from Venezuela: The search for survivors grew increasingly desperate yesterday as another aftershock rattled the area. Families have begun burying loved ones, but the full death toll could take weeks to emerge. Leer en español.
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