The devastating double earthquake that rocked northwestern Venezuela on 24 June has been seized on by the United States as an opportunity to get more imperialist boots on the ground. Under the cover of ‘humanitarian concern’ the US army’s Southern Command announced it had 2,000 US armed forces ‘on land, air and sea around Venezuela’. The US has been conducting ‘airfield management’ at Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar airport in La Guaira with MQ-9 Reaper drones, military transport planes and combat helicopters, whilst the warship USS Fort Lauderdale lies docked a few miles along the coast. Armed marines patrol alongside specialised urban search-and-rescue units. This is not ‘earthquake relief’. This is a strategy to occupy Venezuela in the wake of the 3 January military incursion which saw the US army bomb Caracas and kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores.
Working alongside the US are its most reactionary allies. Syria’s HTS government has dispatched the reactionary ‘White Helmets’, regime change propagandists created and funded by Britain and the US during the 2011-2024 Syrian war, who under the veneer of ‘humanitarian’ operations have always acted as foot soldiers for imperialist interests. More outrageous still, the Zionist state of Israel sent a military delegation to Caracas, including IDF General Elad Edri. Venezuela broke diplomatic ties with the Zionist state in 2009 after late revolutionary president Hugo Chavez denounced Israel’s murderous Operation Cast Lead onslaught on Gaza. Venezuela’s revolutionary Chavista masses have repeatedly mobilised in solidarity with Palestine. The hypocrisy of these genocidal forces who have reduced Gaza to a wasteland now seeking to burnish their international credentials by ostentatiously pulling a few Venezuelans out of the rubble is not lost on revolutionary Venezuelans. Tatuy Community TV, a political media collective, declared: ‘We denounce and condemn the aspirations of this genocidal entity to exploit the Venezuelan tragedy to whitewash its image with so-called “humanitarian aid”. Solidarity with the Palestinian people means first and foremost not normalising the actions of their oppression. Israel will never be an ally of any people. Israel in an enemy of all humanity’.
The cogs of capitalist investment are already turning. Israel’s Edri pitched a ‘Project for the Reconstruction of the Future’ to the Venezuelan state, starting with contracts to remove the rubble. Meanwhile, since the mothballing of USAID, the US state department is instead promoting a ‘Global Empowerment Mission’ (GEM). Posing as a humanitarian aid organisation, GEM is headed by government lobbyist Michael Kesti, and Miami-based real estate mogul, Michael Capponi. Having secured contracts for reconstruction in the Haiti earthquake (2010) and the ongoing Ukraine-NATO war, GEM is now establishing a permanent headquarters in Caracas, teaming up with far-right donors and news outlets in Miami, pitching ‘long term reconstruction’ efforts in Venezuela whilst handing out a few boxes of aid, adorned with US flags. Days prior to the earthquake, British company Shell signed five major gas and oil deals to access Venezuela’s Loran and Dragon fields, projected to bring the oil giant $500m in revenue each year. Shell pledged just $5m for earthquake relief, small change for a company that reported an annual net income of $17.8bn last year. When it comes to creating an opportunity out of a humanitarian crisis, imperialism never misses a beat.
The Bolivarian Revolution springs into action
The back-to-back earthquakes (each measuring above 7 on the Richter scale) are estimated to have released energy equivalent to 240 Hiroshima atomic bombs. 190 buildings collapsed in the densely populated coastal La Guaira region. At the time of publication over 5,200 people have been confirmed dead with thousands more missing. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution immediately mobilised the state, armed forces and grassroots communal and social movements. 25,000 professional Venezuelan emergency workers were deployed in La Guaira: police, armed forces, firefighters, civil protection units. In addition, more than 10,000 volunteers flocked to registration points in Caracas whilst Venezuela’s 3,900+ communes organised to collect food and run 107 camps that have been set up to shelter the 19,500 people left homeless. 128,000 families have received direct assistance.
Over 3,500 rescue workers from 27 countries joined the search for survivors. Cuban medical personnel, who were already working in Venezuela through the ‘Barrio Adentro’ community health programme, were the first international workers at the scene, attending to casualties since the night of the disaster. 41,000 patients have received specialist treatment, 10,900 tonnes of food have been distributed, and 96% of the electricity network has been restored.
Despite this Herculean effort, international media launched an immediate information war to discredit the Venezuelan state and erase the efforts of organised revolutionaries, casting the Venezuelan state as either absent or authoritarian. Government-built social housing developments are portrayed as ‘death traps’– despite only 5% of the damaged buildings being newly-built social housing – whilst the Venezuelan economy is framed as bankrupted by corruption and poor management.
This fake news conceals the 1,088 US-led unilateral sanctions on Venezuela, and the theft of $20bn of Venezuelan overseas funds and assets that remain frozen as a result. This includes 31 tonnes of gold withheld in the coffers of the Bank of England since 2019. Due to these sanctions, between 2016 and 2020 the Venezuelan economy lost 91% of export revenues and its GDP shrank by 65%. Nor is there a demand on the Trump administration to release $8bn of Venezuela’s oil wealth held in the US Treasury Department since Washington seized control of Venezuela’s oil trade after the 3 January bombing.
The UN Development Program estimates the earthquakes caused $37bn in direct damage alone. The British Labour government has offered a paltry £2m in ‘humanitarian funding’ whilst King Charles offered his ‘most heartfelt condolences’ to the Venezuelan people. In response, Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez wrote to King Charles demanding the immediate release of the gold, today valued at over £3bn. The Revolutionary Communist Group stands with the Venezuelan people. Give Venezuela back its gold! Lift all sanctions!
Sam McGill
