Special Report: This Tragedy Is Political

Special Report  |  More than ten days after back-to-back earthquakes devastated the country, the Venezuelan regime has blocked rescuers, controlled aid, monitored journalists, and persecuted victims who have spoken out. 

In this episode, we examine the aftermath of this tragedy, exposing the true nature of the Venezuelan dictatorship. 

Link to verified organizations providing assistance in Venezuela can be found here: https://donarseguro.com/en 

Transcript

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Welcome. Once again, this week's episode is going to be different from usual. It's now been more than ten days since two massive earthquakes struck Venezuela, devastating Caracas and the surrounding areas, especially the coastal state of La Guayra. In less than a minute, an estimated four hundred or more buildings collapsed. Entire families were buried beneath the rubble. Thousands of people were left without homes. And in the most critical hours after the disaster, when every minute could mean the difference between life and death, the Venezuelan government was nowhere to be found. Last week we spoke about the earthquakes themselves, the devastation that they caused, and the abysmal failure of the Venezuelan dictatorship to mount even the most minimal response. But this week, we're going to talk about what happened next. Because the regime didn't simply abandon the victims of this disaster, it began persecuting them. Venezuelans who criticized the government's response have been threatened, detained, and disappeared. Humanitarian assistance has been obstructed and converted into another instrument of political control. And instead of concentrating its resources on saving lives, the dictatorship has concentrated them on controlling information, silencing criticism, and protecting itself. This is no longer only the story of an earthquake. It's the story of how a dictatorship responds when a natural disaster exposes its incompetence, its corruption, and its complete indifference toward human life. The truth is that this tragedy is political. The reason Venezuela was completely unprepared is political. The reason that rescuers did not arrive is political. And the reason so many Venezuelans have died and will continue to die in the coming days, weeks, and months is absolutely political. In the days after the earthquakes, a series of videos began circulating across Venezuela. They showed ordinary people doing the work that the government had failed to do. Neighbors digging through the rubble, families organizing food and shelter, volunteers transporting the injured and searching for survivors with whatever tools that they could find. At the same time, government officials were filming propaganda in disaster zones where almost no real rescue work was taking place. Other videos showed soldiers looting and police officers stealing dollars found beneath the rubble, carrying away televisions and refrigerators while people remained trapped nearby. And then there was one extraordinary video: a group of women confronting an officer who appears to be stealing a bag filled with hundred dollar bills recovered from the rubble. The women shout at him in anger and disgust. They grab the bag from his hands. And what they do next is astonishing. They begin ripping up the money, scattering torn $100 bills across the rubble. The moral imperative that these women felt was so strong that they would rather destroy the money than allow the officer to steal it or take it for themselves. And that video reveals the true divide in Venezuela, between those who understand that everything must come second to the suffering of the victims, and those who see the disaster as just another opportunity to enrich themselves. A divide between solidarity and predation. And nowhere was that divide clearer than in the contrast between ordinary Venezuelans, many of whom have almost nothing, and the Venezuelan military. Instead, the regime sent armed men. And when trained rescuers from outside Venezuela tried to enter the country, some were denied entry or sent back. That reportedly included rescue teams from Colombia and Spain, who were left waiting at airports for hours before being forced to return home. These were people with the training and equipment to search collapsed buildings at the exact moment when every hour mattered, but the government kept them out. Taken together, that's what made these videos so enraging. The state was not only failing to rescue people, it was standing in the way of those who could. As the days passed, the government began asserting control over the response. Collection centers were placed under political supervision. Donations, food, water, and medical supplies increasingly had to pass through institutions controlled by the regime. That gave government power over where the aid went and who received it. It also gave officials another opportunity to turn humanitarian assistance into propaganda. One member of the Mexican rescue group known as Los Topos went viral after describing an interview he gave on Venezuelan state television. According to him, the reporter repeatedly pressured him to thank Delcy Rodriguez, the current head of the Venezuelan dictatorship. You're not my boss. During their podcast, journalists from Sky News were forced to stop recording after security officials ordered them to shut it down. What could be filmed, who could be interviewed, where aid could go, and what would happen to anyone who exposed the truth. The most prominent case is probably that of Wilmer Cruz, a resident of La Guayra who went viral after speaking to an international news outlet. Please, I'm making a call to the government. Even if you have to kill me, I can speak. What I need is a machine. And the government heard him. They saw the interview, but they didn't send him a machine. Security forces began threatening him, demanding that he stop speaking to the media. And then Wilmer Cruz disappeared, taken by officers of the National Police. Thankfully, Venezuelans started making videos demanding his release, and under pressure, the regime released him. But they imposed restrictions on his speech and rights, meaning that if Wilmer speaks out again, they can take him back to prison. Just think about that. This man had just lost his family. He had spent days digging through the concrete with his own hands because the state had abandoned him. And when he finally spoke publicly, when he begged the government to do the most basic thing imaginable, the response was not help, it was repression. That is what the Venezuelan regime was trying to communicate. You may suffer in silence, you may beg for help in silence. But the moment your suffering becomes an embarrassment to the government, you become the enemy. Based on what? What comparative study? For eight days the government hadn't even mounted a decent response, but we're supposed to believe that it developed a comprehensive comparative study? Obviously, there was no study. No evidence was published. Delsi simply invented a comparison and declared that the regime was the winner. Even when the evidence was incontrovertible, when Venezuelans across the disaster zones were describing the same abandonment, the regime chose to lie directly to their faces. Even the room of the press conference felt surreal. A gigantic blue screen covered the wall behind Delsi, bathing the stage in cold artificial light. Everything was polished, sterile, and carefully controlled. There was something deeply unsettling about it. The regime was projecting an image of perfect order, while outside that room families were still searching for their dead. Maria Martin, a reporter for the Spanish newspaper El País, confronted Del C directly. Another lie. Then came Julio Vaqueiro of Telemundo. You maintain that the response was immediate, but we've toured La Guaira, spoken with many people, and very few, none, I must say, agree with that. But there's a reason that Delcy only encounters gratitude when she visits these places. Her appearances are all staged. Security forces arrive first, they control the area, they remove anyone who might protest, shout, or interrupt the performance. She doesn't meet the public. She meets a carefully selected audience surrounded by armed men. Because if Delcy Rodriguez appeared spontaneously at one of these disaster sites, without security forces clearing the way and controlling everyone around her, she would be met with an avalanche of insults. And she knows it. But there's another political figure hovering over this tragedy, María Corina Machado.

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Nunca jamás.

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Machado escaped Venezuela in December 2025, after months in hiding to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She is the undisputed leader of Venezuela's democratic movement and the political figure that the regime fears the most. During the 2024 presidential campaign, she built an extraordinary bond with millions of Venezuelans who have come to see her as a symbol of hope and the person that they trust to lead a transition to democracy. And after the earthquakes, Maria Corina wanted to return. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, she boarded a private plane in the United States headed for Curacao, where she planned to enter Venezuela by boat. But the plane turned around after high-level officials in the Trump administration warned her against returning and withdrew their support for the operation. She later tried again from Panama, but Copa Airlines refused to let her board a flight to Venezuela. It's reported that the regime contacted the airline CEO and threatened to cancel all its routes to Venezuela if the airline allowed her to board. Now, it was entirely predictable that Delcy Rodriguez and the Venezuelan regime would try to keep Maria Corina out. They know the power that she has to mobilize Venezuelans. They know what her return could mean at a moment when public anger is exploding. What is far more disturbing is that the United States appears to be helping them. The Trump administration reportedly views Maria Corina's return as destabilizing, something that could provoke protests, threaten Delcy Rodriguez's hold on power, and interfere with the relationship Washington is now building with the regime. In other words, the United States has decided that stability means protecting Delcy Rodriguez from the political leader that Venezuelans actually trust. And this is happening while more than 900 American military personnel are reportedly operating inside Venezuela as part of the earthquake response. That presence gives the United States enormous influence over what happens next. We do not know what Washington's long-term strategy is here, but the immediate result is clear. María Corina Machado remains outside Venezuela. Delcy Rodriguez remains in power, and the United States is helping keep it that way. But what hurts most of all is the realization that none of this may be enough. Not the indignation, nor the grief, not the sight of families digging through the rubble with their bare hands, not even the decimation of La Guayra, the catastrophic failure of the government's response, or the lives that will continue to be lost in the coming days and months. None of it will make these people, this regime, relinquish power. They will watch Venezuelans die and continue lying. They'll stand in front of a gigantic screen and congratulate themselves on the fastest response in the world while families are still searching for bodies. They'll call for national unity while kidnapping the people who expose their failures. They'll distribute aid with one hand and use the other to punish anyone who refuses to thank them for it. And then they'll accuse us of politicizing this tragedy. But the truth is even more horrifying than saying that the regime is simply allowing Venezuelans to die. It's actively killing them. Through its incompetence, through its corruption, through its persecution of the people demanding help, and through the deliberate choice to protect its own power before protecting human life. That is why this tragedy is political. So, no, acknowledging the political reality of this disaster is not manipulation. Pretending that this is merely a natural tragedy is the real lie. The earthquakes were natural, but the catastrophe that followed has been nothing but political.