Venezuela in the wake of quakes, kidnapping and theft of its assets

by Jim Hodgson

I begin with a confession. In the wake of the catastrophic double-tap earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, I have been slow in sharing my thoughts and what I have learned.

My delay is partly due to memories of other disasters, especially my involvement in efforts to rebuild in Haiti after its 2010 earthquake. 

I am also remembering visits in better moments to the area most affected by current calamity: the north coast communities in La Guaira state. It’s the Caribbean Sea, so there are hotels, beaches, pools, yacht clubs and high-rise condominiums, as well as homes for the people who work in the airport, the seaports, and in fishing and service industries.

The disaster has slipped from Global North headlines. As of Wednesday, July 15, the official death toll had risen to 4,829 (up from the number shown in the above graphic). The number of reported injuries remained stable at 16,740. (Image: Orinoco Tribune, July 13)

If you travel to Venezuela by air, odds are you arrive in La Guaira at the Simón Bolívar International Airport (often called Maiquetia for a nearby community). Caracas, the capital, is a 25-km drive south and high up into the mountains.

On two of my trips to Venezuela, I observed elections in Caracas and La Guaira. In 2004, an opposition attempt to remove then-President Hugo Chávez proceeded through a revocatory referendum. An election in 2018 (boycotted by part of the opposition) returned President Nicolás Maduro to office. (I wrote about the latter experience in a series of articles for rabble.ca.) 

The day before the 2018 vote, we spent an afternoon visiting communities in La Guaira, including a new social housing project, “Urbanización Hugo Chávez,” located in Catia La Mar just beyond the west end of the airport.

In the wake of the earthquakes, it feels like every building in Guaira has become a point of contention in Venezuela’s polarization. While the government says only five per cent of the damaged buildings are newly built housing, this natural disaster is politicized: something known to happen elsewhere, as in the current wildfire season in Canada. 

But whether you are looking at a pancaked high-rise or a home dislodged from its foundation in a social housing project, people needed to be rescued and survivors still need support.

Economic and social context

To understand what happened in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, “it’s necessary to place the place the tragedy in its economic and social context,” wrote La Jornada’s Ángel González from Caracas. 

“Venezuela has spent years with a public health system that has not been able to reach optimal conditions after 11 years under U.S. sanctions. That led to a reduction of more than 90 per cent in the budget for public health and education (with 80 per cent of the overall budget allocated to social welfare programs).” Moreover, sanctions prevented the government from buying parts for heavy equipment or new machinery needed for an emergency such as this.

Even so, within a few days, added González, the situation in La Guaira had begun to be addressed with field hospitals set up by the Venezuelan army and international brigades. Two weeks later, temporary shelters with services for more than 22,000 people were in place. About 18,000 people are left without a home.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez announced July 8 that her government was already working with experts to identify appropriate areas to “build new earthquake-resistant homes and cities.” She added that local and international companies had also been called up “for the rapid and aggressive construction of housing.” That will take time. And money.

And here again, politics enter in. While rescue missions and immediate relief efforts shift to longer-term support and re-building, U.S., Canadian and European sanctions must be eased and Venezuelan assets held abroad must be unblocked.

I have witnessed the humanitarian consequences of sanctions that are misused in cruel attempts to induce regime change in Venezuela, Cuba and other countries, and so have searched almost in vain for news articles that mention sanctions. One exception is an AP News item July 9 that covered the president’s housing announcement. Rodríguez said she had “decided to send a letter, among others, to the King of England” to request the release of 31 metric tons of Venezuelan gold reserves frozen at the Bank of England due to economic sanctions. The gold, valued at USD $1.2 billion in 2019, is now worth about $4.6 billion.

I’ll share more about the use and misuse of sanctions in Venezuela and elsewhere in another post in days ahead.

Meanwhile, you might like to read this op-ed by Mark Weisbrot published in the Los Angeles Times and on the site of the Center for Economic Policy and Research. Sanctions, he writes, “target and punish the civilian population in pursuit of a political goal. Once relatively rare, they have become a ‘tool of first resort, according to the US Treasury — probably because the resulting fatalities are mostly unseen.”

And, to my surprise, there is a relatively good piece in The New York Times about U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acting as Venezuela’s de facto viceroy. I think this link will take you past the paywall to the article.

U.S. interference mars Latin American elections

by Jim Hodgson

As I write, Colombians and Peruvians await confirmation of a victor after presidential election day results proved too close to call.

Like mid-term elections in Argentina last October and the Honduras election in November, Colombia’s vote was marred by overt U.S. interference. 

On June 21, Colombians had to choose between a progressive human rights defender, Iván Cepeda, and a far-right political new-comer, Abelardo de la Espriella. Cepeda would continue current President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to achieving peace with several armed groups that have so far resisted joining a prolonged peace process.

As Colombians headed for the polls, I received an email from Dayana Mosquera, Colombia consultant at Global Exchange: 

In recent days, foreign figures have openly inserted themselves into Colombia’s campaign. 

It began in Washington. President Trump posted his “Complete and Total Endorsement” on Truth Social, and de la Espriella answered on X, casting the two countries as “sister nations” bound to defend Western civilization. A chorus followed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom de la Espriella met privately this year, said Washington would be “very forceful in guaranteeing” a free and fair vote. U.S. Representative María Elvira Salazar urged Colombians to rally behind him.

It did not stop there. Beyond Washington, de la Espriella has secured the unconditional support of other leaders including Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, José Antonio Kast of Chile and Argentina’s Javier Milei, who interpreted the result as a rejection of the “failed socialist model” and said the forces of freedom across the region were watching and lending their support. From Madrid, Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Colombians could recover the “sovereignty taken from them.” 

Each framed it the same way: as a defense of Colombia’s freedom and even its sovereignty. 

That is the contradiction at the heart of this election. Sovereignty and freedom are not gifts foreign politicians can hand a country by meddling in its vote. They are the very things such interference denies. Nor is this happening in isolation. 

Since Trump reshaped American politics, a familiar style has spread: elections become contests to be won by any means, opponents are cast as enemies, and institutions are treated as obstacles. That style is no longer staying home. It is carried across borders by a networked right, by officials willing to amplify it, and by compliant allies in the region eager to satisfy Washington for their own gain. This weekend, Colombia is where the line is drawn.

Next target for the far-right will be Brazil, where presidential elections are set for October.

Crime and the far-right backlash

In Peru, voters have waited since June 7 for a final result. Keiko Fujimori – daughter of a former dictator – faced Roberto Sánchez who served as foreign minister under former president Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021 but forced from office in December 2022. 

Like Castillo, Sánchez wears a traditional hat popular in rural parts of Peru. He says his hat serves as “the expression of all hats and of the diversity” of Peru. His economic proposals differ from the “market-friendly,” neo-liberal policies applied in recent decades by most Peruvian leaders. He has said he would renegotiate contracts with mining companies, saying that the state should collect more taxes. He has also said that rural communities should own a share of the mines operating in their territory and that he opposes open-pit operations.

Fujimori ran on a law-and-order platform, promising to deploy the military in prisons and on borders. In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, the approach won votes, as it did in February in Costa Rica in February. Shaken by higher levels of drug-related killings, Costa Ricans chose conservative Laura Fernández for her tough-on-crime platform. 

To an extent, these right-wing politicians draw inspiration (and slogans) from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, another Trump ally. His heavy-handed security strategies have seen tens of thousands of young men imprisoned without due process, and have targeted environmental protectors (the Santa Marta 5) and human rights defenders like Ruth López Alfaro.

Proposals from the centre and left for community violence prevention programs, better police training, and prison and judicial reforms, show results over years. But the right uses crime as an emotional rallying cry. Their short-term security strategies promise to make people feel safe soon. They come with a high price to human rights and democracy, but to people who live with real fear on a daily basis, those values seem abstract. 

Meanwhile, another right-wing strong man, Daniel Noboa, holds power in Ecuador, neighbour to Peru and Colombia. A week ago, he declared a new 60-day state of emergency across ten provinces and several additional municipalities on Tuesday, suspending constitutional rights and authorizing security forces to conduct searches of private homes without a judicial warrant when organized crime is suspected. His decree came shortly after a meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to discuss joint military operations.

Trump officials, including his ambassadors, insist on such joint operations, often with the threat of acting unilaterally if governments do not comply – and the example of U.S.-government-sponsored killings of more than 200 people in aerial attacks on small boats in international waters that are alleged (without evidence) to be carrying illegal drugs.

As a result, the centre-left government of Guatemala declared a state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed Trump’s “help” targeting drug traffickers.

In Mexico, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be working hand-in-hand with the conservative government of the northern border state of Chihuahua – without the knowledge of the federal government – after two agents were killed in a car crash. As that scandal exploded in Mexico, the U.S. government launched indictments against the governor and other officials of Sinaloa state, and sought their extradition. 

In an editorial, La Jornada newspaper described these events as “heavily charged acts of political interference, compounded, to top it off, with an implicit threat.” 

We say “no” to the U.S. war on Cuba. Why won’t Canada?

by Jim Hodgson

Today, Canadian churches, labour unions, development agencies and solidarity groups are calling on our government to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cuba – cornerstone rights of all states guaranteed in the United Nations Charter. 

The statement (reproduced below) appears as an ad in the Hill Times, a newspaper in Ottawa whose audience is made up of politicians, public servants and those of us who try to influence them. Look at them: 28 organizations, representing millions of Canadians.

For more than three years, I have worked as a volunteer among a loose network of civil society groups to press the government of Canada for action. We began with a letter April 17, 2023, sent to the ministers of foreign affairs and international development. 

We followed up with other letters and statements, and I wrote or co-wrote several opinion pieces: Hill Times in 2023, Canadian Dimension in 2024 and at rabble.ca a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I wrote these together with John Kirk, retired from teaching at Dalhousie University but still, like me, pressing our government for the sake of our many friends and co-workers in Cuba – and in favour of a different way to live together on our planet.

Several times, our inter-agency group called on Canadians to send letters to our politicians. (We’re still doing so, here.) Some of us met with members of Parliament and with staff at Global Affairs Canada and at the Embassy in Havana.

Earlier this year, we were joined by an ad hoc group of trade unionists who used a series of labour conventions and other gatherings to lift the campaign to a whole new level, with hundreds of postcards sent to the prime minister.

The government’s response, to put it mildly, has been feeble. A few million dollars here and there for humanitarian relief delivered through UN bodies or Canadian NGOs, but no calls to end the vicious U.S. sanctions, no shiploads of supplies (like those sent by Mexico, Colombia and other countries, and no fuel. Not even support for a humanitarian corridor so that fuel can be supplied to those agencies that are providing aid. No protest to the United States over its extraterritorial measures that harm Canadians who have worked alongside Cuban state enterprises in mining and tourism.

This afternoon, Canada’s parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights (SDIR) is holding a Briefing on Human Rights in the Caribbean Region with a focus on Cuba. But, like the Feb. 26 Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development hearing before it, the witness list is tilted in favour of right-wing exile groups, raising concerns about the balance of views brought forward to the committee. This time, fortunately, the Canadian Network on Cuba is being allowed to share a more progressive perspective.

It’s pretty clear now that the Carney government will not speak up for Cuba so long as its talks to renew Canada’s free trade deal with the United States and Mexico continue.

At risk here is not just Cuba’s sovereignty, but Canada’s too. What many of us warned about in the free trade debates of 1998 and 1993 was the loss of Canada’s sovereignty. The long U.S. history of invasions, coups, electoral interference and sanctions has been made more acute in this second Trump administration. 

The Canadian government must be bold and defend Cuban sovereignty, international law and the lives of Cubans.

Please write (again) to the prime minister and to your member of parliament. If you are in a country other than Canada, please write to or call your representatives to ask for their solidarity with the people of Cuba.