A devastating earthquake has struck the state of Sucre, but for the families pulling bodies from the rubble, the silence from Caracas is the second disaster. As aftershocks continue to shake the coastal region, victims report that government emergency services are either absent or overwhelmed, leaving communities to dig through collapsed homes with bare hands. The quake, which registered 6.
2 on the Richter scale, has killed at least 34 people and left thousands homeless. Yet witnesses describe a state that has abandoned its people. 'We saw no soldiers, no doctors, no trucks with water,' said Maria Gonzalez, a mother of three whose house collapsed in Cumaná.
'We are on our own.' The Maduro regime, already buckling under hyperinflation and a collapsed oil industry, has been accused of diverting resources to military parades and foreign allies while its own citizens suffer. Critics say this catastrophe exposes the incompetence at the heart of a socialist system that promised solidarity but delivers only neglect.
For the working class of Venezuela, already hammered by shortages and poverty, this earthquake is not a natural disaster but a political one.
