When President Delcy Rodríguez announced on Friday that she would “militarize” La Guaira, the state that was hit hardest by two earthquakes this week, some Venezuelans hoped it would mean heavy machines, well-organized rescue missions and swift help for the devastated region.
Instead, many were left wondering what military forces had been ordered to do.
In La Guaira, military personnel, some with long guns, could be seen mainly on avenues, helping to keep traffic moving and away from certain areas. In other northern towns, including Catia Las Mar, Los Corales and Caraballeda, security personnel were also seen directing traffic, patrolling the streets and transporting the bodies of victims, but not helping with removing debris or searching for survivors.
In the meantime, many residents tried desperately to save their loved ones and neighbors under the rubble, using shovels, pickaxes and borrowed tools. When an injured person was found, it was usually not an ambulance or official vehicle that hurried them off for medical care, but a family member’s private car.
Ms. Rodríguez said in her announcement on state television that the military was in affected areas to help, and that it had cleared many roads. But she did not specify what the deployment would mean for the region, or whether soldiers would patrol the streets or impose a curfew.
Faced with criticism from residents that the authorities have done too little and too slowly, the government has broadcast its efforts on official channels online and on television, showing firefighters pulling victims out of the rubble and police standing behind yellow tape.
But many people in La Guaira said this week that they felt abandoned by the state and that residents had led many of the initial efforts to rescue people, often working late into the night.
As resources and personnel arrived in Venezuela from abroad, social media users also complained that Venezuela’s armed forces were conspicuously absent from the emergency response.
In a televised interview on Thursday, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado lamented a “lack of emergency response capacities on behalf of the regime to react.”
“There are areas that are currently not being taken care of,” she said on Newsmax. “A lot of people are trapped under rubble.”
On social media, members of the political opposition expressed concern that military forces would seize control of aid flows — a sign of the deep mistrust that some Venezuelans hold for the country’s powerful military establishment.
United Nations investigations have implicated the nation’s security and intelligence services in systematic human rights abuses amounting to crimes against humanity, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and torture of critics, and extrajudicial killings.
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