Venezuela’s worst natural disaster in decades is testing the country’s forced alliance with the United States, creating an unexpected, tragic hurdle in Washington’s campaign to turn the country into an effective economic protectorate.
President Trump has touted the military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power as an unfettered success, which has redirected the flow of Venezuelan oil and gold to the United States.
The humanitarian toll of back-to-back earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday night, and the reconstruction ahead, will test whether his administration will now be willing to support a purported ally with relief funds and policies to assist the country.
“No matter what, the United States has always responded to humanitarian crises, especially in our own hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Thursday. “That’s what we’re focused on now.”
Mr. Rubio said on Thursday that he had spoken to Venezuela’s leader, Delcy Rodríguez, and added that rescue teams from Virginia and California would assist the search for survivors. The Defense Department will help deliver the aid, he said.
Mr. Rubio, who helped disband the State Department’s aid agency last year, did not say how much money the U.S. would allocate for humanitarian relief.
Mr. Rubio said that the earthquakes, which have killed at least 164 and destroyed hundreds of buildings, represented a “setback” for Washington’s multiphase plan to recover Venezuela’s moribund economy and ensure democratic elections.
“These are things you don’t plan for,” he said. “I think Venezuela is going to emerge stronger from this.”
Following Mr. Maduro’s downfall, Washington has pressured Ms. Rodríguez to overhaul oil and mining laws to attract Western investment. The U.S. Treasury has also set up a payment system that has concentrated the administration of Venezuela’s export revenues into the hands of the U.S. government, giving its officials a direct and crucial role in earthquake relief.
At the same time, Washington has maintained its wide-ranging sanctions on Venezuela, issuing instead exemptions for companies that want to do business there.
The new financial system imposed by the United States has eliminated Venezuela’s most blatant corruption schemes, but has ended up gathering a large portion of oil revenues in a few Venezuelan banks and consumer companies with bank accounts in the United States.
The persistence of sanctions has also made it difficult for Venezuela’s government and Venezuelan companies to move money in and out of the country, an issue likely to attract greater attention amid acute humanitarian need.
A State Department spokesman said in a written response to questions that U.S. sanctions exemptions, known as general licenses, already allowed financial transactions related to humanitarian efforts. The spokesman added that the U.S. government would ensure that these facts were widely known.
People connected to the Venezuelan government, as well as the country’s banking and corporate executives, said this month that Western banks routinely delay and halt money transfers related to Venezuela because of U.S. sanctions, a compliance policy that Washington’s exemptions are unlikely to change.
The earthquakes will also test Washington’s bet on Ms. Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s vice president, who oversaw the economy and, in January, emerged as an unlikely willing executor of Mr. Trump’s vision for the country.
Ms. Rodríguez’s challenges in meeting the public’s expectations of an economic boom following Mr. Maduro’s downfall have already been eroding her popularity. Her approval rating fell to 25 percent in May, the third consecutive monthly decline, according to an online survey.
Venezuela’s economic growth in the first three months of this year fell to its lowest quarterly rate since 2021, a stark contrast to the narrative of record growth that Mr. Trump has been claiming repeatedly in public speeches.
“We had a great victory in Venezuela,” Mr. Trump said in a speech on Saturday. “Venezuela has become a happy country, because they have never made the money that they are making now.”
Ms. Rodríguez now faces a daunting task of leading a rescue and reconstruction effort by an impoverished, hollowed-out and autocratic state that she helped to create as Mr. Maduro’s right-hand lieutenant.
Even before the earthquake, Ms. Rodríguez had been facing growing calls to transform the country’s political system and allow new elections. These calls are now likely to intensify in a country gripped by mourning and hunger for change.
Tyler Pager contributed reporting from Washington.
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