Venezuelans jumped to respond to quakes. Years of institutional decline prepared them.
| Caracas, Venezuela
Every half hour, a new caravan of motorcycles leaves from Parque del Este in Caracas for Venezuela’s devastated coastal state of La Guaira.
This park has become an improvised relief hub, where donations move through a makeshift assembly line. Volunteers sort supplies by categories – water, tools, food, medicines, and pet supplies – then build towering loads on the backs of motorcycles, so high they sometimes rise above the drivers’ heads.
Volunteers bind the heaviest items with layer after layer of packing tape, then log each rider’s name, license plate, destination, and cargo before sending them out in groups of 10.
Why We Wrote This
In the aftermath of two large earthquakes in Venezuela, a society that has had years of practice depending on neighbors instead of the state has jumped into action.
Hundreds of motorbike drivers have joined the effort. Some have barely stopped moving since back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes shook Venezuela June 24. Less than a week after the historic temblors, which have left at least 1,700 people dead and an estimated 50,000 missing, a sprawling network of citizen-led initiatives has emerged across the country.
In the last 48 hours, Melanie Álvarez says she has made more than 10 trips between Caracas and La Guaira, the coastal area hit hardest by the earthquakes. The trip can take more than half an hour each way, traveling under the harshest sun.
In the first hours after the quakes, residents didn’t wait for rescue crews. They dug through rubble themselves, using whatever they could find: shovels, buckets, metal rods, their own hands. Since then, that same urgency has expanded into a broad citizen response. There are engineers volunteering to inspect cracked buildings, professionals offering free counseling, women sewing underwear from fabric scraps, welders building beds, and volunteers with 3D printers producing in-demand medical supplies, like splints.
Many here say they had little choice. The earthquakes exposed long-running weaknesses in Venezuela’s institutions. And as frustrations grow over what locals describe as a slow and insufficient official response, ordinary citizens have stepped in to fill the gaps in rescue, relief, and recovery.
“This is the response of a society that has learned to live without the state,” says Oscar Murillo, a researcher with the Venezuelan human rights organization Provea.
“Sense of duty”
The solidarity now visible across Venezuela did not begin with the earthquakes, says Mr. Murillo. It was forged during years of shortages, blackouts, mass emigration, and institutional decline.
That decline has deep roots. Hugo Chávez, a socialist leader who was widely popular among Venezuela’s poor, came to power in 1999 promising to lift up the country’s most vulnerable. But over time, his government weakened democratic institutions. After his death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro took over just as oil prices fell. Corruption deepened, the economy entered one of the worst collapses in modern history, and a humanitarian crisis pushed close to a third of the population out of the country. Sanctions by the United States government added another layer of pressure.
For more than a decade, Venezuelans have had to solve problems on their own. “The fact that teachers kept showing up to classrooms despite miserable salaries and doctors treated patients in public hospitals with chronic shortages is a testimony to their resilience and sense of duty,” Mr. Murillo says.
“When disaster struck, those habits became an emergency response system.”
One example is Venezuela’s growing community of “makers” – people who use 3D printers to build tools and medical supplies.
Carlos Hernández, director of LayerLab, helped organize a nationwide effort to produce splints and immobilizers after the earthquakes. His team released standardized designs that had already been tested by doctors, allowing volunteers in Venezuela and abroad to print the same products. Within days, makers not only in Caracas, but from Spain, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Honduras, and the U.S. were printing supplies for resource-starved hospitals here.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 splints have already passed through distribution centers, Mr. Hernández estimates, with many more delivered directly to doctors and emergency workers.
Volunteers are also printing neck braces, IV bag holders, and other medical equipment.
“The Venezuelan doctor has always learned to solve problems with whatever is available,” Mr. Hernández says.
More than 80 engineers have joined an initiative led by José Armas, who helped create a website where residents can upload photos of damaged buildings. Engineers in Venezuela and abroad review the images.
“We noticed that everybody was scared because there were so many damaged buildings,” Mr. Armas says while inspecting an apartment block in Caracas’ 23 de Enero neighborhood.
When engineers see signs of serious damage in the photos, they flag the case and send a volunteer to assess the risk.
The need is visible in damaged neighborhoods, where many families are still afraid to go home. Some have crowded into relatives’ houses; others are sleeping outdoors in tents, waiting to learn whether their homes are safe. In some areas, residents sleep near piles of belongings they managed to pull from cracked apartments and homes.
“What has become clear is that Venezuelans only have each other,” says Valentina Quintero, a longtime Venezuelan tourism promoter. “We only had the drive and will of thousands of volunteers, and the strength that comes from desperation.”
Losing trust, finding solidarity
With a diaspora of nearly 8 million people, the earthquake response has spread beyond Venezuelan borders.
In South Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S., expatriates organized a massive donation drive at several restaurants and community centers in recent days. The response grew so quickly that organizers in Doral had to ask people to pause donations after filling a huge warehouse and reaching their capacity to sort and ship supplies.
“People don’t just come to drop things off,” says María Quintero, a volunteer in South Florida. “They come to help and connect.”
Back in Venezuela, some volunteers are focusing on children, many of whom are sleeping in shelters or staying with relatives after losing their homes. Circus performers have turned up to try and make kids laugh, even briefly, amid the fear and uncertainty. Others have designed coloring books and facilitated their widespread delivery.
Not all efforts are coordinated. In one workshop in Barquisimeto, welders are building bunk beds for displaced families, furnishing improvised shelters. In Maracay, a carpenter is collecting donations to build coffins free of charge and deliver them to La Guaira. In a viral video shared on social media, a man holds a handwritten sign with his name and phone number, offering free rides to the hospital, as ambulances are scarce.
The volunteer response has been massive, but some organizers say maintaining that momentum could become a challenge.
At a tent camp in Caracas, volunteer coordinator Isabel Herrera says the first days after the earthquakes brought doctors, psychologists, and others just looking to lend a hand. By Monday, however, the deliveries of food, water, and other assistance had become less frequent.
Experts say it’s natural for the initial momentum to fade. But after years of learning to navigate crises with limited institutional support, civil society in Venezuela has a remarkable capacity to self-organize, says Mr. Murillo.
“The earthquake has revealed what happens when citizens no longer expect institutions to solve problems for them,” he says. “This is the same society that survived a humanitarian crisis.”
Now, it is drawing on those well-worn survival skills to confront this latest disaster.
