Die Geier kamen vor den Rettungsteams an

Gisela Salim-Peyer: “Big earthquakes flatten buildings into rubble the same way everywhere. Last Wednesday, when back-to-back quakes of magnitudes 7.5 and 7.2 rocked a large part of my native Venezuela, I found some dark consolation in the thought that such tragedies are impartial to place. The tectonic plates deep below had exerted their formidable powers because this is what they sometimes do. The suffering would be acute, but its precedents were universal and as old as the Earth.

“But Venezuela’s man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one. For 28 years and counting, Venezuela’s rulers have stolen or squandered much of the oil revenue of the most oil-rich country in the world. Oligarchs pocketed the petrodollars of the late-aughts oil boom and left the nation somehow poorer and more indebted. In the hours just before the earthquakes struck, the regime released a total figure for the amount that it owed its creditors: $240 billion. The humanitarian consequences of this wastefulness were well documented before last Wednesday. Now they have acquired a fresh urgency.

“In the crucial first 24 hours following the quakes, the government response was practically nonexistent. In an upscale neighborhood in Caracas, ill-equipped police officers illuminated the rubble with cellphone flashlights, and volunteers used their bare hands to clear debris … An unusual number of vultures have been seen flying over what’s left of La Guaira in recent days. The birds appear to have arrived in some disaster zones before the rescue teams.

“The lack of preparation is unforgivable. Worse, the regime led by Delcy Rodríguez—under the heavy-handed management of the Trump administration—has taken active steps to make matters worse. The government deployed the military to the disaster areas not to help but to diffuse any expression of public discontent. ‘Here there are more rifles than shovels,’ a volunteer reportedly shouted in despair. Civil-society groups pleaded for the government to unblock access to social media and censored news outlets, even if only temporarily, so that people could get information. Instead, Rodríguez announced that local and international journalists would be subjected to further restrictions.”

Read more: [https://theatln.tc/ynddchlB](https://theatln.tc/ynddchlB)

Removing Maduro from Venezuela hasn’t improved the country a lot it seems. It’s incredibly sad, but unsurprising: Trump’s „plan“ did not go past something like „we’ll take their oil and look good doing it“.