Earthquakes in Venezuela: It is not fate that is to blame, but capitalism and the bourgeois state!

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On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 25, at 6:04 p.m., two earthquakes, less than a minute apart, shook north-central Venezuela. Their epicenter was located in the town of Morón, 168 kilometers west of Caracas; this town, along with La Guaira, was among the areas hardest hit by damage and destruction throughout Venezuela. At the time of writing, the death toll from the earthquakes stands at more than 1,900, a figure that, of course, continues to rise over time and is likely to reach tens of thousands of victims: according to the UN, 50,000 people are missing.

For its part, NASA, based on its satellite observations, estimated that more than 50,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.

In 2019, a Venezuelan geographer, Virginia Jiménez Díaz, warned in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País (1) that this city [La Guaira, ed.] was in the same state of risk as it was two decades ago (2): “We are creating disasters every day” (3) (...) “This can be explained by the weakness of institutions [read: corruption]. (...) ‘The creation of vulnerability is closely linked to the inefficiency of the state [read: once again, corruption and incompetence].” Under capitalism, all tragedies foreshadow their occurrence long before they actually happen.

After the 1967 Caracas earthquake, stricter seismic building codes were implemented, but they were not followed because they increased the construction costs of these increasingly tall and complex structures. Furthermore, after the 1999 landslide, numerous public housing units—intended primarily for the working class—were built; they were of poor quality and constructed on unstable ground, including areas that had been devastated by the torrential rains of that time.

These abuses have resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims today: the injured, the dead, and people living on the streets with nowhere to rest in peace. These were homes built with criminally negligent care and poorly designed, all to cut production costs for both private companies and public agencies! These are crimes committed under the capitalist system, under the yoke of orthodoxy and the logic of money!

In the aftermath of the disaster, the government agencies responsible for managing such tragedies proved woefully inadequate; in many places, residents, standing at the foot of collapsed buildings, waited in agony for the arrival of the equipment and personnel needed to begin digging and attempt to rescue as many people as possible trapped under the rubble, from which voices could sometimes be heard calling for help. In many places, residents attempted the impossible, but without adequate resources, doing with their bare hands what actually required technical expertise and equipment suited to this kind of situation. Others began looting pharmacies and various stores to cope with a situation that was becoming terribly chaotic as time went on and the authorities—who showed no sign of life—failed to reach the disaster-stricken areas.

Unable to come to the aid of victims who were expressing urgent needs, the government decided to “militarize” the La Guaira region, as well as other areas. The police and military contented themselves with closely monitoring those who might have taken advantage of the collapses to steal the belongings of the deceased, without ever picking up a pickaxe or shovel to help survivors search for their missing loved ones, buried under the rubble: further proof that the bourgeois state—even a “Bolivarian” one—which keeps the working class in a precarious state of survival, and whose policies have caused the mass exodus of more than seven million Venezuelans, including workers and the lower middle class, artisans, and small business owners, etc.—even as it shamelessly sells itself out to U.S. interests (4)—is far more motivated by the defense of the capitalist order than by the lives of the people!

During nearly three decades of Chavista rule—beyond the facade and propaganda bestowed upon it by many distinguished left-wing intellectuals, as well as by governments such as China’s, which lent it colossal sums—the regime never implemented any genuine projects or initiatives to defend against so-called natural disasters; on the contrary, it has, for example, allowed violent expeditions into the northern Amazon, using state-of-the-art technology to extract all kinds of minerals, including coltan, gold, rare earth elements, iron, and bauxite; deeply damaging a pristine natural environment that could have been exploited without creating major imbalances between humans and nature, between society and the environment—unlike what is happening today…

After catastrophic floods in Spain, we wrote: The working class “ suffers silently in bourgeois catastrophes as well as in everyday peace, in floods as well as at work, where it contributes thousands and thousands of deaths every year to the maintenance of commodity production. But, because it is at the center of the capitalist world, because it holds in its hands the production of all social wealth, because it constitutes the majority of the population in every country, it can get rid of the bourgeois class and annihilate its world, opening the door to a future where true abundance finally arrives, the true balance of the human being in his natural environment. This is undoubtedly the future, namely the real strength (today only potential, tomorrow real) of the proletarian class. But to realize this future, to show its true strength, the proletariat must return to the terrain of class struggle, it must fight against the enemy classes, both in defense of its immediate interests, those linked to the most basic survival, and in the general political confrontation against the political and social domination of the bourgeoisie. ” (5)

Tomorrow, the revolutionary proletariat will avenge all their victims by overthrowing the bourgeois state and establishing their dictatorial rule to eradicate murderous capitalism!

(1) https://elpais.com/chile/2026-06-26/por-que-se-han-derrumbado-tantos-edificios-en-el-terremoto-de-venezuela-el-duro-aprendizaje-de-chile.html

(2) Two decades ago, a mudslide occurred that turned into a massive flood: a mixture of water and mud poured down from the peaks of the mountains surrounding the port city after two weeks of uninterrupted rain, burying thousands of homes and their occupants. An unusual and unprecedented tragedy that occurred in La Guaira in 1999.

(3) This refers to the unregulated construction of favelas and shantytowns, as seen in Rio de Janeiro, which involves all sorts of improvisation, ignorance, and disregard for engineering principles, etc.

(4) On June 25, Trump stated on his social media platform Truth Social that the United States would help its “new great friends,” while blocking yet another attempt by Maria Corina Machado—a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a traditional pro-American figure in the Venezuelan opposition—to enter Venezuela. She apparently is no longer a “great friend” in the same way that Delcy Rodríguez’s Bolivarian government is: the latter, in fact, gives the United States what it wants, while maintaining bourgeois order…

(5) “Capitalism is solely responsible for Spain's catastrophic floods”, pcint.org, 30/10/2024

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