DORAL, Fla. — On Wednesday, Delcy Rodríguez called for a week of mourning, as search-and-rescue teams were still digging down to free survivors that they had found under the rubble in northern Venezuela.
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Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela since Nicolás Maduro’s capture, faced accusations that her administration and supporters were hindering the disaster relief effort instead of contributing to it.
“If in fact we are having impediments being put in the way of getting the help to the people of Venezuela, then we need to exert as much pressure as possible,” U.S. Rep. Carlos A. Giménez said on Wednesday in Doral.
César Rodríguez, a pilot with W Aviation in Fort Lauderdale, reported having to wait for operating permits from the Venezuelan National Institute of Civil Aviation, or INAC, to be allowed to land with aid.
“We still have two planes with cargo,“ César Rodríguez said in a public update on Tuesday on Instagram.
In Venezuela, Francisco Lermanda, a member of the search-and-rescue team Topos Chile, reported that they had found a 14-year-old boy who was trapped and at risk of a deadly blood clot, so they used a phone to call their team’s physicians for guidance.
“A soldier took away our phone because he said it could be espionage,” Lermanda told Venezuelan Diario La Grey about how the armed Venezuelan military disrupted their effort to save the teen.
Lermanda warned that he had experienced how the Venezuelan government was militarizing and politicizing the response to the earthquakes — and this concerned him.
“It is very difficult to cope with this situation,” Lermanda told Diario La Grey.
The world-famous leader of the Brigada Internacional de Rescate Topos Azteca, Héctor “El Chino” Méndez, has been active since the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.
“I am not a politician; I am a rescuer,” Méndez told reporters in Spanish while working in Venezuela. He later added, “I’m 80 years old, and you’re not going to come to me to tell me what to say.”
A spokesperson for the Mexican Topos Tlaltelolco Rescue Brigade later released a statement asking the public to keep the focus on the victims and on the rescue efforts.
Sebastian Eduardo Martinez Borrego, also known as “Boikido,” was among the Venezuelan English-Spanish translators who reported they were harassed over their work with foreigners.
“I fear for my life, I am being pursued and harassed by state repressive agencies,” Martinez Borrego wrote on Instagram, as he blamed Venezuela’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, or DGCIM.
Before many of the foreign rescue teams arrived, the civilian volunteers who had rushed to rescue survivors with nothing but their bare hands and tools suddenly faced a new obstacle on June 26: The government required a new permit for access.
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Despite the urgency, the volunteers had to stand in line to apply before officials in uniform, who sat behind desks in Caracas to process permits, as the Venezuelan military restricted access to La Guaira.
Venezuelan officials allowed foreign journalists into the area with a list of limitations and requirements. The Venezuelan National Press Workers Union, or SNTP, was documenting the limits to on-the-ground reporting.
Journalists with Runrun.es reported that the Venezuelan military didn’t give them access to the devastation at Carayaca, a city in the state of Vargas, just west of La Guaira.
“The country needs verified and timely information, especially the families of the victims,” a spokesperson for SNTP wrote in Spanish on June 29 on X.
On Tuesday, Diosdado Cabello, a former Venezuelan military officer who serves as the minister of justice, announced the arrests of law enforcement personnel who were accused of looting in La Guaira.
Cabello, who is wanted in the U.S. for narcotrafficking, identified the four suspects as Maya Aguilar Reyes, Fredy Rafael Lugo Oliveros, Roger Andrés Omaña, and Josue Jhonatan Burgos Sánchez.
A witness recorded and shared a video that went viral. It showed Aguilar Reyes, his identification, and a woman in tears who confronted him, took a bag he was holding full of U.S. dollars, and ripped the bills into pieces over the rubble near a collapsed building.
Delcy Rodríguez’s brother Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the National Assembly, announced on Wednesday that the death toll had increased to 2,295.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates fatalities in the tens of thousands, and the United Nations announced the procurement of 10,000 body bags.
“I would like more presence of public entities, who really are those responsible for this, but in the end, we’re used to making do with almost nothing,” Mijaed Diaz, a veterinarian who was searching for body bags for four bodies in La Guaira, told Reuters.
With the support of the U.S. State Department, North Carolina-based nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse opened a temporary 56-bed field hospital near Paseo La Guaira, north of Caracas.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Southern Command announced some changes on Wednesday afternoon, as U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Jarrard continued to lead in Venezuela.
Joint Task Force-Bravo, under Col. David Webb’s command since June 18, moved “advanced elements” from the Simón Bolívar International Airport to the Port of La Guaira, where the USS Fort Lauderdale had a medical support platform.
A U.S. Army medical unit, a military ambulance, and marine logisticians, who had a water purification system, a tram, a mobile potable water container, and a tow truck/wrecker, were on the ground, according to SOUTHCOM.
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Helpful list: Aid drop-off locations in South Florida
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