The Conditions of Relief
Two days have passed since earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck the northern coast of Venezuela on the evening of June 24. The scene in La Guaira reported by Reuters on the night of the 26th is brutal. The mother of a child buried in the rubble shouts, "We need to bring a crane." The official death toll is 920, injured 3,360, and buried 172. But an independent online registry lists over 51,000 missing persons alone. Simón Bolívar International Airport was closed due to structural damage, and foreign rescue teams and relief supplies began to reach the affected areas only two days after the earthquake. There is a direct causal relationship between the speed of arrival of relief and the accumulation of deaths.
Natural disasters are natural. But who dies waiting for a crane in the rubble and who is rescued is determined socially. Venezuela's buildings, hospitals, and power grids had been in a state of suspended maintenance due to more than a decade of U.S. sanctions. What is decisive is the fact that this structure has not changed even after the regime change. After Maduro was arrested and removed by the U.S. in January 2026, Delcy Rodríguez became acting president, but sanctions against Venezuela remain fully in place. The White House declared it would oversee Venezuela's oil and gas sector "indefinitely" and announced a deal for the U.S. to sell Venezuelan oil. Only the regime changed; economic sovereignty was not restored, and oil came under the empire's direct control. In this state, the earthquake came. According to the Associated Press, citizens said they "did not see national rescue teams" and took up shovels and hammers themselves. The state apparatus, hollowed out by sanctions, was powerless in the face of disaster, and many of the 920 deaths are a direct result of the structural vulnerability that the empire's economic war has produced over years.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "the top priority is search and rescue" and announced the dispatch of rescue teams. But what conditions accompany this relief, and whether it will lead to sanctions relief, was not mentioned. With the port of La Guaira itself destroyed as the gateway for relief logistics, the relief is structurally forced to depend on the same empire that already controls the power. This is the tragic paradox of imperialism. First, it collapses the state through economic war, then provides relief for the disaster caused by that collapse, and through the relief absorbs even the remaining fragments of sovereignty. Relief is not neutral. Because the conditions that make the act of relief itself possible exist only on the power structure that the long economic war has reshaped.
In the very same week, North Korea commissioned the largest warship it built itself. It is a 5,000-ton Choe Hyon-class guided missile destroyer. Kim Jong-un declared at the commissioning ceremony the nuclear armament of the navy and a shift from coastal defense to strategic strike capability. In the empire's language, it is a 'provocation.' But seen with eyes that face the rubble of Venezuela, this is a declaration that it has chosen the path of not succumbing and enduring under the same pressure of the imperialist asphyxiation operation. This refusal comes with a price. But that price is fundamentally different from the price proven by Venezuela's 50,000 missing. One is the vulnerability born of the price of co-optation, and the other is the price of maintaining refusal. The two events are 14,000 kilometers apart but converge into one political lesson. Regime change within the imperialist order is not sovereignty restoration, and relief is not humanitarianism but the next stage of operations.
Natural disasters are natural. But who dies waiting for a crane in the rubble and who is rescued is determined socially. Venezuela's buildings, hospitals, and power grids had been in a state of suspended maintenance due to more than a decade of U.S. sanctions. What is decisive is the fact that this structure has not changed even after the regime change. After Maduro was arrested and removed by the U.S. in January 2026, Delcy Rodríguez became acting president, but sanctions against Venezuela remain fully in place. The White House declared it would oversee Venezuela's oil and gas sector "indefinitely" and announced a deal for the U.S. to sell Venezuelan oil. Only the regime changed; economic sovereignty was not restored, and oil came under the empire's direct control. In this state, the earthquake came. According to the Associated Press, citizens said they "did not see national rescue teams" and took up shovels and hammers themselves. The state apparatus, hollowed out by sanctions, was powerless in the face of disaster, and many of the 920 deaths are a direct result of the structural vulnerability that the empire's economic war has produced over years.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "the top priority is search and rescue" and announced the dispatch of rescue teams. But what conditions accompany this relief, and whether it will lead to sanctions relief, was not mentioned. With the port of La Guaira itself destroyed as the gateway for relief logistics, the relief is structurally forced to depend on the same empire that already controls the power. This is the tragic paradox of imperialism. First, it collapses the state through economic war, then provides relief for the disaster caused by that collapse, and through the relief absorbs even the remaining fragments of sovereignty. Relief is not neutral. Because the conditions that make the act of relief itself possible exist only on the power structure that the long economic war has reshaped.
In the very same week, North Korea commissioned the largest warship it built itself. It is a 5,000-ton Choe Hyon-class guided missile destroyer. Kim Jong-un declared at the commissioning ceremony the nuclear armament of the navy and a shift from coastal defense to strategic strike capability. In the empire's language, it is a 'provocation.' But seen with eyes that face the rubble of Venezuela, this is a declaration that it has chosen the path of not succumbing and enduring under the same pressure of the imperialist asphyxiation operation. This refusal comes with a price. But that price is fundamentally different from the price proven by Venezuela's 50,000 missing. One is the vulnerability born of the price of co-optation, and the other is the price of maintaining refusal. The two events are 14,000 kilometers apart but converge into one political lesson. Regime change within the imperialist order is not sovereignty restoration, and relief is not humanitarianism but the next stage of operations.