Venezuela’s acting leader defends quake response as her 180-day mandate expires

The government of Venezuela’s acting president has issued its first public defence of the pace and efficiency of its earthquake response amid mounting public criticism.

The response came as Delcy Rodriguez’s 180-day mandate as interim leader was expiring.

The powerful twin quakes struck the northern state of La Guaira on June 24, and killed more than 2,295 people, according to the latest government figures. A non-governmental digital database continues to list more than 38,000 people as missing.

Ms Rodriguez, who served as deputy to former president Nicolas Maduro until his capture in January by Donald Trump’s administration, waited more than an hour after the quakes initially hit before making her first public statement, and held her first news conference on the government response late Thursday — eight days after the quakes.

Relief organisations typically scramble to find survivors in the first three days after a natural disaster, as the passing of time exponentially diminishes hope for finding signs of life.

But exhausted rescuers were still digging across the hard-hit communities of La Guaira on Friday, encouraged by Thursday’s dramatic rescue of a 43-year-old security guard from a collapsed shopping centre basement after nearly eight days under the rubble.

Even with some international teams packing up to go home, Ms Rodriguez late Thursday insisted that the government was not winding down rescue efforts.

“We have not closed the search-and-rescue phase. We are still in that stage because, according to our overall assessment, there are still active sites where we believe there may be survivors, even if there is only one,” she told reporters in a testy news conference, where she pushed back against the criticism of the state’s rescue efforts for the first time since the quakes struck.

Ms Rodriguez blamed public outrage over the government’s response on what she called “narratives manufactured in propaganda laboratories”, claiming that rescue crews deployed immediately with adequate equipment to disaster zones – contrary to widespread complaints by residents that they were left alone to search for their loved ones without official teams or heavy machinery for the first 48 hours.

“Those propaganda operations, driven by partisan political interests, are despicable,” she said. “We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately.”

She went on to say that 11 international field hospitals, along with health workers from 33 countries, had been deployed to quake-affected areas, adding that the government had approved the creation of a fund to receive donations for reconstruction.

The United Nations Development Programme estimates that the quakes caused 6.7 billion dollars in physical damage in Venezuela, or roughly 6% of the country’s gross domestic product. That does not cover other long-term recovery and reconstruction costs.

The comments from Ms Rodriguez, who became interim leader with the backing of the Trump administration after the ousting of Mr Maduro, appeared aimed at showing her government was in control of the response. In recent months, she has overseen business-friendly reforms of the country’s lucrative oil sector under US pressure but shown no urgency in returning Venezuela to democracy.

Under Venezuela’s constitution, temporary absences are to be filled by the vice president — which was Ms Rodriguez’s former role — for up to 90 days, after which they can be extended by the national assembly for an additional 90 days.

On Friday, that 180-day interim period expired. There was no immediate comment from authorities on what, if anything, they would do in response to the expiration of Ms Rodriguez’s mandate. The National Assembly, controlled by Ms Rodriguez’s party, can trigger a snap election if politicians declare the post permanently vacant.

More broadly, no timetable has been given for the process of holding democratic elections, with the Trump administration saying before the earthquake that a vote would take place once Venezuela and its economy have been stabilised.

Mr Maduro claimed victory in a 2024 election in which the opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, was banned from running. An independently verified vote count carried out by the opposition found that Ms Machado’s candidate was the real winner.

Ms Machado has pledged to return from exile to help with the earthquake recovery. Earlier this week she accused Ms Rodriguez’s government of closing the airspace ahead of her flight to Venezuela to block her return.

The Trump administration has repeatedly praised Ms Rodriguez’s earthquake efforts and largely turned its back on Ms Machado.