“Continue to support the Venezuelan people”: Thousands are missing as earthquake rescue efforts continue

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Amy Goodman: This Is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, as we now turn to Venezuela, where rescue efforts continue as tens of thousands of people remain missing, trapped under the rubble of flattened homes and buildings, nearly a week after two successive earthquakes devastated La Guaira and Caracas. Rescue teams are desperately searching for survivors, with Venezuelan health officials saying on Monday that more than 1,700 people have been confirmed dead, and the number is expected to rise. The United Nations said it would purchase 10,000 body bags.

All this comes as the Associated Press reports that more than a hundred Venezuelans deported from the United States to Caracas, hours before the earthquakes struck, are believed to have died. Very few survivors from that group described how they were left in a hotel in La Guaira and had to crawl out of the rubble.

For more, we go to Caracas, where we are joined by Beatriz Ochoa, Head of Advocacy for Latin America at the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Describe to us what is happening as you sit there today, Beatrice.

Beatriz Ochoa: Thank you very much for having me and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

What we are witnessing is a great deal of devastation, not only in Caracas, but also in other parts of the country, especially in the coastal city of La Guaira and its surrounding areas. We also see a lot of solidarity from the Venezuelan people. These are some of the things that surprised me the most, in a good way, sometimes people share very little of what they have, but everyone wants to help. Everyone wants to support their neighbors, friends and of course their family members.

But we also see that this will be something that needs to be supported in the long term. We see people staying in parks as shelters, and also in schools as temporary shelters. This is of course a good step in the right direction, because people are safe. They don’t sleep on the streets. But this is only – or this can only be a temporary measure. We will need to move to more medium- and long-term solutions, so that people can have affordable housing, a more dignified place to sleep, and can rebuild their lives.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Beatriz, I wanted to ask you – the US sanctions against Venezuela are still very much in place. What impact do these sanctions have on the Venezuelan government’s ability to provide assistance to its citizens?

Beatriz Ochoa: This is something that has been around for many years. In the past, sanctions have affected humanitarian operations where there was a lot of due diligence on the part of banks and financial institutions. There are a lot of difficulties in processing payments for our employees and suppliers, so making purchases is more difficult, more expensive and more bureaucratic.

Now, we welcome the general license issued a few days ago, which is supposed to allow dedicated operations for humanitarian operations. This has only been in place for a few days. I think what is most important is for financial institutions and banks to be able to follow this license. Sometimes they are very afraid, and then they become, for example, reluctant to address any operation that attacks Venezuela, because they have fines, huge amounts of fines. So, we welcome this waiver, so that banks and other financial institutions feel more comfortable. This is a very positive step. I think it may be too early to test it, but it is certainly a very positive development.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you also, about – the Bolivarian Revolution has always focused on organizing at the neighborhood level or at the grassroots level, and on developing the communes. Has this type of grassroots organization demonstrated itself in terms of rescue operations and operations carried out so far since the earthquakes?

Beatriz Ochoa: Yes, a lot of the neighbors and the community have organized themselves. And recently, I was in a school that was being used as a temporary shelter, and we were told that it was organized by local communities and that they were trying to help people who were already there, like, in their neighborhoods and so on. And of course, this is a way of organizing, maybe not the only way, but this is the way the school used to organize itself. I also visited the parks, and they organized themselves differently. It was more volunteers, neighbors, and the community themselves who were doing it — for example, who cleaned the toilets, who made sure meals were distributed more equitably. So, there are different ways in which society organizes itself. I can tell you that.

AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk about your call, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s call, and many other calls, for more support from the international community? What would that look like?

Beatriz Ochoa: Of course. Thank you. The Norwegian Refugee Council calls on the international community to continue supporting the Venezuelan people. Already before the crisis, 7 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, and the funding situation has been very poor in the past few years. So, this has to stop.

The support, it’s been amazing. There have already been a few countries that have sent search and rescue teams, which have already pledged certain amounts of money. This is very generous. We all very much welcome this. We need money to provide life-saving assistance, as I said at the beginning, safe or safer places to sleep with dignity, where people can have privacy, where they can shower and have minimum standards of hygiene. But we will also need support for the children. Schools are used as temporary shelters. This is the case in many other crises; This isn’t just for this one. Children will need access to education, to temporary learning spaces, where they can feel – where they can feel normal, but also some psychosocial support, some basic tools that can make the difference between processing the traumatic experiences they’ve had and being more resilient in the short, medium and long term.

Another message from the Norwegian Refugee Council is that support from the international community must continue over time, so, again, not just in the short term, but this will need to be long term. I consider it a marathon, not a sprint, so we will need support for the months and years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Beatriz Ochoa, we want to thank you for being with us, Head of Advocacy for Latin America at the Norwegian Refugee Council, and joining us from Caracas, Venezuela. Once again, more than a hundred Venezuelans are believed to have been deported to Venezuela just hours before the earthquake deaths.

This does it for our show. We will publish an interview in Spanish with Beatriz on freedomnow.org. We are also hiring an Education Program Director and fundraising and outreach interns. Find out more at democracynow.org/jobs. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, on another edition of Democracy Now!

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