00:00In Venezuela, over 5,000 people have died. Another nearly 17,000 have been injured after a set of two
00:05earthquakes hit the country just a few weeks ago.
00:08This comes as the nation is already in the middle of a major political transition with protesters pushing for free
00:13and democratic elections.
00:14Joining us now from Caracas is Phil Gunson. He's the senior analyst for the Andes region at the International Crisis
00:20Group.
00:20Phil, it's good to talk to you again. First, I want to ask how you and your family are and
00:24just how recovery is going right now in Venezuela.
00:26Of course, we've been watching all these videos coming out. I know it's getting harder and harder to find survivors.
00:31Has any progress been made? How is everyone doing?
00:35Personally, we're fine. Thank you for asking. Our house, fortunately, is built on rock.
00:41We're not in the part of the capital, Caracas, that suffered, which is nearer to the mountain and is built
00:47mostly on sediment so that the buildings shake a lot more.
00:53More generally, of course, the situation is really challenging.
00:57As you mentioned, the death toll, the official death toll is now around 5,000, but at least that many
01:04people must still be under the rubble.
01:06And it's very, very challenging because, of course, these are high rise buildings that basically collapsed, you know, one floor
01:12on top of another.
01:13So extracting the bodies is a really challenging task and the recovery, of course, will be an even greater challenge.
01:20I wanted to ask you from your position as an analyst here, how much faith you put into the numbers
01:24that the government gives out here.
01:26And you talk about sort of how more widespread the damage might be, the death toll, the number of injured.
01:31What is the kind of non-governmental sense of how widespread and difficult the damage has been?
01:37Yeah, I don't really think the government has much of much motivation for manipulating the figures.
01:42This is, of course, the government that has us well used to concealment of statistics, distortion of statistics.
01:50But in this particular case, I don't think they want to minimize the disaster.
01:55If anything, you know, they need the help and they need to stress just how bad this is.
02:01To give you some kind of a more objective figure, perhaps, the UN ordered 10,000 body bags and made
02:10it clear that that was perhaps roughly the kind of final death toll that they were anticipating.
02:18The damage is mostly concentrated in the small coastal state of La Guayda, which is just north of Caracas on
02:25the Caribbean.
02:26And buildings did come down in Caracas. There were some some deaths and a lot of injuries and property damage
02:31in Caracas.
02:32But it's mainly down there on the coast that the true disaster happened.
02:36How much international aid are you seeing?
02:39I know the U.S. sent a couple of those task force teams that are usually deployed, but a lot
02:42of that usually comes through USAID, which we know is currently defunct.
02:46I'm wondering what you saw, given the unclear status of the Venezuelan government, who helped and is more needed?
02:54Well, the first few days were really terrible.
02:57I think everybody coincides in saying that the initial response, 48 to 72 hours, which, of course, is the crucial
03:05period for getting people out alive.
03:09There really was next to no government presence on the ground in the particularly hard hit area.
03:15And when it did appear, it was totally inadequate, lack of heavy equipment.
03:20The rescue crews from civil defense and the firefighters really had no equipment, even basic stuff like uniforms and boots.
03:29I mean, they were lacking.
03:30And the uniform security services were accused, are accused of basically having stood around, if anything, stood in the way
03:38of rescue efforts.
03:40There was a large international response.
03:42Now, of course, we're into the recovery phase and rescue, search and rescue is really over.
03:48And those teams have gone back.
03:49But there are still field hospitals from many countries that are really acting in an extremely helpful way in dealing
03:58with, you know, the aftermath of this.
04:00Many, many people, of course, in need of medical attention and even psychological attention.
04:04Phil, I know we want to look at this kind of in complement with the political situation on the ground
04:08and as we kind of make our way there.
04:09Let me just ask you to contrast for us the way that the government has responded to this crisis with
04:15the landslides that we had many years ago now.
04:18So, Christina, asking about international aid.
04:20I know that Delce Rodriguez, the interim president, has reached out to the IMF for additional support.
04:25Contrast just the level of kind of international aid and outreach she has been able to at least ask for,
04:31try to tap this time around versus then, as we've seen the country going through this, this strange and novel
04:36political transition of a sort.
04:39Yeah, it's interesting.
04:401999, when the last disaster happened in that same area, floods and landslides, killed again thousands of people.
04:48It was the first year that I was living in Venezuela, the first year I was down here as a
04:53reporter.
04:54And one of the things that really stood out then was the fact that Hugo Chavez, who had just come
05:00to power less than a year earlier, he refused USAID.
05:05In fact, he sent back the U.S. naval vessels that were on their way to help out at that
05:12point.
05:12Because now we're in the situation, very strange and paradoxical situation, where since January the 3rd, Venezuela's great, at least
05:21over the last couple of decades, great geopolitical rival and adversary, the United States, is now acting in partnership with
05:30a rather reluctant Delce Rodriguez government.
05:32But at least that has opened up the country to the possibility of more international aid.
05:38And in fact, many countries, not just the United States, but countries that have been very adversarial with countries in
05:46some cases with which Venezuela doesn't have any political relations, any diplomatic relations, like Israel, for example.
05:54I mean, have come in and played an important role in the search and rescue.
05:58I want to ask you about the capacity and kind of the function of this government.
06:02There's been some reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere how involved Secretary of State Rubio is over the
06:07country's finances, over some of the political apparatus.
06:09And then we have this reporting this week that interim president Delce Rodriguez says she's not sure she's going to
06:14run in a future presidential election.
06:17Speaking of video, she said she's willing to sit down with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado after U.S. sanctions
06:22are lifted on the country.
06:24Do we have any idea at this point what the political future looks like for Venezuela?
06:29Well, it's hard to look more than a couple of weeks into the future in this country.
06:33Anything can happen.
06:35But what we do have right now is an announcement that on the 1st of August there will be talks
06:42beginning between a delegation led by Jorge Rodriguez,
06:46the president's interim president's brother who heads the National Assembly and has always been, you know, in recent years, the
06:53main negotiator for Venezuela and an opposition delegation.
06:56And the curious thing is that that opposition delegation is not representing Maria Corina Machado, who is clearly the opposition
07:02leader.
07:03She's outside the country, of course, still.
07:04And the U.S. has been very reluctant to have her come back.
07:07This opposition delegation is led by a former legislator called Dinora Figuera in the name of something called the 2015
07:18National Assembly.
07:19Back then, there was a parliament in Venezuela that was dominated by the opposition.
07:23And the remnants of that, which really don't amount to more than 20 people, have been the recipients in the
07:31recent past since the Guaido experiment ended with the interim government there,
07:36of U.S. recognition to some extent that they're the last democratically elected body.
07:41But this is clearly an attempt by the U.S. to, if you like, head off Maria Corina Machado,
07:47who has been seen by the Trump administration as excessively confrontational and really not the person who can sit down
07:53with the Dulce Rodriguez government negotiations, I think.
07:56Of course, we don't know where that process is going or how far and how fast the U.S. will
08:01press for a genuine political transition.
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