Kudos to Venezuela’s first responders and all the brave citizens still pulling survivors from under the rubble of the 774 buildings that collapsed in last Wednesday’s double earthquakes. Is the sudden pancaking of so many structures – structures built during the boom years of high oil prices, a tipping point for an under-sanctions nation dogged by decades of eroding services and infrastructure? The interim president of a regime in survival mode was copiously booed Saturday in Caracas as many accuse the successor of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro of putting the security apparatus before disaster relief.
We’ll ask how best the international community can help with a particular eye to the dozens of US forces airlifting in supplies and helping coordinate air traffic, the US once the sworn enemy and whose president claims the locals are ‘dancing in the streets’ now that he’s removed Maduro and the oil’s flowing his way. If it’s truly a turning point, then what kind of turning point?
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
