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El Ciudadano

Original article: Venezuela se mueve

By Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez, Doctor of Philosophy

Natural disasters serve as historical illuminators. Beneath the tremors of the Earth’s crust, the deep-rooted structures of society surface. The strengths built over decades of popular organization, the institutional capacities developed collectively, the inherited weaknesses due to economic dependency, and the virtues forged through long cycles of community awareness all come to light. 

Where an earthquake collapses buildings, it also tests the moral architecture of a nation. The crucial question shifts from merely how many degrees the seismic movement reached, to how an organized community responds to the suffering of its members. 

Solidarity is a fundamental human right, not a privilege. Solidarity is part of humanity’s ethical heritage. On June 24, 2026, two earthquakes struck Venezuela: the first registering a magnitude of 7.2 and the second at 7.5, with a mere 39-second interval. The main event occurred approximately 160 kilometers west of Caracas, resulting from the contact between the Caribbean tectonic plate and the South American plate. 

Both plates shift laterally in relation to one another, accumulating stress over decades or centuries until it is suddenly released through earthquakes. Preliminary reports locate the phenomenon within the active fault system in northern Venezuela, particularly linked to the tectonic corridor traversing Carabobo and the central coast. 

The rupture led to a rare occurrence known as a «double earthquake»: two significant quakes with magnitudes exceeding 7 occurring practically in the same area and separated by less than a minute. So far, 920 confirmed fatalities and more than 3,000 injuries have been reported. Thousands are still missing after the collapse of residential and commercial buildings. This event marks the most destructive seismic incident recorded in Venezuela in over a century. 

This quake clearly surpasses the 1967 Caracas earthquake, which resulted in 236 deaths and around 2,000 injuries. It constitutes one of the few major double earthquakes recorded in Latin America during the 21st century. The 7.5 quake released nearly three times more energy than the 7.2 event. Therefore, the second quake was the true main event, resulting in the majority of the destruction observed.

From a scientific standpoint, the double earthquake is a uniquely dangerous combination: a significant initial rupture weakened structures, followed just 39 seconds later by an even more powerful earthquake that caused widespread collapses. This sequence explains much of the devastation observed in Caracas, La Guaira, Carabobo, and the central coast.

Venezuela is in motion. The society continuously strives to produce life under adverse conditions; history is in motion amid economic tensions, geopolitical disputes, and long-standing social struggles; the very land is also moving, reminding us starkly that nature is an inseparable part of human existence and that no political construct can detach from the material forces shaping reality. 

The recent earthquakes that shook Venezuelan territory, with exceptional magnitudes and painful consequences for thousands of families, serve as a beacon illuminating various dimensions of contemporary historical experience. This is not solely a geological phenomenon. It is a social, ethical, and civilizational test. 

Thus, understanding the current seismic episode requires simultaneously observing tectonic plates and social structures. It calls for studying both the seismic dynamics of the Caribbean and the material and political conditions in which millions of people navigate their daily lives. It necessitates recognizing that the social production of security is a collective task as critical as scientific research on geological faults. 

In this context, international solidarity emerges as an objective necessity, not merely a decorative gesture. No people should face an emergency of this magnitude in solitude. Cooperation among nations aligns with a fundamental human principle grounded in the real interdependence of peoples. 

Every rescue brigade, every shipment of medicines, every technological contribution, and every resource allocated for reconstruction represents concrete expressions of shared responsibility. It is a right that stems from the social nature of our existence, and no border can justify indifference to human suffering. 

The international offers of support that began to emerge after the earthquakes reveal precisely this universal dimension of cooperation among peoples. No strings attached. At the same time, it is essential to maintain a critical vigilance against media monopolies that often turn tragedies into informational and political commodities. Frequently, disasters are used to impose oversimplified interpretations that reduce complex historical processes to rapid-fire emotional narratives. 

The spectacularization of suffering operates as a form of symbolic extraction. While communities search for survivors among the rubble, certain media production centers craft narratives that serve economic or geopolitical interests detached from the real needs of the affected population. Collective pain is then transformed into raw material for ideological operations that obscure structural causes and divert attention from the urgent tasks of rescue, assistance, and reconstruction. 

Venezuela is in motion. It moves because it lives. It moves because it produces, resists, learns, and transforms. It moves in the spontaneous solidarity of those removing debris to save strangers. It moves in hospitals facing extraordinary challenges. 

It moves in the communities organizing shelters, food, and care. It moves in the science studying geological faults and in the social consciousness that understands the shortcomings of an international order incapable of ensuring universal conditions of dignity. 

Not to contemplate tragedy from a distance, nor to fuel fleeting media spectacles, but to serve as a reminder that humanity shares a common fate and that the true measure of any civilization lies in its capacity to turn solidarity into concrete action in the face of the suffering of peoples. This trembling of the earth should become a moral beacon for the world. 

Fernando Buen Abad

Cover Photo: CNN

La entrada Venezuela in Motion: Earthquakes and the Resilience of Society se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.