CARACAS—When U.S. forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, Washington did not hand power to opposition candidate Edmundo González, the real winner of Venezuela’s fraudulent 2024 election. Instead, U.S. President Donald Trump chose to install Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, as his replacement. White House officials thought she would be a disciplined and technocratic administrator willing to govern under U.S. tutelage and open Venezuela to foreign investors, per New York Times reporting.
Then, at 6:04 p.m. on June 24, the ground in Venezuela moved.
Two strike-slip earthquakes—magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5—ruptured 39 seconds apart beneath the state of Yaracuy. It was the most violent seismic event to strike Venezuela since 1900. As of Wednesday, the tremors had killed at least 2,295 people and injured more than 11,267, according to the Venezuelan government. At least 40,000 remain unaccounted for, according to independent open-source platforms. The United Nations has warned that the humanitarian toll is likely to climb. Some buildings in Caracas collapsed, while the nearby coastal city of La Guaira was practically flattened.
A week on, the deeper casualty is the fiction at the center of Washington’s bet on Rodríguez. The earthquake did not just level buildings. It revealed the hollow state she leads.
