Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Venezuela’s government struggles to respond to deadly earthquakes, Mercosur launches trade talks with Japan, and Ecuador and Paraguay declare national holidays after defeating Germany at the World Cup.
Venezuela is still reeling from twin earthquakes that hit the country last week. The government said on Wednesday that at least 2,295 people had died in the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude tremors, while citizen-compiled registries say tens of thousands of people are still missing—a sign they could be lying dead under rubble.
A United Nations official on Monday said the organization planned to send 10,000 body bags to the country. The U.N. Development Program estimated that the earthquakes caused $6.7 billion in direct physical damages alone, with the broader costs of economic disruption likely to be much higher.
As experts continue to crunch the numbers on disaster response, one thing is clear: The earthquakes have laid bare many Venezuelans’ dissatisfaction with their government.
