In a mountainside cemetery high above Caracas, far from the chaos of Venezuela’s earthquake-lashed coast, a family of three huddles in the back of a pickup truck coming to terms with their loss.“At first, it will be difficult,” says Adolfo Guedez, tears rolling down his cheeks as his eldest daughter, Carmen, hugs a wooden cremation box containing the ashes of her sister, Alexandra.
Yaritza García and her daughter, Carmen, hug after receiving the box containing the remains of Alexandra at El Junquito Cemetery on the outskirts of Caracas
“But she will help us get through this,” Guedez comforts his wife and daughter, motioning to the urn holding their second child’s remains. “She will help us.”Alexandra Yarismar Guedez García, a 23-year-old physiotherapist, is one of more than 5,000 Venezuelans who were killed when the country’s north coast was devastated by two earthquakes on 24 June 2026.Last Sunday, after 18 days searching for their missing daughter in the wreckage of her collapsed apartment building, the Guedez García family finally found Alexandra’s body, buried in the sitting room, and started the journey back home to Poblado Uno (Village Number One), the small farming community where she was born and raised.“It’s a nightmare – it never went through my mind that I would have to live through a nightmare like this,” the victim’s despondent father said as his family prepared to set off from the temporary shack where, for nearly three weeks, they had squatted by the ruins of Alexandra’s home in Caraballeda, a beach town that was one of the worst-hit areas.
