Trump, Rubio and a Zombie State In Venezuela
Rafael Osío Cabrices is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Twilight in Venezuela: Dispatches from My Once and Future Country.
For decades after the 1967 Caracas earthquake, seismologists warned Venezuelans that a major earthquake was coming. And we had been waiting for the big one. On Jun. 24, the prediction of horror came true. Twice. Two level-seven magnitude earthquakes struck northern Venezuela, the most densely populated region of the country, in less than a minute.
That would test any country. It is harder for Venezuela in 2026: a country where half the people live in extreme poverty, the economy has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was, a quarter of its population was lost to mass migration in less than a decade, and the healthcare system is in ruins.
