[Photo Credit: Reuters]
At the La Esperanza cemetery in western Venezuela, local volunteers have been digging graves for victims of the country’s devastating twin earthquakes last month, unloading coffins and helping families search for loved ones.
In the hills above the hard-hit town of Catia la Mar, local volunteers working alongside some cemetery workers have buried 314 people at La Esperanza cemetery, community council head Elis Zabala, 33, said on Tuesday.
About 100 of the people who were buried are identified only by a number linked to morgue records.
The volunteers are performing jobs often handled by government teams in other countries. Venezuelans have criticized the government’s response to the two earthquakes on June 24 as slow and say it remains ineffectual nearly two weeks on.
The top U.S. diplomat in Caracas said on Tuesday that Venezuela has complied with requests to advance the humanitarian response, not directly addressing criticism of the government put in place after Washington’s ouster of former President Nicolas Maduro.
Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro’s vice president, has vehemently defended the government’s handling of the quakes. Rodriguez has said there is a media conspiracy to discredit the official response, though she provided no evidence for her accusation.
Barrett, who told media last week that he had “a great deal of confidence” in local authorities, said that total humanitarian assistance from the United States for the quakes now exceeds $310 million. Venezuela’s response capacity has been sapped by decades of economic and political turmoil, political analysts have said.
The earthquakes’ death toll rose to 3,685, authorities said on Tuesday, while nearly 18,000 people remain homeless after the two quakes, which measured magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 and struck within seconds of each other.
Civilians have led many of the rescue and recovery operations on the ground, with the help of professional rescue teams from around the world, firefighters and volunteers from the army.
Civilians also provided much of the in-kind aid such as food and clothing in the initial days after the quakes, especially in the hardest-hit state of La Guaira. Global humanitarian organizations including the International Rescue Committee have said the response has not met the scale of humanitarian need.
At the cemetery on Tuesday, about 20 police officers blocked journalists’ access. Zabala said volunteers from the area began digging trenches at burial sites the day after the earthquakes.
