Venezuela is burning, and I’m forced to watch from afar

This article is part of the special coverage “Inside Venezuela’s Earthquake Disaster,” where we examine the aftermath of the earthquakes, share stories from the ground, and explore the human impact, recovery efforts, and challenges facing affected communities. This post is also part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
Few things are as certain as being born somewhere.
The place where I was born has been renamed many times, but the coordinates remain. My mother comes from an ancestral line of Wayuú peninsula people that dates back way before humans invented borders. My ancestors have been known for fiercely resisting many colonization attempts, and remain one of the few Indigenous groups to withstand governments, guerrillas, landowners, organized crime, many churches, and climate change.
Their connection to the land is one I inherited: I am made of soil, and in return, I honor and protect it.
The winds of exile put me in the middle of the Valley of Mexico in mid-2022. Built atop drained lakes that amplify seismic waves, Mexico City was the first place I’d been where nature scared me. That September, the earth shook precisely at the same time and date it had done several times before. Even though almost nobody was hurt, I saw people outside screaming and running as their muscle memory took over. Just five years before, a 7.1 earthquake had killed hundreds of people, leaving an indelible mark on the country.
I learned how to pick up the signs quickly: tectonic-plate news and emergency protocols became the new normal. My exile taught me to be a humble guest of an intricate land. Being so close to the earth's movement made me forget the feeling of safety.
In my new city, the floor trembles sometimes, and I try to stay calm and follow instructions. But the protocols didn’t prepare me to see my home swallowed by the earth from my phone.
‘Everything fell’
I usually talk to Gaby in the mornings, while the birds of Caracas peep in the background of her calls. But on June 24, I didn’t hear from her until 4:09 p.m. Her message was just one word, “earthquake,” followed by a gigantic silence.
With that message, she encapsulated the worst natural catastrophe of the last century in Venezuela: two earthquakes fewer than 39 seconds apart.
For eight long minutes, I tried to stay calm until her signal came back and she picked up the phone, her voice scared: “I can’t talk,” she said, “Everything fell,” and hung up.
Since news coverage is scarce and restricted in Venezuela, we rely on social media for any information. As I frantically searched all platforms, little by little videos started to show up.
I’ve seen Caracas get bombed, tear-gassed, burnt, militarized, lose power for weeks, but it wasn’t until that day that I truly grasped what three decades of precarious existence can do. I couldn’t compare the footage to anything I’d seen before.
Video after video where everything visible was dust, cement, screams, buildings melting into the ground. No matter who I called or texted, nobody was picking up. I tried to identify areas of the city in the footage, but everything was covered in white powder. Of course, government and official platforms refused to speak. A deafening silence.
All I could see on my friends’ profiles were people dancing to San Juan, the widely beloved Afro-Catholic celebration and the reason so many people were in La Guaira in the first place. I saw their stories from the beach, having lunch, attending meetings and events just minutes before everything went down. And then nothing.
My home was on fire, and all I could do was watch.
‘I’m constantly reminded I’m unwanted’
As an asylum seeker in Mexico, I’m legally bound to stay in my federal state until my case is resolved and my residency approved (or denied). For Venezuelan migrants, this limbo can last many years: you’re not allowed to leave, but not really living here either. This is not just a matter of luck; it’s a system designed for people not to make it. My crime is wanting to exist here, and the punishment is a land-locked prison where I’m constantly reminded I’m unwanted.
I vividly remember the last time I saw the ocean in La Guaira, the day I left Venezuela convinced I was coming back in a few months. It’s been four years since, and every day I realize how much I took access to the sea — that sea — for granted.
I miss Caracas every day. All I talk about since living in Mexico City is going back to my country. If Venezuela were a person and I could see her again, I’d hug her for hours. If my arms could stretch enough to reach her waters, I would give my 10 fingers to her shore. I feel the Caribbean like a woman, just like Pablo Herrero and José Luis Armenteros’ said. All of a sudden, the woman I love is bleeding through my screen. After just a few minutes of silence, we heard the cry.
I saw the building where I last lived in Caracas partially collapse, and with it entire blocks of memory disappeared under the rubble as the people I love dug with their own hands to find their family members.
The pain is indescribable: nature doesn’t compare to what the regime has done to the people dying, how they’ve rejected volunteers and refused services to their own blood. Meanwhile, eight million Venezuelans in the diaspora had nothing else to do but to stare at their phones and sob. And around me, millions of people in another land, and with different problems, participating in the collective ritual of the World Cup, unfazed: Venezuela is not a woman to everyone.
I know this cognitively: life goes on as the world crumbles, as I tether myself to a six-inch screen, thinking pixels can help somebody. With no passport, no documents and no money, I can’t get on a plane and use my hands for something else. All I can do is spread messages or ask for donations, but I can’t hug Gaby. I can’t help the children who are now sleeping in the streets by themselves, their faces burnt by the Caribbean sun that they can’t escape without a roof. I can’t get on a plane and move the soil with my fingers until we find an answer. I can’t join the millions of Venezuelans who have stepped up to save their community, not from the strength of nature, but from a government that has seized their donations and built them vertical coffins in which their lives are now forever buried.
This is the prize I’ve had to pay for (sort of) escaping dictatorship. I have to watch my people live in tents, turn their social lives into donation drives, while I can’t stretch my arms or make the salt in my veins turn into waves. I lay in bed, and the chirping of Caracas birds has been replaced by World Cup cheers that sound like a foreign language to me.
Selfish, trapped inside these walls, guilty of trying to survive, I feel I’ve abandoned my land. Even when I know it was stolen from me.