On Venezuela’s coast, life is reduced to survival and burial

A group of volunteers called “trenzando sonrisas,” or “braiding smiles,” braids the hair of young girls at a temporary shelter in La Guaira, Venezuela, July 14, 2026. More than a month after the earthquakes, the coastal region of La Guaira — once Venezuela’s main gateway — is completely unrecognizable. (Fabiola Ferrero/The New York Times)

By EMMA BUBOLA

There was a billboard on the seaside road along Venezuela’s northern coast with a gigantic photograph of a smiling Nicolás Maduro, the country’s former leader, and the words “a land flowing with milk and honey,” a biblical phrase that describes a blessed land.

But there was no Maduro, no milk and no honey behind the sign. Just mountains of rubble, body bags and makeshift encampments for thousands of Venezuelans left homeless by June’s devastating, back-to-back earthquakes.

La Guaira, once a lively beachside escape and the state hardest hit by the disaster, is completely disfigured. Tall residential towers overlooking the Caribbean are dusty piles of contorted debris. With about 24,000 people left homeless and hundreds of buildings damaged or destroyed, according to the government, the coastal strip has become an immense humanitarian camp, with many living in tents near the debris.

The inescapable presence of the sea and its salty summer breeze clashed with a near-constant presence of death — in the corpses that kept emerging from the rubble, in the body bags on pickup trucks, in the boxes of ashes carried from the morgue to cars, homes, shelters or church altars.

Spaces designed for leisure or business or commerce now serve only two essential functions: survival or burial.

The McDonald’s, a popular stop for residents and tourists on the way to the beach, functions as a field hospital. The port has been turned into a crowded morgue. The golf course and a surfing resort are homeless camps.

The muddy, fly-infested encampments in La Guaira raise urgent questions about where the huge numbers of displaced will eventually live and what a future for the region, once a main gateway into Venezuela, could look like.

The challenges are magnified because it is the second time in less than three decades that the area has faced a colossal reconstruction task after a natural disaster.

After mudslides killed at least 15,000 people along the coast in 1999 and floods forced thousands of people out of their homes in 2010, the government built a forest of high-rise apartment buildings meant to fulfill a pledge by Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chávez, to provide the poor proper homes.

This year, many of those buildings collapsed, trapping and killing large numbers of residents. Some critics have said that builders did not account for the loose soil that made them vulnerable in quakes. (The official death toll stands at more than 5,500, but that is probably an undercount.)

Many Venezuelans see the sprawling ruins, months after U.S. forces captured Maduro, as the culmination of a failed political and economic project overseen by a corrupt and incompetent authoritarian government.

Just as major questions loom over what lies ahead for Venezuela, the fate of La Guaira is also deeply uncertain.

Venezuelan authorities have promised to build housing that can better withstand earthquakes.

But many Venezuelans question whether their government has the capacity or resources for such a colossal endeavor. The country’s finances have been cratered by mismanagement and U.S. sanctions, and the regime struggled to handle immediate disaster response.

Others wonder whether quake survivors would be willing to stay in the area at all.

“I don’t know what will happen with us,” said Iraida Rivas, a nursery school director, as she stood at the gate of her school. Three toddlers who had attended the school died in the quakes. “We have lived through too much.”

For now, the region is trapped in a painful limbo between tragedy and the future.

Woven through debris — where for weeks, hands of the dead were still visible from beneath the crushing weight of massive columns — were people sleeping, eating and waiting.

A seaside town turned grim

The basketball court at the Juan José Mendoza school, which had more than 1,400 students, became a camp for foreign volunteers supporting rescue and recovery efforts. The court’s walls still showed students’ writing — initials encircled by hearts, declarations of love — near mattresses where volunteers slept.

The quakes killed 110 students and left 50 more missing, said the school’s director, Diana Ferrer.

At the Republic of Panama high school, bunk beds replaced desks to house hundreds of refugees. Inside the “Hugo Chávez’’ classroom slept people injured in the collapse of public housing constructed by and named for Chávez. Amputees lay next to colorful school banners depicting the muscular system and teenagers sat below a whiteboard titled “My Future Project.”

It was unclear what future they will have in La Guaira. Taxi drivers, commercial painters, hairdressers, builders, beach sellers and many others lost their jobs.

On a recent morning, a now-unemployed port worker waited in line at a soup kitchen near a makeshift morgue. He had bought bus tickets to leave for Colombia with his wife.

“There is nothing here,” said his wife, Zenaida Pacheco Mata, 64.

Even those whose homes still stood had their normalcy shattered.

Celia Figueira’s small seaside cottage was relatively undamaged, but part of her daughter’s house next door had toppled into a swimming pool. It listed there now, tilted atop the water like a sinking ship.

Still, Figueira, 66, wanted to leave La Guaira, and not simply because her garden now looked like a surrealist painting.

“There were two buildings where my friends lived there,” she said, pointing at an empty space outside. “Now I stand here and I don’t see them. And my friends are below.”

The sprawling encampments

Outside her window, camping tents and shelters fashioned out of trash bags, towels and blankets filled every corner of La Guaira.

Venezuelan authorities, foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations have set up multiple camps and shelters around the region and in the capital — in parks, squares, schools, basketball courts, baseball stadiums and parking lots.

But many people preferred to put up tents beside the rubble where they were still digging to find loved ones’ bodies.

“I’m not leaving until I get him,” said Dayana Delgado, whose 8-year-old son, Braine, was buried under debris on a basketball court. “They are not going to build apartments and put people to live on top of my son’s body.”

Zoe Santander, 38, whose 9-year-old son, Xavier, was underneath the collapsed tower where they lived, was also staying near the ruins. “Leaving would mean abandoning him,” she said. The tent where she was sheltering was not waterproof and her boyfriend, Carlos López, 33, said he had a bad cough from the constant, soaking rain.

“It’s not life to live like this,” he said, between coughs. “We need to figure out what we are doing next.”

Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of Venezuela’s Congress and whose sister Delcy is the country’s interim leader, said the government had identified potential plots of land in La Guaira to build new homes.

“We are sure that La Guaira will be reborn with great strength,” said José Alejandro Terán, the region’s governor.

The Trump administration, which effectively controls the country’s finances, government and natural resources, has said it had been working with Venezuelan authorities and the private sector to open more housing options, and was working to prepare areas for demolition and reconstruction.

Beyond doubts about whether their government’s pledges can be trusted, many in this quake-ravaged region are traumatized.

“La Guaira scares me,” Santander said. “I don’t want to live here.”