With $8 billion in Venezuelan oil money, U.S. gives $300 million in quake aid

By SIMON ROMERO

When a giant earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, the United States mounted an enormous relief effort involving more than $3 billion in aid, 7,000 U.S. troops on the ground and a halt to deportations of Haitians to their devastated country.

That response dwarfs what the United States has promised for earthquake-ravaged Venezuela, a country the Trump administration says it is now running after seizing its leader this year. So far, the U.S. has put forward $300 million, deployed a much smaller force of about 900 U.S. military personnel and not announced a halt to deportations of Venezuelans.

I was one of the first reporters on the ground in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in 2010. Big differences mark the disasters: Haiti is poorer than Venezuela, its earthquake death toll appears to have been far higher and, perhaps most important of all, the U.S. approach to the world has fundamentally changed.

But the parallels between the disasters are also haunting: Pancaked multistory concrete buildings, bodies flooding into overwhelmed morgues, survivors disparaging government responses, and civilians leading desperate rescues of people trapped in the rubble.

Viewed against cityscapes clouded by dust from pulverized structures, the images speak to hollowed-out first-responder agencies, generalized impoverishment and political dysfunction in both Haiti and Venezuela.

But in the years since the United States led an international effort to help Haiti, Trump officials have expressed disdain for foreign aid. They have gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, the main U.S. agency for distributing foreign aid, and slashed assistance to poorer countries.

At the same time, crisis-plagued Venezuela has gone from being one of Latin America’s largest aid donors to itself requiring large amounts of aid. In 2010, Venezuela was among Haiti’s main donors, providing food, medicine, emergency oil shipments and debt relief.

Before Venezuela’s economy collapsed a decade ago, its socialist leaders framed such aid as a political counterweight to U.S. policy, which blended earthquake recovery with nation-building efforts, channeling most assistance through USAID.

In Venezuela, the Trump administration is now prioritizing immediate search-and-rescue operations and political stability in a country it views as an oil-rich client state where U.S. energy companies can make fortunes.

After raiding Venezuela’s capital and seizing its authoritarian president in January, President Donald Trump said that he was taking control of Venezuela’s oil. Since then, U.S. officials have said they are overseeing billions in Venezuelan oil sales.

The question is, how much of that money will be used to help quake survivors and rebuild Venezuela now that large parts of the country lie in ruins?

Having dismantled USAID last year, the U.S. authorities are now channeling the $300 million in assistance announced so far through groups like the Red Cross, religious organizations and the United Nations. This U.S. funding accounts for the bulk of global relief efforts, with the European Union and countries such as Australia offering much smaller amounts.

John Barrett, the top U.S. diplomat in Venezuela, said last week that the United States expected to remain engaged in Venezuela’s recovery for as long as necessary, with shelter, debris removal, running water and electricity generation the immediate priorities.

But Barrett also said that the Trump administration’s broader strategy for Venezuela — prioritizing political stability and using Venezuela’s own oil revenues to finance an economic recovery — remained unchanged despite the disaster.