标签： South America

Weeks after a pair of destructive earthquakes killed hundreds and displaced thousands across neighboring Venezuela, Colombia has been struck by its own deadly seismic event that has left communities reeling and humanitarian organizations scrambling to deliver life-saving aid across a vast, hard-to-reach affected area.

The 7.4 magnitude quake, which struck Monday, shook a huge stretch of western Colombia, shaking densely populated urban hubs including Cali and Pereira and cutting through remote, mountainous terrain in the department of Chocó. As of Thursday evening, official government data put the confirmed death toll above 280, with thousands more injured and nearly 11,000 residential structures completely destroyed. Search-and-rescue teams have pulled almost 350 survivors from the rubble, but hundreds of people remain unaccounted for, leaving families waiting anxiously for news of their loved ones.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has pledged a large-scale, coordinated governmental response to the disaster. However, with urgent needs stretching across hundreds of miles of varied terrain, international and local aid organizations are set to play critical roles in delivering shelter, essential supplies, and long-term economic support to displaced and impacted families.

Unlike earthquake response efforts in Venezuela, where the interim government’s chaotic and under-resourced relief work faced widespread public criticism, Colombia’s more robust democratic and civic institutions are expected to streamline coordination between state and non-state actors. Even so, the far larger geographic scope of the Colombian disaster has created unique logistical barriers that challenge even well-established institutional frameworks.

“Institutional capacity does not remove the humanitarian need,” explained Catalina Vargas, country director for the global humanitarian organization CARE in Colombia. “The most severely affected area, Chocó, is also one of the most isolated and underserved parts of the country, so access remains the binding constraint regardless of the strength of national institutions.”

As relief efforts ramp up, disaster response leaders are urging donors to give cash rather than unsolicited physical goods, to give on-the-ground groups maximum flexibility to meet shifting needs. Abe Diaz, head of disaster relief at tech and retail giant Amazon, which is delivering pre-requested supplies to partner organizations on the ground, noted that unneeded donated goods create unnecessary burdens for overstretched response teams.

“Unrequested product donations overwhelm communities and force responders to divert resources from life-saving work just to sort and store unwanted supplies,” Diaz said.

To support potential donors, a wide range of vetted international and local organizations currently active in relief efforts have opened fundraising channels:

### U.S.-based organizations operating on the ground
– **All Hands and Hearts**: The group has already delivered critical search-and-rescue equipment including jackhammers and pickaxes to the Pereira fire department, alongside blankets and rehydration supplies for displaced families.
– **CARE**: With decades of established programming in Colombia, the group’s immediate response focuses on cash-based food assistance, emergency supply kits, and protection and emotional support for impacted households.
– **Direct Relief**: The global health-focused organization is funding local medical response teams and preparing to ship requested prescription medications and essential healthcare supplies to treatment facilities across the affected region.
– **GEM**: Working alongside local partner groups, GEM is distributing essential survival kits containing food, clean drinking water, and hygiene products.
– **Operation Blessing**: The faith-based organization’s initial relief work centers on delivering food, water, and solar lanterns to people displaced from their homes.
– **Save the Children**: With more than 40 years of work in Colombian communities, the group has already launched psychosocial support services and established multiple safe, child-friendly spaces in impacted areas.
– **World Central Kitchen**: The food security nonprofit is providing fresh meals and clean water to displaced people, first responders, and volunteers, including in isolated mountain communities that are hard for other groups to reach.

### High-profile benefit concert planned for earthquake relief
A host of Latin music’s biggest stars, including Marc Anthony, Luis Fonsi, Chayanne, Feid, and Jay Wheeler, will headline an international benefit concert for both Colombia and Venezuela earthquake relief on Sunday, August 16 at 6 p.m. EDT, hosted at Miami’s Kaseya Center. The concert will be broadcast live across multiple platforms, including Univision, ViX, WAPA, TelevisaUnivision radio stations, iHeartLatino, and Venevision Play for viewers in Venezuela. Viewers can donate during the broadcast by scanning an on-screen QR code, texting UNIDOS to 707070, or visiting the Univision.org website. All proceeds will go to five relief organizations: All Hands and Hearts, CARE, GEM, TECHO, and World Central Kitchen.

### Colombia-based organizations accepting international donations
– **Abaco Colombia**: An association of 26 food banks operating across the country, the group is distributing emergency food rations to impacted families across all affected regions, and accepts online donations.
– **Cruz Roja Colombiana (Colombian Red Cross)**: Local teams are leading search-and-rescue operations, providing emergency medical and psychosocial care, and meeting other critical needs, with online donation options available.
– **Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia**: This community-focused foundation supports youth programming, nutrition access, and community development, and is partnering with GEM to deliver relief supplies and food to displaced people in Pereira and surrounding areas. It accepts donations via PayPal.
– **Fundación Semillas de Oportunidades**: Based in Quibdó, the heart of impacted Chocó department, the foundation supports youth through art and sports programming, and is currently aiding affected families of young people across the region, accepting donations via PayPal.
– **Manos Visibles**: A network of organizations focused on advancing racial and territorial equity, the group is collaborating with a local trade school to restore at least 100 damaged homes in the port city of Buenaventura, with online donation options available.
– **Presentes Corporation**: A 43-year-old Colombian organization focused on building community resilience, the group is partnering with Miami-based nonprofit Give to Colombia to facilitate cross-border donations from U.S. supporters through its *Colombia Se Levanta (Colombia Rises)* fund, which accepts online donations.
– **Refugio Huellas de Amor (Pereira) and Huellitas Callejeras Barranquilla**: Both animal welfare organizations are supporting impacted and rescued animals in disaster zones, and accept donations via PayPal.

This reporting was contributed by Associated Press staff writer Megan Janetsky from Mexico City. AP’s coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported through a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP maintains sole editorial control over all content.

For 15-year-old Deivi Delfín, the nightmare of earthquakes never seems to end. Just months after surviving a catastrophic pair of back-to-back seismic events that destroyed their home and killed three immediate family members in Venezuela, he and his 17-year-old brother Winder thought they had found safety by joining their father in Colombia. Barely three days after arriving, disaster struck again: one of the strongest earthquakes in Colombia’s modern history shook their new city, leaving the brothers already broken by trauma reeling from another terrifying shake.

The Delfín brothers’ tragedy began on June 24, when two massive earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 hit just 39 seconds apart along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Their hometown of La Guaira, the region worst impacted by the tremors, would see entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, with the Venezuelan government reporting a death toll that exceeded 6,300 people to date. To this day, no official count of missing people has been released.

On that fateful evening, the two teenagers had been heading back from a day trip to a nearby Caribbean beach. Winder had begged his mother Yusmani to let their 10-year-old brother Moissés join them, but the young boy had been grounded for misbehavior and stayed home with their mother and grandmother Carmen. When the ground began to roll violently, the brothers clung to each other and shut their eyes, certain they would not survive. When the shaking stopped, a thick cloud of dust and debris obscured everything around them.

When they reached their 12-story apartment building, all that remained was a mountain of tangled concrete: their mother, grandmother, and 10-year-old brother were trapped beneath the ruins. “My world came crashing down,” Winder recalled of the moment he realized what had happened. Their father Deivid, who had already been working in Cali for the family, spent three frantic days searching for his two surviving sons after rushing back to Venezuela, while the teenagers joined rescue efforts, sleeping on the street and going without food for three days straight.

Deivid warned his teenage sons that crawling through the unstable rubble put their own lives at grave risk, but the boys refused to stand down. Smaller and more agile than adult rescue workers, they squeezed through narrow gaps between collapsed concrete slabs, navigating by the faint light of cell phones and handheld torches to flag potential locations of their trapped family to official crews. It was during these weeks of grueling, heart-wrenching searching that both boys say they lost their childhood forever. “I don’t feel like a child anymore,” Deivi told BBC Mundo in an interview.

Slowly, the boys pulled small fragments of their old life from the wreckage: a pair of Moissés’s shorts, their mother’s well-worn Bible, an unfinished handwritten shopping list. One day, Deivi spotted a scrap of patterned fabric he recognized as his grandmother’s floral skirt, leading rescuers to recover her body first. Days later, Winder was the first to identify his mother’s remains: a plastic bag she had been using to dye her hair when the boys left for the beach was still wrapped around her head. When rescue crews lifted the heavy concrete slab that pinned Yusmani’s body down, they made a devastating discovery: little Moissés was still clinging to his mother’s hand. At the sight, Deivid collapsed, overwhelmed with grief. “When his little head fell into my hands… I broke down,” he shared.

After burying their three lost family members, the brothers traveled to Cali to start a new life with their father, who had already settled in a modest working-class neighborhood on the northeastern outskirts of the Colombian city. The boys say they hold onto hope that they can build a quiet life focused on work and study, one that would make their late mother proud. But that fragile new start was shaken to its core just days after they arrived, when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake—Colombia’s strongest seismic event in a century—struck the country, leaving hundreds dead and hundreds more missing across the nation. Cali was once again among the areas hardest hit by the shaking.

Deivi was asleep when the tremor began, and at first thought the gentle swaying was just a nightmare. When the shaking grew more violent, he scrambled out of bed and ran outside, followed immediately by Winder. The brothers clung to a metal street gate as the ground moved beneath them, waiting out the worst of the tremor. Their father, who had been out running errands when the shaking started, immediately ran back home to check on his sons, only to find the house empty. A neighbor told him she had seen the boys run out to the street, and after searching through nearby blocks, he found them waiting outside the barbershop where he works. It was the traumatized teenagers who had to calm their panicking father: “Dad, stay calm. We’ve been through this before,” they told him.

Today, the boys say the memory of the Venezuela quake continues to haunt them, and the second shake in Colombia has only deepened their trauma. But even after unthinkable loss and repeated disaster, they hold onto small hopes for the future, clinging to each other as they rebuild their lives from scratch.

CALI, Colombia — In a tense, reverent moment that captured the fragile mix of hope and grief gripping this quake-battered South American nation, search and rescue workers stood amid piles of crumbled concrete Thursday, lifting their arms and clenching their fists to demand total silence. They strained to catch even the faintest sound of life trapped beneath the wreckage left by a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake that has already claimed at least 265 lives and left hundreds unaccounted for. Thursday marked the third full day since the tremor shook the country on Monday, pushing search efforts into what emergency responders call the critical final window for pulling trapped people out alive.

Aid experts widely recognize the 48 to 72 hours immediately following a major seismic event as the golden window for successful survivor rescue, though outcomes can stretch far beyond that timeframe if trapped people have access to clean water and small amounts of food. For the teams digging through rubble in Cali — one of the hardest-hit urban centers, alongside Pereira, Manizales and Quibdó — that narrow timeline has made every minute of work urgent.

Daiana Rojas, a 25-year-old volunteer rescuer who is herself a Cali resident, told the Associated Press that faint sounds had been detected at one search site since 2:30 a.m. Thursday, keeping optimism alive. “There might be two more people alive here, and I’m hopeful,” she said. “We have been hearing sounds since 2:30 a.m., so our hope remains.”

Rojas and her own family escaped the earthquake unharmed, but the experience of living through the most powerful quake to hit Colombia this century left a deep mark. She recalled the overwhelming terror when the ground began to shake: “I thought that was going to be my last moment alive.” Now, walking through the wreckage of her hometown, she said, “Seeing this situation in my city breaks my heart.” She chose to set aside her own shock to join volunteer rescue efforts, working side-by-side with professional teams to clear debris.

Cali Mayor Alejandro Edr warned reporters Wednesday that the next 20 hours would make or break the push to find any remaining survivors. “The next 20 hours are the most critical to find and rescue people alive,” he said, confirming that search teams have continued to pick up faint signs of life beneath fallen structures across the city.

The disaster has become an early critical test for Colombia’s newly inaugurated president Abelardo de la Espriella and his administration, which has scrambled to mobilize response resources while independent aid organizations work to reach the most severely damaged communities. Reporting from the government has shown a discrepancy in missing person numbers: de la Espriella said Wednesday that nearly 500 people were registered as missing, but independent civilian-run databases tracking the missing list more than 4,200 unaccounted-for people. Overall, the president confirmed that more than 25,800 families across the affected region have been impacted by the quake, many left homeless after their homes collapsed.

In her days of digging through rubble, Rojas has already witnessed two extraordinary moments of survival: she helped pull two people out alive from the debris, and she has also helped recover the remains of those who did not survive. Speaking of the survivors she has helped rescue, she said, “They are not a relative or a friend of mine, but it feels as they were.” She described the shared tension and joy that ripples through search sites across the city: whenever rescuers call for silence to listen for signs of life, bystanders and team members alike freeze, holding their breath to avoid making even the smallest sound. When a sign of life is confirmed, that tension bursts into applause as teams race to reach the trapped person before conditions worsen.

This report included contributions from journalists Suarez, reporting out of Bogota, Colombia, and Batschke, reporting from Santiago, Chile.

Two major seismic events struck South America within two months this year, leaving behind flattened buildings, grieving communities, and urgent calls for help that spread across social media. As nations from every continent stepped forward to offer assistance, a sharp contrast in how the two impacted countries—Colombia and Venezuela—mobilized their disaster responses has laid bare deep divides in political structure, institutional capacity, and available resources between the neighboring Latin American nations.

On Monday, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit western Colombia, toppling buildings in multiple provinces including the country’s third-largest city, Cali. Barely an hour after the ground stopped shaking, Colombia’s newly inaugurated President Abelardo de la Espriella had already established a central emergency command post to coordinate search-and-rescue operations. By contrast, when two consecutive earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24, acting President Delcy Rodríguez waited nearly four full hours before addressing the nation about the unfolding crisis.

This gap in response speed was just the first of many stark differences. In the days after Colombia’s quake, trained rescue teams deployed heavy machinery including cranes and excavators to dig through rubble for trapped survivors. In Venezuela, ordinary civilians spent weeks digging through collapsed structures by hand, with no heavy equipment provided by the state. Venezuela’s government was forced to rely entirely on international rescue teams to fill critical gaps in its disaster response, while Colombia confirmed it has sufficient domestic personnel to lead search efforts, only accepting support from the United States and requesting humanitarian supplies rather than foreign rescue crews.

For Colombia, the rapid response came even amid an unprecedented political transition. De la Espriella, a conservative former criminal defense lawyer with no prior national political experience, was only sworn in 72 hours before the earthquake struck. His narrow electoral victory over former leftist president Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing head of state, was initially disputed, with Petro refusing to recognize the result and alleging electoral fraud. This political feud delayed the formal handover of power, leaving key agencies including the national disaster management authority in the hands of officials de la Espriella had criticized during his campaign. Despite this disruption, humanitarian workers and international observers note that Colombia’s disaster response rose above political tensions, highlighting the resilience of the country’s democratic institutions.

“All the institutions have worked,” said María José Torres Macho, the United Nations’ top representative in Colombia. “Our ability to be working with them has not been affected by the change of government.”

Just an hour after the quake, de la Espriella released a public video confirming he would take personal leadership of the response, telling impacted communities in the hard-hit coffee-growing region, “You’re not alone.” Within hours he was coordinating with national officials and relief agencies in Bogota, and within 36 hours he had already toured disaster zones in the western cities of Quibdo, Cali and Pereira, while dispatching cabinet ministers to more remote impacted areas.

Ana Karina García, director of Fundación Juntos Se Puede, a Colombian-based aid group for Venezuelan migrants, explained the strength of Colombia’s institutional framework: “There is an entire system that means that even when you change the person at the top, the institution keeps functioning.”

Still, Colombia’s response has not been without criticism. De la Espriella’s decision to decline most international rescue teams has sparked questions about his administration’s handling of foreign aid, with China’s ambassador publicly noting on social media that he could not even identify which Colombian official was responsible for coordinating international assistance. Rugged mountain terrain, decades of underinvestment in rural infrastructure, and post-quake communication disruptions have also slowed the collection of casualty data from the hardest-hit areas. The national government’s official count stands at at least 265 dead and 500 missing, a figure far lower than counts released by local authorities, while an independent public database lists more than 4,100 people as unaccounted for.

In Venezuela, by contrast, experienced political leaders have faced widespread backlash over their chaotic, delayed response to the June quakes. Rodríguez, who has nearly 20 years of experience in Venezuela’s highest levels of government, failed to project clear authority over the disaster response from the start. Hours before Rodríguez addressed the nation to declare a national emergency, ruling party rival and interior minister Diosdado Cabello went on state television to release his own damage report, revealing competing power struggles within the ruling socialist party that undermined a unified response. When Rodríguez released the first official casualty count, she excluded La Guaira—the earthquake’s epicenter and the area that suffered the worst destruction. Many of La Guaira’s victims lived in low-cost government-built housing complexes constructed during the 2000s oil boom, part of a massive subsidized housing program that became a core pillar of the ruling party’s political patronage system. Rodríguez remained in Caracas for a full day before traveling to La Guaira to assess damage, and for weeks the government only updated the death toll without releasing any data on missing persons, fueling widespread accusations of undercounting as civilians struggled to recover remains without heavy machinery.

More than six weeks after the Venezuelan quakes, an opposition-run database widely cited by independent observers lists 29,000 people as unaccounted for. The government now updates the death toll just once a week; as of this week, the official count stands at 6,301. Years of systematic political repression have also left most Venezuelans deeply distrustful of the official response to the disaster.

“It was very difficult for citizens to access important information about the emergency, get themselves to safety and know where to seek help,” said Gabriel Bastidas, a Venezuela-based journalist now living in Argentina who runs Monitoreamos.com, an independent outlet critical of the ruling movement that is one of dozens of independent media outlets blocked within Venezuela’s borders.

Experts note that geographic and timing differences also separate the two disasters: Venezuela’s twin quakes struck densely populated La Guaira around nightfall, complicating immediate search and reconnaissance efforts, while Colombia’s quake hit largely rural areas during daylight hours. It also typically takes weeks for full casualty data to emerge after a disaster of this magnitude, and Colombia is only days into its response efforts, with thousands still unaccounted for. Still, the contrast is impossible to ignore for many Venezuelans, who have watched their country’s state capacity hollowed out after years of crippling economic crisis and mass migration under former President Nicolás Maduro.

“From the very beginning, we saw the news media broadcasting live from the sites of the catastrophe; mayors, governors, health secretaries, emergency officials providing details about the dead and missing,” Bastidas said.

That transparency and rapid response has even struck Venezuelans with family caught up in Colombia’s disaster. Juan Mogollon, a 28-year-old Venezuelan who now lives in Orlando, Florida, learned Monday morning that his 16-year-old cousin José Juan Vivas and the boy’s grandparents were trapped in the rubble of their collapsed Cali apartment building. Vivas, a U.S. permanent resident, had been staying with his grandparents, who resettled in Colombia after fleeing Venezuela’s crisis. Having watched Venezuelan civilians beg for rescue equipment and support after the June quakes, Mogollon expected the worst.

Yet within just a few hours, footage from the collapse site showed excavators, cranes, and other heavy machinery already on the ground, alongside firefighters flown in from Bogota. Colombian security forces deployed search dogs and thermal-equipped drones to scan for survivors across impacted towns.

“They are prepared, they have the equipment, they have the protocols, they know what to do,” Mogollon said, as he waits anxiously for news of his relatives. “That’s the least we should expect as citizens in every country, you know? That’s the difference between my country and Colombia right now.”

Ronal Rodríguez, a Venezuela specialist at Colombia’s Rosario University, summed up the lesson of the side-by-side disasters: “The differences between an authoritarian regime and a democratic system can be seen clearly in the institutions and in their capacity to respond to an emergency. Crises are also political opportunities.”

QUITO, Ecuador — Global soccer superstar Erling Haaland has built an iconic public profile in recent years, his face gracing everything from billboards and collectible trading cards to global television broadcasts. The Norwegian striker became a viral social media sensation after netting seven goals across four matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, spawning endless memes and fan content across platforms. Now, law enforcement in Ecuador has found his likeness in an entirely unexpected context: printed on packaging for a massive cocaine shipment seized near the country’s northern border with Colombia.

Ecuadorian national police confirmed Wednesday that anti-narcotics officers arrested a truck driver following the seizure of 469 kilograms (1,034 pounds) of high-purity cocaine. The seizure unfolded along the Pan-American Highway, where agents launched a stop and search after receiving an anonymous tip about suspicious activity early Tuesday. A search of the vehicle uncovered 370 green rectangular drug packages hidden in a custom-built false compartment in the truck’s bottom. Law enforcement has so far offered no official explanation for why traffickers chose to adorn the packages with stickers of the golden-haired Norwegian striker, but the practice is well-documented in international drug trafficking circles.

Criminal networks commonly label drug shipments with the names and images of high-profile celebrities and star athletes, a tactic used to signal which cartel produced the narcotics and which recipient the shipment is intended for. Police released public footage of the seizure showing packages pouring out of the truck’s hidden compartment, with Haaland’s face clearly visible on the packaging stickers. The striker, who is affectionately nicknamed “pretty princess” and “babygirl” by legions of his online fans, was one of the breakout stars of the 2026 World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada. His combination of imposing physical stature, dead-eye finishing, and playful, goofy sense of humor turned him into a global viral favorite, with thousands of creative fan videos and memes circulating online in the months following the tournament.

Haaland is far from the first top soccer player whose image has been co-opted by drug smuggling operations. Law enforcement officials have previously found cocaine shipments marked with images of Argentine captain and eight-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi, confirming the trend of traffickers using high-profile sports figures for shipment branding.

The seizure, which took place in the Guagua Negro region near the border city of Tulcan, around 153 miles north of Ecuador’s capital Quito, also led to a second arrest. Police took a woman identified only as María R., who holds Colombian identity documents, into custody as part of the operation. According to drug enforcement estimates, the seized shipment carries a street value of nearly $842,000 in Ecuador, but would be worth more than $11 million if it reached the U.S. market, and upwards of $19.6 million (17 million euros) if distributed across Europe.

Ecuador has long served as a key logistical hub for international drug trafficking. Criminal networks based in the country stockpile, store, and ship narcotics north through Central American routes primarily to consumer markets in the United States, though significant volumes are also trafficked to Europe. Local Ecuadorian gangs work in alliance with major Colombian and Mexican cartels to manage these trafficking routes. Roughly 80% of all narcotics trafficked through Ecuador originate in Colombia, with the remaining 20% coming from neighboring Peru.

Data from Ecuadorian law enforcement shows consistent large-scale drug seizures across recent years. In the first half of this calendar year, police have already seized 80 tons of illicit drugs. In 2025, authorities confiscated nearly 215 tons of narcotics, the vast majority of which was cocaine, while seizures reached almost 295 tons in 2024.