标签： South America

More than 30 days after a pair of powerful back-to-back earthquakes rocked Venezuela’s northern coastal region, the air in the most devastated neighborhoods of La Guaira still hums with the roar of heavy demolition and recovery equipment. Fine dust from crumpled structures lingers in the humid coastal air, uncollected waste has accumulated in debris-choked blocks, and hundreds of displaced families sleep out in the open beside homes declared structurally unsafe to enter. Water delivery trucks navigate cracked, buckled streets just to deliver basic supplies to stranded communities.

For Carolina de Jesús, Venezuela project director for the global humanitarian organization Project HOPE, who has worked in the disaster zone nearly every day since the tremors struck, the lingering stench of unretrieved bodies permeates hard-to-reach neighborhoods.

According to public health and environmental experts who spoke with the Associated Press, the coming weeks will be a make-or-break period to stop secondary disasters sparked by contaminated rubble and unregulated early recovery work from escalating into a far larger crisis. Official Venezuelan government data confirms the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes that hit on June 24, 2026 have already claimed more than 5,000 lives, injured nearly 17,000 people, and left roughly 18,000 people without permanent shelter. Authorities have not released an official count of missing persons, but independent estimates place the number of unaccounted for individuals in the tens of thousands. The World Bank has calculated that the earthquakes caused $19.6 billion in direct physical damage to infrastructure and property.

For survivors already grappling with a Venezuelan health system crippled by years of deep economic crisis, the steep environmental toll of the disaster is now becoming a daily threat to their health and safety. “There is hope, but also enormous pressure over what will happen tomorrow,” de Jesús said.

Many families are still clinging to uncertainty as they search for loved ones buried under collapsed buildings. Mary Cruz Andueza, 35, is one of these waiting relatives: her mother’s apartment tower, built as part of a state housing program launched under late President Hugo Chávez, crumbled during the quakes. “I don’t know if she’s alive, if she’s dead, if she’s in a hospital or still beneath the rubble,” Andueza said. Days spent searching near the rubble site left her seriously ill, she added: “We’ve had coughs, allergies, fever and headaches because we’re working so close to the collapsed buildings every day.”

The scale of the recovery challenge is staggering: officials estimate the quakes left roughly 1.2 million tons of building debris scattered across La Guaira. Much of this rubble is laced with hazardous contaminants including gasoline, motor oil, lead-based paints, industrial solvents, microplastics and other toxic materials released when structures collapsed. Experts warn that without careful sorting and safe disposal, these pollutants can leach into soil, groundwater and coastal waterways, creating long-term public health and ecological risks. La Guaira’s geography, where steep mountains rise directly behind dense coastal communities, leaves almost no flat, unused land available for safe debris storage or processing.

Joaquín Benítez, director of Environmental Sustainability at Caracas’ Andrés Bello Catholic University, explained that authorities are currently working to separate contaminated waste from reusable construction materials. Clean, recyclable material like crushed concrete will be repurposed for reconstruction projects, while hazardous waste including asbestos, chemical residues and fuel byproducts will need to be transported to specialized licensed disposal sites. Benítez also confirmed that in the chaotic first days of emergency response, when crews rushed to clear blocked roads to reach trapped survivors, some unprocessed debris was dumped along the shoreline or directly into the Caribbean Sea. Local journalists report this practice was stopped after the first few days of the disaster. If debris holding toxic fuels and chemicals reaches coastal waters, contaminants could degrade water quality for coastal communities and destroy fragile marine ecosystems. Large volumes of sediment and construction waste can also alter natural shoreline contours and damage critical coastal habitats like mangroves that protect inland communities from storms.

Diego Díaz Martín, president of Venezuelan environmental advocacy group Vitalis, warned that seasonal tropical rains, common to the region this time of year, could trigger deadly landslides on hillsides already weakened by earthquake damage. He added that many ecological impacts of the disaster remain hidden, as large swathes of the affected region have not yet been fully assessed by environmental teams. Martín called on Venezuelan authorities to incorporate long-term risk reduction into recovery planning, including banning new reconstruction in areas known to be at high risk of landslides. As of late July, the Venezuelan government has not responded to requests for comment on its plans to address the environmental and public health fallout of the earthquakes.

Access to safe, treated drinking water has emerged as one of the most pressing daily threats to quake survivors. Even when water trucks reach isolated communities, de Jesús noted, there is no guarantee the water has been properly purified to make it safe for drinking and cooking. Unsafe water and broken sanitation infrastructure have already driven increases in treatable but life-threatening conditions including diarrheal disease, urinary tract infections and skin infections, and have created ideal conditions for mosquito-borne viral diseases to spread.

“Earthquakes do not cause outbreaks by themselves. The risk comes from the post-disaster conditions,” explained Dr. Mauricio Cerpa, an epidemiologist with the Pan American Health Organization’s (PAHO) Emergency Operations Center. Overcrowded temporary shelters, destroyed water and sewer systems, disrupted routine healthcare and dropped vaccination rates all combine to create fertile ground for infectious disease outbreaks, he said. Cerpa added that Venezuelan health authorities have flagged 18 high-priority diseases and public health threats requiring immediate monitoring, including diarrheal illnesses, respiratory infections, dengue, malaria and measles. Even before the earthquakes struck, Venezuela’s national vaccination coverage had fallen far below WHO-recommended levels, making crowded shelter populations far more vulnerable to large outbreaks.

Health officials have made disease surveillance in temporary displacement camps an immediate top priority, and PAHO has deployed health teams to support mass vaccination campaigns and upgrade water and sanitation services across the disaster zone. Cerpa also warned that thousands of Venezuelans living with chronic conditions including diabetes and hypertension face elevated health risks if routine healthcare services remain interrupted by quake damage.

Thousands of civilian volunteers and humanitarian aid workers have stepped in to fill gaps in the official government response, which has faced criticism for slow coordination and limited access to hard-hit areas. De Jesús said many of these workers have already developed preventable respiratory illnesses after weeks of breathing fine silica and cement dust released during rubble clearing operations. Others have suffered dehydration and diarrheal illness after working 12+ hour days in the region’s sweltering tropical heat.

“One of the main challenges is how to recover all the essential care,” Cerpa said, noting that local hospitals must both restart routine treatment for chronic disease patients while meeting surging demand for disease surveillance, mental health support and maternal health care. Alycia Clark, vice president and chief pharmacy officer at international medical aid organization Direct Relief, said the earthquakes have worsened longstanding shortages of essential medications, trained healthcare workers and functional medical infrastructure that already left millions of Venezuelans without access to consistent care. Many patients are now at risk of missing life-sustaining routine treatment, she added.

Public health and environmental experts agree that the next phase of recovery will focus on three core priorities: restoring safe drinking water and sanitation services, rebuilding core health care capacity, and mitigating environmental hazards before they spiral into new, preventable disasters. Clark emphasized that the immediate, acute trauma response to the quakes will soon transition to a years-long public health challenge that will require sustained international support. “The needs are only going to increase from this point forward,” she said.

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Ecuador, a nation once celebrated for its peaceful reputation, is now locked in an escalating battle against brutal drug-linked gangs that have thrown the country into chaos. In recent months, violent organized crime connected to international drug trafficking has exploded across the nation, leaving a trail of death, fear, and instability that has forced security forces to adopt aggressive frontline strategies to regain control.

BBC correspondent Orla Guerin recently gained exclusive access to accompany Ecuador’s national police on one of their regular patrols through territories that have become the epicenter of the country’s drug war, offering a rare on-the-ground look at the risks officers face every day. The patrol routes wind through neighborhoods where gang influence runs deep, and where police face constant threats of ambushes, targeted attacks, and open confrontations with heavily armed criminal groups.

According to senior police officers Guerin spoke with during the patrol, the force has seen its workload skyrocket as drug crime surges. Gangs fighting over control of key smuggling routes to Europe and North America have engaged in daily street clashes, mass prison riots, and targeted assassinations of public officials, journalists, and rival gang members. The rapid growth of the crisis has stretched police resources thin, leaving officers under-equipped and overstretched even as they work around the clock to push back against criminal expansion.

Despite the constant danger, officers told Guerin they remain committed to reclaiming communities from gang control. The patrol Guerin joined stopped at multiple checkpoints, searched vehicles for weapons and drug shipments, and conducted targeted stop-and-searches of individuals matching suspect descriptions. Each step of the operation was carried out with heightened vigilance, a reflection of the ever-present risk that any routine stop could turn violent.

The on-the-ground reporting underscores the depth of Ecuador’s current security emergency: what began as small-scale local gang activity has evolved into a full-blown drug conflict that threatens the country’s long-term stability, and challenges police to find new ways to stem the tide of violence.

Deep in the violence-plagued coastal city of Durán, Ecuador, police captain Jean Carlos Bustamante confronts an enemy on two fronts: ruthless drug-trafficking gangs that terrorize local communities, and widespread corruption embedded within the very institutions meant to stop them. At 34, a former special forces operator and the oldest member of his hand-picked, trusted team, Bustamante knows the cost of this fight all too well — he has already lost three close colleagues to gang violence, and lost his own fear years ago, even as his parents live in constant dread for his safety.

On a recent operation at dusk, Bustamante led his unit into the core of Los Aguilas (The Eagles) gang territory, a gritty neighborhood where homes are secured with iron bars and residents stay silent out of deadly fear. Acting on a tip that illegal weapons were stashed in an abandoned property, the team lined up against an exterior wall, breached the door with a battering ram, and seized two handguns and assault rifle ammunition — a small but critical win, as Bustamante notes, that removes two deadly weapons from criminal circulation. Still, he acknowledges it is a minor victory in a grinding war of attrition: gangs hold far more firepower and financial resources than the underfunded state security apparatus can match.

Ecuador, once a peaceful South American tourist haven, has transformed into a global hub of cocaine trafficking in less than a decade. According to President Daniel Noboa, roughly 70% of all cocaine bound for Europe and North America now transits through the country. Colombian and Peruvian producers, the world’s top two cocaine suppliers, ship product into Ecuador, where local gangs with ties to Mexican cartels and Albanian organized crime syndicates coordinate onward smuggling. These criminal networks exploit the country’s poorly patrolled long Pacific coastline, weak border management, and under-resourced security services to move millions of dollars worth of narcotics every year. Last year alone, Ecuador recorded more than 9,200 homicides, one of the highest murder rates globally, despite a harsh two-year government crackdown on organized crime.

Critics argue the hardline crackdown has backfired. While top crime leaders have been taken into custody, the fragmented gang landscape has only spawned more small, violent factions competing for territory and smuggling routes. Many Ecuadorians have grown convinced that the war on gangs can never be won — but Bustamante refuses to stop fighting. In a second operation, he used a surveillance drone to spot three suspected micro-traffickers selling small quantities of drugs on the edge of a local playground. The team quickly tracked the suspects to a residential address, breached the door, and detained all three, discovering tiny $1 packets of an addictive heroin mix stashed in a flowerpot. Though one suspect was formally charged, the other two were released — a common outcome, according to senior police, who blame systemic corruption in the judiciary and prosecutor’s office for undermining their work.

Durán police deputy commander Colonel Santiago Gavilanes sums up the frustration: “We imprison them, and they release them. We know because when we carry out raids, we recapture them. Some of those who are released kill people and leave orphans behind.” Gavilanes says gangs have the capital to “buy laws, judges, and politicians,” a claim verified by an anonymous officer who told the BBC he had twice been offered a life-changing bribe to cooperate with criminal networks. After turning the offer down, he learned gangs had detailed information on his work and location, leaked by a corrupt colleague. “You never know who is watching,” he said — a sentiment repeated by almost every officer interviewed in Durán.

Local police claim incremental progress: the city’s murder rate has fallen by half in the first six months of the year, streets are no longer completely deserted after 7 p.m., and public dismemberments of rival gang members, once common, have become far rarer. Colonel Gavilanes says the force has managed to contain gang activity, but full control will be a slow, medium-term process. That progress, however, is constantly undermined by institutional corruption. In an interview arranged through a contact on gang-held territory an hour outside Durán, a mid-level gang leader who goes by the pseudonym Jonathan openly admitted he pays four local police officers between $1,500 and $2,000 per month for advance warning of upcoming raids. “Whenever they’re going to do an operation, they call me,” he said. “They tell me to hide things, and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing.”

Now 37, Jonathan joined a gang at 18 to earn enough money to feed himself. He walks openly through neighborhood streets in daylight, armed alongside his crew, which includes teenagers as young as 17. He admitted to killing eight people, saying he only targets rival gang members who try to seize his territory, and has no regrets about recruiting underage members or selling drugs in the community. Human rights workers confirm that gangs in Ecuador often recruit boys as young as 12, training them to work as hitmen by the time they turn 15. Jonathan is blunt about the persistence of the drug trade: “If they shut us down, another gang will come along, and if they shut that one down, there will be another.” He expects to die violently, like most gang leaders: “Death is paid by death. But if they come to kill me, I won’t make it easy for them.”

Back in Durán, just two nights later, the cycle of violence played out as usual. Under flashing police lights, the body of a young man lay next to a motorbike, killed in a revenge killing by a rival gang. A witness, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, described how two attackers on a motorbike shot the man six times, finishing him with a bullet to the head after he fell. “We are used to this now because it happens every day,” the witness said. “You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet. You can’t even go out or talk to friends or family because someone could shoot you.” He echoed the widespread doubt that the government’s campaign will ever change things: “Criminals are like ghosts. They pop up wherever they please.” As the forensic team loaded the body into a refrigerated van, another corpse was already waiting inside — another chapter in Ecuador’s endless, bloody war on drug-fueled organized crime.