Locals in La Guaira, the most devastated state of Venezuela following last week’s twin earthquakes, denounced on Thursday that a man known as “El Topo de la Guaira,” identified as Wilmer Antonio Cruz, disappeared on Wednesday night after repeatedly condemning the socialist regime for failing to help those trapped in rubble.
Cruz had been working for days as a volunteer at the collapsed building he is believed to have lived in before the earthquakes, which international media identified as OPPPE 26 in Caraballeda, a massive complex featuring 876 apartments before it fell apart. Video interviews with the man recorded prior to his disappearance this week show him shirtless, using a bucket and a hammer to dig through a massive pile of debris looking for trapped neighbors.
Two earthquakes, registering magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck Venezuela on the night of June 24, devastating La Guaira and parts of Caracas, the national capital. Venezuela was already suffering from the near-total lack of a competent healthcare system, extreme poverty, and a dearth of emergency services as a result of over two decades of socialist rule, leaving it poorly equipped to address the disaster. The American space agency NASA estimated this week, using satellite images, that the earthquakes damaged or destroyed as many as 60,000 buildings as the socialist regime had built massive public housing complexes without following appropriate earthquake protocols.
As of Friday, the Venezuelan government has documented 2,595 deaths as a result of the earthquakes and claims to have rescued 6,462 people. The United Nations and opposition groups estimate that over 50,000 people are missing, their chance of making it out of the rubble alive dwindling rapidly.
Locals in Caraballeda began denouncing that unidentified regime agents abducted Cruz on Wednesday night. Human rights activist Tamara Suju, sharing videos from eyewitnesses who said they saw Cruz’s detention, shared that the witnesses claimed Cruz intervened to defend a friend who was trying to use construction machinery to break through debris and rescue people, but was stopped by socialist agents.
Hellbound and Down 