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From Our Own Correspondent
Venezuela Earthquakes: Rescue and Recovery
00:28:58
Civilians seize the initiative in rescue and recovery efforts but are desperate for help.
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Hello. Today, as the US marks 250 years of independence, our correspondent tells the story of her own family's American dream and how the country's aspirational ethos is under strain. In Hungary, it's cucumber season, normally a time of slow news days. But the new PM has got off to a roaring start, turning politics into a national obsession. And we're at a bazaar on the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where two cousins separated by the collapse of the Soviet Union are finally reunited after decades apart. But first to Venezuela, where neighbours, family and friends have joined rescue workers this week battling to find survivors after two earthquakes hit the country's north last week. The damage caused was devastating, with apartment buildings collapsing in on themselves, not able to withstand withstand the force of the tremors. Just six months ago, Venezuela had been in the news for an altogether different reason, as the former leader Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces, bringing to an end 12 years in power. Now the country's fragile political state has exacerbated problems implementing an effective rescue effort. Will Grant has been in the earthquake affected region.
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There's a row of small businesses in Catia La Mar, on Venezuela's northern coast, where people driving down to the beach from Caracas would stop to fuel up. You would fill up the tank with heavily subsidised petrol, buy weak black coffee and fried marlin empanadas for breakfast, and load up the cooler with ice and drinks, which would be perfectly cold by the time you got to the beach. It was the same in the other direction, turning east towards the coastal town of La Guaida. Most of the stores sold plastic inflatables and cheap bikinis modelled on mannequins with oversized busts to replicate Latin America's penchant for plastic surgery. All of them sold beer. The mood during a public holiday is invariably upbeat and relaxed. In Iguata last week, mobile phone videos showed throngs of people in the streets enjoying a carnival atmosphere, dancing and clapping to an urgent Caribbean drumbeat. Suddenly, the crowd stops. A scream, then another, and panic ensues. An earthquake with nowhere to run, the people corralled into a narrow bottleneck. In fact, it wasn't one earthquake, but two individually capable of causing significant damage. Together enough to devastate a nation. Liquor stores and shops the length of the state were mangled in seconds, their cement roofs caved in, reduced to contorted piles of cement to twisted rebar and broken glass. My cousin was last seen going inside, Simon Odas tells me, biting his lip to hold back the tears as we watch the rescue efforts. At a collapsed mini mart in Catielamar. They pulled out the injured owner, but his wife and 5 year old daughter are both gone. After the building collapsed, the gas tank exploded and the rescue team, solely made up of relatives and neighbors, were was digging in the charred ruins to recover three bodies they'd located inside. An unmistakable stench told us they were still there. For Simon, the uncertainty of not knowing whether his beloved cousin was one of them was unbearable. It's like you're drowning or you're burning, he says of the desperation. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. There are no words for it. These weren't the circumstances under which I wanted to return to Venezuela. I lived in Caracas for several years and my first correspondent job almost two decades ago, and its kinetic, chaotic energy has held a special place in my heart ever since. The government's tight visa restrictions for journalists, which were strengthened under now deposed President Nicolas Maduro, have meant I haven't been back for several years. Arriving in Venezuela's third city of Valencia on a flight full of rescue workers from Mexico and Brazil, I wanted to shake that same uncertainty which was eating up Simon. Our first stop on reaching Caracas was my old neighborhood, Los Palos Grandes. I already knew it was badly affected and that a building had gone down on my old block, but I didn't know exactly which one, nor if my former neighbors were all accounted for. The scene which greeted me was shocking. Behind yellow police tape, the Petunia building, a multi storey residency barely 200 metres from my old apartment, was no more. A concertina'd mound lay where once there had been community life and bustle. International Rescue crews in safety helmets crawled onto and burrowed into it, the building's roof now just metres off the ground. Taken aback, I walked around to my old building, the Alleli, and was relieved to see it and its inimitable caretaker, Pedro Carranza. Still standing despite the passage of time. Pedro recognized me immediately and greeted me with a bear hug. An assembly of the elderly residents was sat outside, still recovering from the shock, one of whom had twisted her ankle as she rushed down the stairs. But other than that and a few broken plates, the Alleli had survived intact. Unmovable, said Pedro with pride. Other homes did move, though while not all of them had crumbled like the Petunia, dozens were now uninhabitable. At the base of the nearby Plaza Altamira, those made homeless had already begun to erect tents and were sitting on the park benches, looking dazed and glum. Altamira and Los Palos Grandes are among the wealthier neighborhoods in Caracas now. Their stable lives in well heeled apartments had been upended in the space of 39 seconds. Under the shade of a plastic tarpaulin and sitting on a donated mattress was Jean Carlos Roa Garcia, a policeman of 30 years. He insisted he'd been a decent public servant in that time and didn't deserve the ignominy of living on the streets in his 50s, especially with his wife and daughter in the same predicament. I don't know if I know how to rebuild our life, he said in a small voice, the tough policeman exterior evaporating instantly as tears began to roll down his cheeks. If I was in my 20s, maybe, but at my age, age was a constant theme. I met 15 year old Samuelo Donez in a social housing complex in Los Cocos in the worst affected state of La Guayra to the east of the capital. The government of the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez had built a dozen 12 story tower blocks here and donated the homes to the poorest. Ironically, many of those housed in the buildings had been moved there after surviving the vast mudslides in 1999, Venezuela's biggest natural disaster of the modern era. Until now, all but two of the towers had collapsed, prompting one survivor to describe them as cages of death. Those that were still standing looked ready to fall if hit with a big enough aftershock. Despite the dangers of an imminent collapse, Samuel was fearlessly putting his head in between the concrete slabs as he desperately looked for someone. Edward. His youthful voice yelled out at the top of his lungs.
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Edward.
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Who's Edward? I asked him. Mirmano, my brother, he replied. Edward. He took a break from his gruelling search to sip some water and chat. Edward lived here with my sister in law, Karla, and their two children. My stomach tightens into a knot as I ask their ages. 4 and 3, he replies. We know this is their apartment, he says. We found their crockery. Pointing at some broken purple plates and bowls on the ground, Samuel is throwing himself into trying to locate his relatives with the maturity of a much older man, but even he doesn't think this complex and grisly task should fall on his narrow shoulders. Do you think it's right that a 15 year old is doing this? He asked me. This is a job for the authorities, but they're only interested in the buildings of the rich and important people. While the people in here he motions into the darkness between the flattened concrete slabs, they're not dogs or animals. They're people, too, and deserve help. At another flattened apartment complex, the Hugo Chavez Social Housing Project in Playa Grande, again I was struck by the teenagers. One was Jose Luis Peroteran, in an olive green cap and a matching face mask to keep the smell of death at bay. Jose Luis was coordinating work at the base of a destroyed tower block, from briefing rescue workers to dealing with desperate families. How old was he? I asked. And was he part of the military? 19, he said. And? Well, I don't have military experience as such, he said sheepishly. I'm a barman. I just offered to help and made a social media video about it. And now people ask for me when they get here. Our conversation was briefly interrupted as a pickup truck full of forensic police officers asked the teenage barman where to go. The last teenager I only saw in a photograph, Ermeli Flores Hill, was, and Maybe still is 17. Her mother, Marvis Gill, appeared outside the ruins of the building in Playa Grande, clutching the image as she has every single day since the double earthquake struck. Had Meli had just finished a class in this building with a girl who was tutoring her and was leaving to meet a friend, her mother explained, showing me a photo of a girl with a wide smile and chestnut hair. The friend has been found and is safe, but Hermeli is still missing. Some have said she was in the elevator at the time, others that they saw her and she made it out. The same drowning and burning sensation of uncertainty that Simon or Das felt over the fate of his cousin is also tormenting Marvis over the whereabouts and well being of her daughter. But this was clearly not a tale, just about the young or the very young, although the loss of each child was like a gut punch to Venezuelans. I didn't realize at the time, but a friend's 80 year old mother lived in the Petunia building around the corner from my old place and was inside the building when it went down. Once the inevitable had been confirmed, my friend posted a photograph of her mom on social media in a vibrant floral blouse and jeans, leaning on a cane and smiling into the mid distance. And these lyrics from the Venezuelan singer songwriter Franco de Vita if they let me choose once again, I'd choose you without thinking twice.
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Well, Grant next to Hungary, where the new prime Minister, Peter Madyar, has been in office for less than 60 days but has quickly set to rolling back laws and dismantling institutions built up by former strongman PM Viktor Orban with great enthusiasm and some controversy, Mr. Magya's Tisa party has a huge majority in Parliament. And as he makes the most of his party's mandate, politics has turned into Must See tv. Nick Thorpe reports from Budapest.
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There's a new circus in town in Hungary, the national parliament. For years under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, it was a grey rubber stamp of an assembly, interrupted by an occasional cry of pain from the powerless rump of opposition MPs. But now I join tens of thousands of Hungarians watching the daily drama unfold on screens big and small. This is usually what Hungarians call the cucumber season, where nothing much happens in politics. But this year, one special session of Parliament follows another. The pace is frenetic. So what has changed? First, there's the almost daily spectacle of Peter Modyar, Hungary's youthful new prime minister, chastising the shrunken opposition, the old rulers now wallowing in the dust of this scorching Hungarian summer. His sarcasm is cutting and his own ranks, all 141 MPs roar their approval. None had previous experience in national politics. Peter Modya's Tisapati, only two years old, is the newcomer in the chamber. These are teachers, lawyers, doctors, ex policemen, business people and the odd zoo director and documentary filmmaker. The Minister of Social and Family Affairs, Vilmos Katay Nemet, is the first blind cabinet minister in Hungarian history. He's also a black belt Aikido Master. 31% of Tisa MPs are women, compared to 13% of Fides MPs in the previous Parliament. The freshness, the apparent amateurishness of the new Parliament are more than matched by the drama of the legislation is being bulldozed through by the 2/3 majority. To be fair, on Fidesz, they've got several eloquent politicians of their own, led by Gerge Guyas, who specialises in distinctive light grey suits. He was best friends with PETA Madhya for years and tries to counter the new Prime Minister's sarcasm with his own knowledge of the man. You're not fighting the so called Fides mafia with this law, he said the other day. You're building a dictatorship. The Fides tactic in the new Parliament is to zoom in on the sheer inexperience of the new government. The trench warfare resembles a battlefield on which one side the 141 Tisa MPs are armed with metaphorical machine guns, while the 50 or so Fides MPs and six more from the far right, our Homeland Party, seem more like snipers looking for the weak points of their enemy. We just can't compete for attention with these guys. Ciopa Lukac, managing director of the independent weekly Modular Hong, the Hungarian Voice, told me he was grumbling about losing paying subscribers on whom his paper depends. They supported independent journalism when it was under attack from Fidesz. Now his readers get their kicks watching Parliament all day instead or flicking through the highlights of the day in the evening on Instagram or TikTok. To make matters worse, some of his journalists feel burnt out and have changed professions, he says some have even gone to work in communications for the new government. I can't blame them, he said. They have families to feed. One Thursday morning I went with him to pick up bundles of his newspaper from the Hungarian post office. It's still printed in Slovakia because in the Orban era all the big presses were Fidesz owned. And they still are, though the Fides media empire, starved of cash in the new era, withers a little more every day. There's a sense of revolution in the air, in the streets of the country, as in the ornate corridors of parliament, where empty brass cigar holders mourn the absence of tobacco. Banned long since, the new government is trying to oust the president of the republic, Tomas Schuyork, an Orban ally chosen by the National Assembly. He's clinging onto his office by the skin of his teeth, appealing to the Constitutional Court to defend his trembling throne. The Sovereignty Protection Office was the latest Orban era institution to be dynamited by the Tiso majority. This was the body tasked with investigating unpatriotic outfits like Chopa Lukac's paper and non governmental organisations which stood up for the human rights of asylum seekers. The only soap opera rivalling the parliament is the prospect of the possible arrest, or at least questioning by prosecutors of Viktor Orban himself. He and three other top officials stand accused by lawyers of abuse of power and the illegal detention of seven Ukrainian citizens and arrested while transporting Ukrainian government cash and gold across Hungary in early March. Orban says the dramatic interception by anti terror police was both legal and necessary. Media reports suggest he gave the order for the swoop on two vans carrying 80 million euros as a bargaining chip to force the Ukrainian government to let Hungary's oil imports of Russian oil resume in the 1890s. The Hungarian Parliament and the ministries around it were built on land near the Danube where travelling circuses used to perform. Sometimes in these hectic days, it seems history has come full circle.
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Nick Thorpe the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the independence of its 15 composite republics, including Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Communities even Families that had once lived side by side became divided as new national borders were drawn. Ibrad Sappho, who grew up in Uzbekistan, tells the story of how his own family became separated for decades by increasingly rigid visa laws, and how a new border town bazaar became the scene of a poignant reunion.
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I embrace my cousin Ilham tightly. We're both now 48 years old, the same height too. We spent our childhood playing together, climbing fruit trees and mud roofs on my grandparents farm, or when our families visited each other for weekends or weddings. Back then we could move freely between our homes. But it's the first time we've met since we were 10, because the Soviet Union, the country in which we were both born, collapsed and separated us. My family living in the newly independent Uzbekistan and his in Turkmenistan. Moscow drew up the border between the two Soviet republics back in the 1920s. It didn't make sense then and doesn't make sense now, as ethnic Uzbeks living in this historical region of Khorazm ended up on both sides, as did some ethnic Turkmens. Many historians now claim it was a deliberate divide and rule policy by the Soviets to weaken local political power hours and keep the area prone to future conflicts over water and grazing fields. It didn't matter much when we were young. We were all part of the sprawling USSR and the borders felt invisible. But with its collapse in 1991, the leaders of these republics started reinforcing the borders, keen to assert their country's sovereignty and their personal authority. Turkmenistan introduced strict visa rules with its neighbors and became one of the most heavily guarded states in the world. And that's how Ilham and I ended up being separated, living along the border. I remember climbing the farm roof on my own one night to try and see where he was. I missed my playmate. My family later moved deeper into Uzbekistan and we were unable to visit the other side. But recently an opportunity emerged where we might finally reunite. A new border bazaar has opened, hailed as a new joint venture, though in fact it is two separate markets, one on each side of the border. They opened with great fanfare last November and were praised as the new economic zone for border trade. I traveled there with my elderly uncle, as he too is keen to see his long lost nephew. My cousin's mother, my aunt, died recently and none of my relatives in Uzbekistan were able to attend the funeral. She lived in Dashawz in Turkmenistan, where the ethnic Uzbek population numbers in the hundreds of thousands. I went to the border that day, says my uncle Jumarod. I told them my sister just died, and I had to go and read the final prayers. The Uzbek border guards let me through, but the Turkmens wouldn't. I came back home crying, he says. In Islam, the body must be buried before the sun sets, and the sun doesn't wait for visa approvals. Now, thanks to the new bazaar, people on both sides can see each other visa free, albeit with the usual airport style checks when you cross the border. We head to the Turkmen bazaar's restaurant, hoping to see my cousin Ilham, and there he is with his family and his eldest teenage son, who I learn Ilham named after me. I wanted him to be like you, he says. I feel incredibly honored, but very sad, too. All these years I didn't even know. So what do you think of this new arrangement? I ask as we stroll along shops selling Turkmen sweets and textiles. It's great. Now we can see each other. What if you want to come and visit me in Uzbekistan? I ask. Well, getting a visa is not that much of a problem. It only takes 10 days, he says, glancing around. I sense he's worried that someone may be listening, so he's trying to sound as upbeat as possible. Earlier, a man in civilian clothes whom I assumed was a security officer had stopped me and ordered me not to take any videos. I now see quite a few of them roaming around. I don't want to put my cousin in any danger by asking too many questions. He didn't tell me, but I found out that everyone on the Turkmen side has to acquire a permit from the local government just to come to the bazaar. They can't even drive themselves here, but instead must take a government run shuttle bus. Uzbekistan is authoritarian, too, albeit slightly less than it used to be. One thing that many Uzbeks credit the current president, Shavkat Merziyev, with is improving relations with neighbors. It is a first step, says my uncle as we drive back to his house. I'm just grateful we were able to see them, he sighs. But how long will this last? He goes on. People are dying without seeing each other for years.
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Ibraht Sappho and finally it's the Fourth of July, which this year marks 250 years of American independence. This year's landmark anniversary has prompted much introspection about what the US stands for as a nation. Towns and cities will celebrate the day with traditional fireworks and street parades, though recent surveys have found a shrinking number of Americans still believe in their country is the land of opportunity. Asma Khalid reflects on her own family's pursuit of the American dream In March
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1962, my grandma Nano, as we call her, boarded a flight from Pakistan to Chicago, Illinois. It was a trip that forever defined our family's life. Their young son, my uncle, had contracted polio a few years earlier, and America was the best place in the world for treatment. And so my grandma, grandpa and their young boy flew to a new city that they had only ever read about. But the polio treatment took longer than expected, and weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. My grandpa lost his job back in Pakistan and needed to find a new one. And such was the Post World War II industrial boom of America that as a structural engineer, he was quickly hired by the Illinois Department of Transportation. He became an American citizen, settled in the suburbs of Chicago. And that's why you find a clan of us across the Midwest. It's my family story, sure, but you can ask anyone in the US and they'll have a version of their own Coming to america story. For 250 years, the dream, that intoxicating promise of a better, richer and freer life, has been central to my nation's identity. That in America, anything is possible. But in recent years, the dream seems to be fading. For more than a decade, I covered American politics for National Public Radio, crisscrossing the country, interviewing my fellow citizens. In a former steel making city in eastern Ohio, I met Connie at a Christmas party. She was a retired hairdresser who now spent her days answering phones for the local Republican Party. She reminisced about how her hometown used to feel thriving, but things were changing. You're probably a Muslim, she said to me, looking at my hijab. I don't care for them. I'm sorry. I had interviewed Connie twice before, so maybe she felt she could be more open with me. I asked her why she didn't care for Muslims. Because they want to take over America, she said. I want you to be an American. Do what we do. We were here first. Okay, your second. It's a conversation that haunts me because it's emblematic of the debates about what it really means to be an American, which seemed to have become more contentious in recent years. I first met Ani on a video call shortly after she had been deported to Honduras last November. She's a soft spoken 20 year old who smiles as she tells me how much she misses her former home in Texas. The food, the rodeo. I just low key, miss everything, she said. Ani had been trying to fly home from college in Boston to Texas to visit her family for Thanksgiving. But instead, immigration agents detained her, handcuffed her, shuttled her out of state, confiscated her cell phone and put her on a flight to Honduras. It's been revealed that her deportation was a mistake, but Ani's still stuck in Honduras. The Trump administration said she had been living in the US Illegally. Ani was only seven or eight when she arrived in Texas, and her family sought asylum. She worked hard, got a scholarship to college, the first in her family to go. She was her parents American dream. Now she's trying to figure out if there's a way she can get back to her life in the U.S. abdi is another new American I recently met, a refugee whose life story has been made into radio documentaries, even a memoir titled Call Me American. As a kid, he lived through the civil war in Somalia. He was so enamored of American culture that friends nicknamed him Abdi America after he learned to speak English by watching Hollywood movies. He eventually moved to America after winning the lottery, literally, and he was awarded the chance at a green card in the annual draw. He settled in a small town in Maine, but his aspirations have run up against reality, too. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well, he told me. Early this year, Abdi lost his job, and like many Americans in that situation, that means losing his health insurance, too. His brother, Hassan, never made it to the US no green card for him, but instead recently became a citizen of Canada. My brother says they have better health care, abdi laughs, almost sounding wistful, but if he had to do it all over again, he would still choose the U.S. i guess it's my first love, he says. That's the thing about the American dream. It might not always make logical sense, but it's this stubborn optimism that no matter how tough today is, tomorrow could be better. It's why, as tough as our politics and partisanship might feel, people keep telling me this is home and I have to work to make it better. This Fourth of July, as I do every summer, I'll fly to Chicago and then drive home to my parents in Indiana along Interstate 55, one of the highways my grandpa helped build. And I can think of no better way to celebrate the holiday.
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Asma Khalid and that's all for Today From Our Own Correspondent was produced by Serena Tarling and Polly Hope. The editor was Richard Fenton Smith. I'm Kate Ady, and you can hear more stories from around the world from our own correspondent on BBC Sounds, including a dispatch from occupied East Jerusalem on a dispute over the future of the city's holiest site and how stand up comedians are still finding ways to express dissent in Moscow. We'll be back with a new episode next Saturday, Silence in Court. I'm Lucy Worsley and in my brand
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new series, I'll be hearing about the
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women involved in some of history's most infamous legal battles. Women accused of murder, bigamy and and adultery through to the shocking offense of not knowing their place.
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With a team of all female detectives, I'll explore the lives at the centre
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of some extraordinary courtroom dramas, asking, has the justice system truly changed? Lady on Trial with Lucy Worsley from BBC Radio 4.
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Listen now on BBC Sounds.