Related videos:
Lázara Yumara Villaurrutia Rodríguez, a 35-year-old doctor from Matanzas, has been missing for five days along with her Venezuelan husband Juan Simón Leca and their seven-month-old baby, Sebastián, following the collapse of the building where they lived in Playa Grande, Catia La Mar, La Guaira state, Venezuela, with no response provided by Cuban authorities to her family.
The alert regarding her whereabouts was shared this Monday on Facebook by the Matanzas journalist Yirmara Torres Hernández, who posted the call at the request of a friend and former classmate of the missing doctor. "Her family is desperate, professor, they don't know anything... Her friends are desperate," the friend wrote in her message to Torres Hernández.
The building where the family lived completely collapsed on June 24 when two earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 — occurring just 39 seconds apart — shook Venezuela at 6:04 PM local time, the strongest recorded in the country since 1900, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Since then, no family member has been able to establish contact with any of the three. Torres Hernández, however, maintained a thread of hope in his post: "Even today, people are still being found alive, so there remains hope that this family can be found alive as well."
The case of Dr. Villaurrutia is not an isolated one. According to the citizen platform Encuéntralos and the independent media elToque, at least between 29 and 32 Cubans have been reported as missing in Venezuela following the earthquakes, primarily concentrated in the state of La Guaira.
While families await news, the response from the Cuban regime has been criticized for its lack of transparency and delays. On June 27, the Director of Consular Affairs at MINREX, Ana Teresita González Fraga, stated that Cuba “does not have official confirmation of injured, deceased, or missing nationals”, a statement that directly contradicted citizen reports with specific names and locations.
The president Miguel Díaz-Canel assured on June 28 that he would maintain "permanent contact with Venezuelan authorities," but the government publicly prioritized the safety of the Cuban medical brigade —approximately 12,930 health collaborators— while ignoring the situation of Cuban citizens residing in the devastated areas.
Only on this Monday, five days after the earthquakes, the MINREX officially acknowledged the death of a Cuban, Lupercio Adrian D'Pérez y Pando, and set up phone lines for reports: 7 8321484 in Cuba and 02129914635 / 04123332625 at the Consulate in Venezuela. Previously, on June 27, the Cuban Vanessa Martínez had been found deceased.
Among the documented missing Cubans reported by civic platforms are Ady Zaldívar, 64 years old, in Caraballeda; Michel Luis Curbelo Moreira, a 34-year-old physiotherapist; and the family of Channette Martínez, along with her husband and her eight-year-old son Matías.
The disaster has resulted in a toll of over 1,700 fatalities, more than 3,238 injuries, and UN estimates of up to 50,000 missing in total, with more than 250 buildings collapsed or damaged just in La Guaira, the area where the doctor from Matanzas lived with her family.
Filed under: