The Hotel Santuario La Llanada, in Macuto, La Guaira state, was reduced to rubble after the earthquakes on June 24 in
In that place, there were 147 Venezuelans deported from the United States. Now, their families report that the authorities are preventing them from approaching the site and obtaining information about what happened, while anxiety continues to grow.
Testimonials assert that access to aid and the recovery of bodies are also prohibited, which heightens suspicions and uncertainty surrounding the tragedy, according to a report by the agency AP.
Dozens of people remain under the rubble, while relatives attempt unsuccessfully to reach the site.
Deported and locked away
Flight 164 of the Great Return to the Homeland Mission landed on Wednesday at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía with 120 men, 19 women, and seven children who had spent weeks or months detained in immigration centers in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona under the anti-immigration policy of the Trump administration.
From the airport, agents of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) transported the group to the Santuario La Llanada Hotel, an old building in a mountainous area that is difficult to access, managed by the Negra Hipólita Mission Foundation and a usual reception center for all Venezuelan deportees since the beginning of the agreement between Washington and Caracas.
At 6:04 PM local time, less than three hours after their arrival, two earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 - just 39 seconds apart - shook the northern part of the country. The hotel collapsed.
What followed was a nightmare: the SEBIN agents guarding the premises refused to open the doors while the building was coming down.
"The repatriated were shouting for them to open the doors, to open the doors, because they were trembling, and they did not open for them. They left them locked up as if they were thieves, as if they were thugs," denounced Yulis Salcedo, the mother of one of the survivors.
Survivors who escaped with just the clothes on their backs
Lisbeth Portillo, 58 years old, deported from Florida with a pending asylum application, got trapped under a beam but managed to escape when the movement of the structure created an opening.
"I'm alive, I came out from the rubble," she told her husband. Then she walked for kilometers in search of help: "We walked for about five kilometers, and I cried and cried... there was no communication."
Jenny Rodríguez described the complete abandonment in statements to Noticias Telemundo:
"They practically left us alone there. We hadn't even been in that house for three hours when all this disaster started."
She had to walk barefoot down from the mountain to the stadium in La Guaira to communicate with her family.
Joan, 28 years old, survived because a bunk bed fell on top of him and the mattresses cushioned the weight.
He spent three hours digging with his bare hands until he managed to get out on his own. "The survivors helped with the rescue, but we didn't have any tools; we're talking about a roof weighing nearly 1,000 kilos. Who could possibly lift that?" recounted another unidentifiable survivor.
Families without answers and a regime in silence
Only 12 people have been reported alive according to unofficial sources. Unverified reports from Monday, June 28, indicated that at least 60 people might still be alive in the upper levels and the basement of the hotel.
The Venezuelan regime has not published any official list of victims, survivors, or missing persons from the Flight 164 of the Great Mission Return to the Homeland.
An official told a relative of a missing person, "Stop asking; they're all dead."
Ángelo Mejía Meléndez, 27 years old, was confirmed dead by a survivor four days later. His last message to his mother was filled with hope: "I’m fine. We’ll see each other soon. We had a family reunion this weekend and he was happy."
Anderson Antonio Pérez, 33 years old, resident of Montgomery, Alabama, called his family at four in the afternoon on June 24 to say that he would be brought to Barquisimeto the next day. No one heard from him again.
A tragedy within a national catastrophe
The official balance as of Monday, June 29, was 1,943 dead and 10,571 injured, according to Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) classified the earthquakes as the most powerful recorded in Venezuela since 1900 and estimates a 42% probability that the total number of fatalities could be between 10,000 and 100,000.
The UN estimates that there are over 50,000 missing persons across the country, while the independent citizen project Encuéntralos recorded between 55,000 and 60,000 individuals unaccounted for, of which only about 9,000 have been found.
The families of those deported on flight 164 are making the same plea in the face of the regime's silence: "We just want to know where they are. If they are alive, where they are. And if not, they should tell us the truth."
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