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More than a week after the devastating double earthquake that shook Venezuela on June 24, at least 20 Cubans remain missing and eight have been confirmed deceased, according to monitoring by the independent media elTOQUE and the search sites that citizens have set up in the country.
The earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5, just 39 seconds apart, struck particularly hard in the state of La Guaira, where the majority of affected Cubans are concentrated: the parishes of Caraballeda, Catia La Mar, Macuto, and Naiguatá have recorded most of the casualties within the Cuban community.
Among the most painful cases is that of a Cuban family of six members found dead on June 29 among the rubble of the Oasis Beach and Resjurel buildings in Playa Grande: Yadina de la Caridad Yáñez Linares, a 36-year-old cycling instructor from Sandino, Pinar del Río; her husband Alain Rodríguez Rojas; their six-year-old son Dylan Xander Rodríguez Yáñez; Yadina's mother, Gladys María Linares; and Alain's parents, Raudel Diosdado Rodríguez Cabrera and Teresa Rojas Rodríguez.
Also missing is the doctor from Matanzas, Lázara Yumara Villaurrutia Rodríguez, 35 years old, along with her Venezuelan husband, Juan Simón Leca, and their seven-month-old baby, Sebastián, following the complete collapse of the building where they lived in Catia La Mar. "Her family is desperate, professor, they don't know anything... Her friends are desperate," declared a friend of the doctor.
One of the cases that keeps hope alive is that of 10-year-old Dayan Martínez, originally from Mayabeque, trapped in the Coral Beach building in Los Corales.
Rescuers were able to communicate with him around July 1 and confirmed that he was alive, although they were unable to extract him until that moment.
The list of missing Cubans documented by elTOQUE also includes Ady Zaldívar (64 years old, Caraballeda), Olivia Hernández Pérez (28 years old, psychologist from Havana), Michel Luis Curbelo Moreira (34 years old, physiotherapist), Reinaldo Raspal Interián (62 years old, Catia La Mar), and Aidimir Arriechi (41 years old, mother of two children aged one and four, Naiguatá), among others, bringing the total to 21 documented cases.
The response from the Cuban regime has faced severe criticism. On June 27, the Director of Consular Affairs at MINREX, Ana Teresita González Fraga, stated that Cuba "has no official confirmation of compatriots injured, deceased, or missing," directly contradicting citizen reports that provide specific names and locations.
Just two days later, the MINREX officially acknowledged the first death —Lupercio Adrian D'Pérez y Pando, a resident of Caraballeda since 2021— and set up contact numbers in Cuba and at the Consulate in Venezuela.
The affected families report consular neglect and a lack of information regarding the repatriation of the deceased.
The ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel assured on June 28 that he maintains "constant contact with the Venezuelan authorities," but the regime publicly prioritized the safety of its 12,930 health collaborators, disregarding the situation of Cuban citizens living in the devastated areas.
The overall situation in Venezuela is catastrophic. The official count as of July 2 recorded 2,295 deceased and more than 11,000 injured, figures that the UN considers to be significantly lower than the reality.
The International Rescue Committee estimated up to 50,000 missing persons, a figure that the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, described as "terrifyingly plausible."
As noted by elTOQUE in its coverage, "without stable communications, without early humanitarian aid, and with the burden of distance, Cubans in Venezuela face this tragedy practically alone."
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