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The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, ordered the creation of a specialized military unit for emergency response this Sunday, in an attempt to quell criticism of the government regarding the actions of the armed forces following the double earthquake on June 24 that left over 3,342 dead in Venezuela.
The body will be named "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho Antonio José de Sucre" and will be under the command of Brigadier General Pabón Castellanos, as announced by Rodríguez during the events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the country's independence.
"I have given the order to the Ministry of Defense to create a special emergency task unit to address emergencies of this nature, which will be named Great Marshal of Ayacucho Antonio José de Sucre," the president stated.
The announcement comes amid widespread criticism of the government for directing more than 14,000 deployed military personnel in La Guaira to public order control tasks, while the search and rescue efforts initially fell to civilian volunteers and the victims' families.
Rodríguez firmly rejected those criticisms: "They have sought to attack our armed forces, denigrating them, assaulting them, and we have seen them there helping the people, saving lives, recovering bodies."
He also ruled out any possibility of social unrest: "I do not understand how in these moments of pain for Venezuela, during this national mourning, there are those who dare to speak of misery, there are those who dare to plan for social unrest. There will be no social unrest here; what we have is deep social solidarity from our people."
In the same event, Rodríguez graduated over 800 new officers and ordered their immediate deployment to La Guaira, the coastal region most devastated by the earthquakes, where 158 out of 189 buildings in Catia La Mar were destroyed and critical infrastructures such as the José María Vargas Hospital and the Maiquetía International Airport collapsed.
Parallelly, the acting president appointed civil engineer Francisco Garcés as the new Minister of Transport, replacing Jacqueline Faría, who had held the position since March.
Faría will assume the presidency of the Great Mission Venezuela Renace, established on Saturday and attached to the Presidency, with the mandate to coordinate the recovery of housing and infrastructure and provide "timely responses to the affected families."
According to official figures, the earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 —classified by the United States Geological Survey as the strongest recorded in Venezuela since 1900— also left 16,740 injured and more than 17,000 people without housing, with 856 buildings affected and 190 collapsed.
This Sunday marked exactly six months since Rodríguez assumed the acting presidency following the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces. The cabinet changes announced this Sunday add to a series of modifications that have progressively dismantled the government team that Maduro left behind, who is currently detained in the United States along with his wife, Cilia Flores.
The UN has estimated up to 50,000 missing persons as a result of the earthquakes, a figure that the Venezuelan government has not officially acknowledged.
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