On June 25, 2026, president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue, Rebecca Bill Chavez, spoke with BBC World News.
COMMENTS FROM CHÁVEZ:
“The earthquakes happened on top of a real humanitarian crisis. 70% of the population didn’t have access to health care services, 40% of the population is food insecure, and over 60% of the population didn’t have reliable access to drinking water. An earthquake is going to exacerbate all of these problems, which makes the humanitarian response the priority right now for the international community and for the United States.”
“Delcy Rodriguez’s legitimacy was already thin before the earthquake. She is not the democratically elected president of Venezuela. How she handles this crisis is going to determine a lot, because if she’s able to respond quickly and transparently and marshal the international support that’s needed, it could be a good thing for her. But on the other hand, this could be a real disaster for her if she fails to do so.”
“The U.S. has tremendous responsibility right now. The U.S. Southern Command is already in action, providing things like airlift and search and rescue capacity. But this is going to be a real test of what the dismantling of USAID means, because there was a lot of muscle memory in USAID about how to react to these sorts of natural disasters. That capacity is now gone, and the State Department’s capacity is much thinner, which means it could very easily become very improvised.”
“USAID had long-term partnerships with organizations like the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and losing that institutional knowledge is significant. The U.S. military is going to be key in the next few days; it’s going to be the civilian agency of the United States that will have to coordinate and marshal future assistance to Venezuela.”
