By Alejandra Garcia on June 27, 2026 from Caracas
‘Your hand rests in mine, like a sleeping little frog. I wrote this in JR when you were born. I’ll think of this when I close my eyes for the last time – Mexico, June 16, 2026’
Ten days before the tragedy in Venezuela, my mother sent me a planner. On the first page, in her own handwriting, it reads:
“I miss your hand in mine, like a sleeping little frog. I wrote this when you were born. I’ll think of this when I close my eyes for the last time.”
On June 24, Venezuela shook under the successive impact of two earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale. Amid the roar, the dust, and the panic, my first instinct was to dial her number. Hearing her voice on the other end of the line—thousands of kilometers away from this disaster—I told her a painful truth:
“Mom, many won’t be able to call their mothers today to tell them they’re okay.”
More than 300 aftershocks have occurred since that call, reminding us that the ground continues to shake.
Today, Venezuela is a country measured in losses. The official death toll as of this writing stands at 920. Bodies are piling up on the sidewalks; funeral services have collapsed, and the grief shows no sign of abating. On a street corner, a sight that tears at the hearts of those present: the motionless body of a full-term pregnant woman, covered only by a white sheet. She was unable to escape her building in time.
However, the death toll could have been even more overwhelming had it not been for those mothers who served as a shield for their children as the buildings collapsed.
An entire country is reeling from the story of Andrea, wife of local soccer player Héctor Bello. When the walls of her home began to give way at 6:05 p.m., she didn’t look for an exit; she looked for her two-year-old daughter. Andrea became a shield of flesh and bone. The building collapsed, but her body absorbed the impact of the concrete. Hours later, rescue workers pulled the little girl from the rubble, alive and miraculously unharmed. Andrea gave her life in exchange for her daughter’s.
This maternal heroism is not a metaphor; it is a reality in this tragedy. An 18-day-old baby survived an entire day beneath tons of rubble. When firefighters managed to rescue her, the entire country held its breath. Ninety minutes later, they pulled her mother out of the darkness. Injured and suffocating, she had served as her baby’s external lung, keeping her safe from the cloud of dust.
On the eighth floor of another collapsed building, rescue teams reached a little girl. Holding her in his arms, a rescuer asked her in a broken voice if she was alone. “No, with my mom,” she replied. When asked where her mother was, the girl said, “She’s dead.” Her mother had protected her until the very last second she was conscious.
For those left behind, the trauma is an open wound. Mateo, a boy rescued from the rubble, repeats a blood-curdling phrase to psychologists:
“My mom stopped breathing at 7:30 p.m. She closed her eyes right next to me.”
Like him, hundreds of children are now wandering as orphans, survivors only because their mothers chose to be their shields.
The Venezuelan tragedy also has international repercussions. Unofficial lists of the missing circulating on social media report the disappearance of more than 29 Cuban citizens. Among them are the siblings Vanessa and Dayan Martínez, who vanished along the devastated coast of La Guaira. Entire families across the sea—especially the mothers—stare at their phones, waiting for a miracle that never comes.
But amid this scene of makeshift morgues and weeping—like that of another mother walking barefoot over the ruins, screaming for her son Jorge, trapped beneath the weight of what was once his home—life persists.
A few hours ago, a video recorded on a cell phone went viral among the rescue workers. In the middle of a makeshift camp, surrounded by dust and rubble, a woman gave birth, assisted by the supportive arms of other women. The newborn’s cry—loud, high-pitched, and defiant—broke the silence of death. It is life pushing its way through.
It’s impossible not to think of Silvio Rodríguez’s song at moments like this, a song that today becomes both a prophecy and a balm in these hours of utter darkness: “Venezuela is giving birth to a heart.”
At the end of the day, when the sun sets and aftershocks once again shake the refugees’ tents, one realizes that the difference between the living and the dead in the wake of these earthquakes is a matter of chance. Some were lucky; others were not.
Before closing my eyes tonight, I dial the number for Cuba again. I hear her voice. I am one of the lucky ones. Today I can tell her that I am safe, as I walk on the soil of a country where mothers continue to sustain life.
Alejandra Garcia is a Cuban journalist working in Venezuela as an evening anchor for Telesur in English and the Latin American correspondent for Resumen Latinoamericano in English.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English