By Clodovaldo Hernández – Jul 3, 2026Tearing apart the social fabric of Venezuela has been one of the explicit or hidden objectives of those who have opposed the Bolivarian Revolution since its inception. In the reactionary discourse, popular organization has always been demonized, as it is—according to that ideological vision—the seed of dangerous communism.Paradoxically, after the double earthquake of June 24, the discourse of the global media machinery and trends on social media have mutated diametrically and now point in the opposite direction: it is being made to seem that Venezuelan society has had an initial autonomous response capacity to the calamity, despite—and even in opposition to—the national government.The reality is that in Venezuela there exists a solid social fabric capable of facing contingencies due to the efforts of Commander Hugo Chávez, President Nicolás Maduro, and Acting President Delcy Rodríguez to strengthen this web of solidarity, as the essence of the ongoing revolutionary process.Those who are trying to establish the idea that the people tried to protect themselves because the government abandoned them are trying to fish in the very turbulent waters of a tragedy of almost incalculable proportions.We return here to the point of the magnitude of the catastrophe. Whatever the “digital experts in anything and everything” might say, it was impossible to attend to each and every one of the hundreds of emergency fronts that arose in La Guaira, Caracas, and other localities at the same time. In that sense, the direct action of the communities to try to rescue the trapped neighbors, attend to the injured, and establish safe places to spend the night cannot be considered as an effort to fill a void left by official negligence. On the contrary, it is a demonstration that people, to a greater or lesser extent, have organized themselves over the past decades and that there are records, censuses, and responsibilities previously assigned to address emergencies, surely not as severe as the one experienced on June 24, but sufficient for an initial response.The narrative of a people abandoned by the stateThe international media apparatus and the all-powerful social media are trying to establish the idea that the people were left to their fate. Some, the most sensationalist and yellow journalists, have gone so far as to insinuate or assert that the grassroots organizations were deliberately prevented from acting, sabotaging the people’s efforts to save their family members and neighbors.The most extreme sectors are trying to establish the narrative that the people associate the tragedy with socialism, something that these sectors have been doing since the Vargas [La Guaira] landslide, only now it has been amplified by the effect of social media, multiplied by so-called influencers and bots at the service of these predatory schemes.When analyzing the historical trajectory of the country in this century, it is observed that the main forms of community organization emerged in response to the economic suffocation plans designed by the US empire and implemented on the ground by its political and economic allies. For example, the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) were born in response to the internal economic war that was waged through programed shortages and the hoarding of essential goods by these extremists. This sector had the particularity of even attracting the middle class that is traditionally opposed to this type of initiatives.Before the CLAP, in the popular sectors, land committees, housing committees, technical water committees, and social missions had germinated and bore fruit. All those lines of development of popular power have always been met with the repudiation of counter-revolutionary forces. This fabric has had a clear importance in socio-natural disaster situations such as the landslides in Caracas, Mérida, and Tejerías, to name just a few that occurred in the second and the current third decade of the century. In the much more complex tragedy that the country is currently going through, that social fabric built over the years has been crucial. When the pernicious effects of necrophilic narratives have passed, this will have to be recognized, even by those who, in the midst of a natural and understandable despair, have become multipliers of those nefarious stories.Truth Amid the RubbleThe twisted ideological purpose: sowing disdain for the public sphereThe ongoing psychological operation is extremely twisted: by praising the people who acted on their own, it aims, at its core, to deeply instill the conviction that everything representing the public is corrupt and inefficient by nature.It is the same paradox that has made possible the rise of governments advocating for the elimination of all kinds of state agencies, compensations, subsidies, and aid for the most needy sectors possible, under the promise that it will improve the lives of the citizens. These political proposals have turned out to be absurdly popular, despite the fact that, in simple terms, they take money out of the pockets of the poor to put it into the bank accounts of the rich.In the wounded Venezuela of 2026, interested parties are trying to take advantage of the opportunity that the tragedy has provided them to stoke the affected people’s hatred against the State and, in general, against the public sector. Praising the collective action of the communities aims to create the narrative that the solution is a castrated State.In the face of these narrative strategies, reflection and debate are more necessary than ever. Organized communities must analyze and discuss this terrible opinion and reflect on what has happened in countries governed by savage neoliberalism that have suffered disasters of this magnitude. (LaIguana.TV)Translation: Orinoco TribuneOT/SC