These three journalists, from the city hardest hit by the earthquakes, endured loss and trauma. But they kept working, determined to tell the world what was happening around them.
Five minutes after two earthquakes struck(opens in new tab) Venezuela on June 24, Juan Ernesto Páez-Pumar had already sent reports about what he was seeing around him.
Páez-Pumar(opens in new tab), editor of Diario 2001(opens in new tab), was working from home in the city of La Guaira, in the heart of what became the hardest-hit region. He and his family managed to get out of the house in the first seconds after the ground — and their entire world — began shaking.
“You live a duality. The citizen, the human being, but at the same time, the journalist,” Páez-Pumar told the LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “There are two responsibilities: one to your family and another to your profession.”
Venezuelan journalist Juan Ernesto Páez-Pumar covering the earthquakes in Venezuela. (Screenshot IG)
Like many of his compatriots affected by the earthquakes, Páez-Pumar also faced the death of a family member: his mother. The building where she lived collapsed, and Páez-Pumar waited 14 days for her body to be recovered.
During the days he waited for his mother’s body, Páez-Pumar kept vigil with relatives of other people who lived in the building and also interviewed them.
“I call it a horror reality show,” Páez-Pumar said. “Whenever a body was found, a family would leave. They were like the contestants voted out of a reality show.”
His mother’s body was the last one recovered. Páez-Pumar also lost his brother-in-law and his city.
“There are many layers of pain, one on top of another. That’s what I’ve called ‘the continuing tragedy,’ ” he said. “It’s a continuing tragedy, and we don’t know how far it’s going to go.”
At least 12 journalists died(opens in new tab) as a result of the earthquakes, and at least 46 others were affected(opens in new tab), according to Venezuela’s National Union of Press Workers, or SNTP for its initials in Spanish.
But as the SNTP raises funds(opens in new tab) to help journalists, many survivors have felt a responsibility to continue reporting despite their personal crises.
Nadeska Noriega Ávila(opens in new tab), chief correspondent for the online news outlet El Pitazo(opens in new tab), watched as cracks tore through the walls of her apartment. In moments that seemed to last forever, she thought that neither she, her husband, her three children nor her mother would survive.
Fortunately, that did not happen. That night, they slept in a parking lot with other neighbors. But in the following days, without water, gas or electricity, and fearing that her building could collapse, she had to “put the house in order” while continuing to report, Noriega told LJR. That included sending her children and mother to the homes of her sisters, which were safe. Meanwhile, Noriega’s husband remained at home waiting for news about his sister and nephew, who have still not been found.
“How do you face work? Like this: with the family divided and your heart crushed,” Noriega said. “Because it’s not just personal grief; it’s the grief of an entire city.”
Venezuelan journalist Nadeska Noriega Ávila from the news outlet El Pitazo. (Photo: Courtesy)
La Guaira state, which was called Vargas until 2019(opens in new tab), has always been Noriega’s home. In 1999, when she was 29 and already a journalist, she also survived what is known as the “Vargas tragedy(opens in new tab).” On Dec. 15, 1999, unprecedented rains caused flooding and mudslides. As many as 30,000 people are estimated to have died.
Noriega lost her home but returned to the state because “this is my place,” she said.
“Here, we use the word ‘guayabo’ to describe the sadness that comes from love,” Noriega said. “Right now, we have a horrible ‘guayabo’ because it’s not just buildings, it’s not just places. They’re landmarks in your urban memory that are disappearing completely.”
The Vargas tragedy left a lasting mark on the people of La Guaira. Reynaldo Mozo(opens in new tab), a journalist with Efecto Cocuyo(opens in new tab), was 9 when he survived it. He spent three days in a neighbor’s house waiting to be rescued. They were later taken to a military barracks that served as a shelter for hundreds of people.
He vividly remembers a reporter in a yellow poncho, carrying cameras, who arrived at the barracks to interview survivors.
“I want to be like him,” Mozo thought at the time, he told LJR.
He spent part of his childhood in the Venezuelan Llanos, a tropical region stretching across the central and western parts of the country, but returned to La Guaira because he predicted that being closer to Caracas would give him a better chance of becoming a journalist. He was in his apartment in Caracas when the earthquakes struck and spent several hours sending reports without knowing what had happened to his family.
It was not until the next day, after sleeping outdoors for fear of a collapse, that he was able to reach La Guaira and confirm that his mother and grandmother were safe. Two cousins, however, were not as fortunate. One of their bodies was recovered seven days later.
“I was already working, too, thinking about how we were going to find my cousin,” Mozo said. “It was also very difficult to work, to concentrate on La Guaira, knowing that your family was still there. When I was able to get them out [his mother and grandmother], I felt more at ease.”
His approach to covering the current tragedy(opens in new tab) was shaped by what he experienced as a child. The language he uses and his respect for survivors are among his defining traits. Mozo said he avoids using the word “victim” to describe people affected by disasters.
A man in front of the remains of the Hugo Chávez development in Playa Grande in the state of La Guaira, formerly Vargas. (Photo: Nadeska Noriega)
“That word stayed with me from childhood because I was bullied in the Llanos because I came from La Guaira, from a tragedy,” he said. “I avoid using it because I know how a child or a person who had everything yesterday, who was comfortable in their home, can feel when they wake up today in a tent.”
That is why Mozo approaches these places with an understanding that privacy may be lost, but must still be respected.
“Journalism has to be grounded in that more human side, so people can express what they feel without you seeming like a teleprompter or a robot asking and asking and asking until the person feels bad,” Mozo said.
Surviving the tragedy was also a lesson in journalism for Noriega.
“In 1999, many mistakes were made in coverage, particularly in covering the pain of people who had lost entire families. All of that leads you to ask, ‘What did that pain add to the news coverage?’” said Noriega, who has taken training courses on covering emergencies.
“If I was a victim and I am a survivor [...] I think I have to give my interviewees the same respect that I ask for myself,” she concluded.
The three journalists worry that, as the days pass, Venezuela will fall off the international news agenda. They do not want what happened with the Vargas tragedy to happen again.
Venezuelan journalist Reynaldo Mozo Zambrano, from Efecto Cocuyo. (Photo: Courtesy)
They also agree on two other points: Government censorship(opens in new tab) must end, and local media need financial support to continue their work.
“Organizations connected to our work have to be emphatic in demanding that governments — because it’s no longer just one government, but also the U.S. government that has oversight — immediately stop the threats, the blockades, all of this that amounts to censorship,” Mozo said.
Noriega added: “Venezuela remains a regime that always wants to silence people and always wants people not to speak or the media not to report. The best way to help is by facilitating or providing resources of any kind to independent media [...] which are ultimately the ones standing up and facing this.”
For Páez-Pumar, reporting while waiting for news about his mother was also a way of coping with the tragedy.
The vigils and walks he took while reporting helped him honor his mother’s memory and the values she instilled in him: responsibility and honesty.
“It was good for me because I didn’t end up drowning in just one thing. I was doing something I considered useful, necessary,” Páez-Pumar said. “And I know she was proud of that because if there was someone who instilled that sense of responsibility and that calling in me, it was her.”
This text was translated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Jorge Valencia
