Styrofoam? Venezuela’s Deadly Quake Exposes the Rotten Core of Socialist Construction

The twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela this week were not merely acts of nature—they laid bare decades of deliberate neglect and ideological folly. A magnitude 7.2 quake followed seconds later by a 7.5 temblor devastated the northern coast near Caracas, particularly La Guaira state, collapsing buildings and claiming at least 1,430 lives as of the latest reports, with tens of thousands still missing. Rescue workers sifting through the rubble made a grim discovery: entire apartment complexes, many erected under Hugo Chávez’s “Grand Housing Mission,” were little more than facades held together by Styrofoam and thin concrete shells. Video from the...