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Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Venezuela’s government struggles to respond to deadly earthquakes, Mercosur launches trade talks with Japan, and Ecuador and Paraguay declare national holidays after defeating Germany at the World Cup.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Venezuela’s government struggles to respond to deadly earthquakes, Mercosur launches trade talks with Japan, and Ecuador and Paraguay declare national holidays after defeating Germany at the World Cup.

Venezuela is still reeling from twin earthquakes that hit the country last week. The government said on Wednesday that at least 2,295 people had died in the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude tremors, while citizen-compiled registries say tens of thousands of people are still missing—a sign they could be lying dead under rubble.

A United Nations official on Monday said the organization planned to send 10,000 body bags to the country. The U.N. Development Program estimated that the earthquakes caused $6.7 billion in direct physical damages alone, with the broader costs of economic disruption likely to be much higher.

As experts continue to crunch the numbers on disaster response, one thing is clear: The earthquakes have laid bare many Venezuelans’ dissatisfaction with their government.

Government response teams have been slow to reach some of the worst-hit areas and even blocked would-be rescuers from accessing disaster zones, Tony Frangie-Mawad reported for Foreign Policy on Wednesday. Multiple videos circulating on social media show Venezuelans lambasting government officials. Residents of one neighborhood booed acting President Delcy Rodríguez when she toured the destruction there.

Rodríguez assumed power after the United States ousted President Nicolás Maduro in January. Since then, Caracas and Washington have overseen what they call an economic recovery program for Venezuela. But those efforts have focused overwhelmingly on the country’s oil sector, not its public health or emergency response systems, which were run down by years of economic crisis.

Venezuela’s armed forces are “prepared to respond to riots but not the main threat of natural disasters,” Ángel Rangel Sánchez, a former head of Venezuela’s civil defense agency, told local journalists on Saturday.

Even before the quakes, Rodríguez’s popularity was low, with most Venezuelans telling pollsters that they want elections to be able to choose their own leader. History suggests their desire for change may now grow.

Citizen dissatisfaction following earthquakes in both Nicaragua in 1972 and Mexico in 1985 planted the seeds for the downfall of........

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