Three weeks after Venezuela was struck by twin earthquakes on June 24, the scale of the devastation is still growing. The death toll is approaching 5,000 people, with 18,000 homeless and 21,000 more in shelters.

The worst-hit state is La Guaira on the Caribbean coast – an area that had already been the site of one of Venezuela’s worst natural disasters. In December 1999, the state, then called Vargas, saw several days of torrential rain which flushed mud and rock down the slopes of the Ávila mountains.

Hillside houses were swept away, entire neighbourhoods were buried under landslides, and buildings collapsed near the shore. Tens of thousands of people were thought to have perished, though the precise number is still unknown.

As I recounted in my 2003 book, Venezuela: The Crossroads of Hugo Chávez, the armed forces were central to that disaster response. As part of Plan Bolívar 2000, a programme that deployed around 70,000 troops across Venezuela for civic tasks such as infrastructure and road building, the military was sent to Vargas in large numbers. Soldiers pulled many survivors from the mud and rubble in the first days.

But as the relief effort dragged on, it soured into a dispute over who was in charge. In one incident, the then-governor of Vargas, Alfredo Laya, ordered a unit of paratroopers to deliver food and water to stranded families. The officers replied that they had no such orders and, following an argument, Laya was........

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