Chávez

Less than 48 hours after the earthquakes of June 24, X (formerly Twitter) users mentioned that a Japanese team did a study on seismic risk in Caracas in the early 21st century. That’s true. In March 2005, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the primary government agency responsible for managing Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA), released the report Basic Plan for Disaster Prevention in the Metropolitan District of Caracas in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The technical report presented a Disaster Prevention Plan as requested by the Venezuelan government. The plan’s goal was to save lives during an earthquake by minimizing asset damage and improving the State’s response capacity.

The study covered only three of the five municipalities that form Metropolitan Caracas: Libertador, Chacao, and Sucre, because the government committed to apply its conclusions to Baruta and El Hatillo. It did not consider what is currently called La Guaira state (Vargas back then).

The Japanese team was headed by Mitsuo Miura (Pacific Consultants International, PCI) and composed of staff members of PCI and OYO International Corporation. They visited Venezuela seven times, from December 2002 to March 2005, when they discussed the results with the Venezuelan officials and conducted field surveys. Upon returning to Japan, the team finished additional studies and prepared this final report.

The diagnosis

The study defined several scenarios to estimate risks, soil displacement, and potential damage. It projected that, in the worst case, a considerable number of buildings in Caracas, depending on their age and type, would collapse, with a high human cost. Only the ones built after 2002 showed high seismic capacity. Twenty years ago, those buildings made up no more than 0.1% of the studied area. 

On the other side, 98,237 buildings were vulnerable. Those built before 1967 (the year of the previous great earthquake in Venezuela) had low seismic capacity, while those built from 1968 to 2001 had a moderate capacity. Of the 1968-1982 buildings, 82% were made of brick and mortar. 

“The project will reduce the number of heavily damaged buildings from around 10,000 to around 1,300, and the number of casualties from around 4,900 to around 400 in the case of a 1967 earthquake.”

The Japanese team evaluated, using Japanese standards, office buildings, homes, bridges and viaducts, and established a range of risks in several seismic scenarios. After surveying the Metro tunnels and stations, they suggested reinforcing columns and structures, as well as adding resistant materials in the gas and water networks, and improving the structure of gas stations to avoid dangerous combustible spills. 

By 2005, shantytowns covered approximately 20% of Caracas’ urban area, and hosted 51.2% of the capital’s population. This study conducted, for the first time, seismic reinforcement tests on four full-scale models of the typical rancho. It demonstrated that the unengineered constructions have low seismic resistance and require reinforcement, as they could not withstand minor loads and showed failures in columns and connections. The bricks did not contribute significant resistance. If those homes were reinforced with beams, their resistance increased by 40% at an additional cost of 5% to 7%. 

The solution

Their plan recommended seven big tasks. To improve safety, reinforce buildings and bridges, control the flux of sediments, and relocate the population living in high-risk areas. To improve response, implement early alert systems and emergency command centers. And to improve coordination, educate the population and stimulate citizen participation. By that time, local technologies made all these projects possible.

“The project”, they assured in the report, “will reduce the number of heavily damaged buildings from around 10,000 to around 1,300, and the number of casualties from around 4,900 to around 400 in the case of a 1967 earthquake.”

There was no plan, no authorities, no clear responsibilities to allow Venezuela’s capital and most populated city to coordinate the response in case of a disaster, the Japanese warned.

When they did the calculations back in 2005, they estimated the plan would cost around 2,800 million dollars (most of them to reinforce all the buildings that could be damaged in an earthquake) and would take 16 years to fully implement. So, if the Chávez and Maduro governments had done their part of the deal, Venezuela would have finished five years ago a seismic prevention and safety strategy in Caracas designed by the experts from a country that knows earthquakes as much as Japan, paying a quarter of the costs estimated for the 2026 earthquakes.

The Japanese team also recommended an early alert system for landslides, to be developed from 2005 to 2007, with a cost of one million dollars. This was meant to protect 19,000 Venezuelans.

The responsibilities

The Venezuelan entities involved in the plan would be the ministries of Public Works and Housing, Transportation, and Planning and Development; the Caracas Metropolitan Mayor’s office; the capital’s five municipalities; and the National Civil Protection and Disaster Management Organization (Protección Civil). 

But by 2005, only a civil protection law from 2001 defined some of the corresponding responsibilities. The capital’s Disaster Prevention Administration was being developed. As the Japanese experts warned in their report, there was no plan, no authorities, no clear responsibilities to allow Venezuela’s capital and most populated city to coordinate the response in case of a disaster.

When Japan’s JICA delivered the report to Hugo Chávez, the area under assessment had 17 firefighter stations, 15 municipal police stations, 17 civil protection stations and two emergency control centers. Since then, the only visible change for the inhabitants is the increase of National Police (PMB) command centers.

On June 24, 2026, three buildings went down in Chacao municipality, and inspections are being made to assess the structural damage of several more. In Libertador municipality, at least two residential towers collapsed in San Bernardino, and there’s important damage across the city. In parts of Petare, in Sucre municipality, where many buildings are ranchos, an undetermined number of lodgings collapsed totally or partially, and basic services are not available in some places.

Many foreign crews came to help, especially in La Guaira. One of them is a new research team with seven JICA specialists that arrived in Caracas four days after the earthquakes to design the support measures Japan would contribute to. On June 30, after a request from the interim government, Japan sent tents, water tanks and purification equipment, and erected two campaign hospitales, one in Caraballeda, in the middle of the disaster zone in La Guaira, and another by the Dr. Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas.

Besides this, Miyamoto International, a Japanese organization of disaster prevention engineering, came to assess earthquakes’ impact. The team is headed by the famous engineer Hideki “Kit” Miyamoto, the organization’s founder and director. He said they are talking with the Japanese government and reviewing the previous reports. Maybe they will issue a new body of knowledge like the 2005 investigation by JICA. Let’s hope that, this time, the Japanese expertise will be used.

This World Cup has made unlikely international stars out of a plucky Cape Verde squad, further catapulted the status of gargantuan Norwegian striker Erling Haaland and firmly planted Lionel Messi as the greatest player of his generation.

But the players on the pitch haven’t been the only ones catching the eyes of soccer viewers.

Another legend among legends has also cemented his legacy during this run: Aurelio Casillas — the fictional drug kingpin and protagonist at the heart of the long-running Telemundo series “El Señor de los Cielos.”

The 10th season of the program finds Casillas reemerging to recover his narcotics empire after disappearing from his family’s radar. Familial drama ensues as betrayal runs rampant and Casillas embarks on a vengeful crusade against his enemies to regain and avenge the death of his love interest.

The image of Casillas, portrayed by veteran Mexican actor Rafael Amaya, has been plastered all across Telemundo’s World Cup coverage.

In the ads leading into games, Casillas is there. During most commercial rejoins, hosts spotlight the “El Señor de los Cielos” final season‘s Tuesday premiere.

The promotion has gone beyond what most U.S. audiences might be accustomed to as the network has cleverly implemented in-game ad reads that seem to flow freely into match coverage.

If Haaland coordinates a strike that helps Norway regain power in the game, a Telemundo game announcer might point out that decorated drug trafficker Casillas has also been known to schedule timely strikes to help him regain power in the dangerous world of narco warfare.

The incessant and cheeky ad reads served as more than just a gimmick as social media users have taken note of Telemundo’s marketing strategy. Many have joked about capitulating to the network’s advertising and giving the show a try. Others have humorously pondered about the contents of the program, while some have defiantly proclaimed that they will never fall for the series’ propaganda.

Hate it or love it, people can’t stop talking about it.

During halftime of Friday’s high-octane Argentina-Cape Verde Round of 32 match, Telemundo sportscaster Adriana Monsalve nodded to the online chatter the show has generated.

“We’ve read your messages on social media,” Monsalve said. “Between those who have said they’ve been convinced and those who admitted that they will be watching ‘El Señor de los Cielos,’ all we have to say is thank you. We await you all this Tuesday at 9 p.m./8 p.m. Central on Telemundo and Peacock.”

This type of over-the-top promotion model has long been used by the network as a way to convince advertisers that running commercials on its airways is worthwhile, noted University of Oregon advertising professor Christopher Chávez.

“They’ve really had to scrap it out over the years and so their product placement has always been overt, whereas in English-language media, there’s at least some attempt to make it creative or artistic,” Chávez, who also serves as the director of his school’s Center for Latina/o and Latin American Studies, told The Times. “There’s just this history of announcers and creatives really just going all in on marketing and almost not disciplining themselves, and because you have this global platform, people are just taking notice and they’re having fun with it.”

Telemundo’s executive vice president of marketing and creative strategy, Claudia Chagui, told The Times that the company had a game plan for how to approach the moment for “El Señor de los Cielos.”

“We had a very clear strategy going into the World Cup,” Chagui said. “We knew what we wanted to do in terms of how to protect our core fans and how to attract English-leaning Hispanics and maybe even general market fans to come and watch it in Spanish and all of that happened. We knew that this launchpad for ‘El Señor’ was going to be the strongest platform we could have.”

Chávez remarked that the Telemundo likely put a lot of stock in engaging Latinos online in the hopes that they would have fun with the marketing rollout.

“[Telemundo] knows that Latinos are younger and tend to be more proficient users of social media and more likely to share content,” Chávez said. “They’re very aware of that kind of market research, so whatever they put out there, hopefully it’s going to be meme-able or it’s going to be shareable. I think they’re pretty much banking on that.”

Chagui said that while much of the viral online chatter is beyond the control of the network, Telemundo’s social team has been locked in to the conversations regarding the show.

“We have our ‘El Señor’ account and even our Aurelio account — who is commenting on some of these conversations — and we’re making sure that our community feels like they’re being heard,” Chagui noted. “There is a real fan community around this IP and we take that very seriously. We want to take care of our fans.”

The show has been able to have such reach this World Cup cycle because more U.S. viewers are opting to tune in to Telemundo’s coverage than ever before.

In a recent social media post, Telemundo said that nearly half of all World Cup viewers stateside are watching its coverage.

NPR reported that 20% of Telemundo’s soccer audience speaks English as their primary language. Telemundo Deportes leadership told the outlet that the network’s telecast numbers have increased by 122% since the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

“It’s so much better when we’re watching it on Telemundo, because the announcers are not simply announcing the game, they’re engaging with the audiences themselves,” said Mari Castañeda, University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Commonwealth Honors College dean. “They’re really leaning into a more Latino aesthetic that is much more loose, open, joyful, kind of like a party atmosphere that changes the vibe and makes it become more celebratory, which it should be. The World Cup is meant to bring people together and it really seems to be doing that.”

That level of involvement from the commentators was something that Telemundo’s marketing team made sure to instill in its talent pool, Chagui noted.

“We work with our sports team and say, ‘These are the things that are top priorities for us from a promotional perspective,’ and our team creates all those mentions for those commentators and we work hand-in-hand with the sports team to make sure that there’s time within the games for them to be able to make those mentions,” she said.

“We tweak that messaging along the way to make sure that it doesn’t become too repetitive, that people don’t get tired of it. And now when the season starts, you’ll see that those mentions are going to be even more organic and will be more related to what’s happening on the show at the time.”

An unexpected added element that fell into Telemundo’s lap was the dream run of Mexico’s national team in the tournament.

“We prayed for that, but it’s been tremendous,” Chagui said. “[The Round of 32 game against Ecuador] had over 17 million viewers, so talk about a dream promotional platform. We really couldn’t ask for more.”

Chávez saw this current cultural moment as a great time for “El Señor de los Cielos” to potentially add a slew of new viewers, especially among English-first audiences.

“One of the things that streaming platforms like Netflix has done is that you’re starting to now see preferences change,” he said. “American audiences are starting to consume Korean dramas, for example, or Spanish-language dramas … [these] platforms have changed people’s comfort levels with consuming content that is not necessarily in English.”

Chagui also credited Telemundo’s streaming home, Peacock, as an important driver of popularity for “El Señor de los Cielos.”

“Now everybody watches content in any language, so I think the partnership with Peacock has been tremendous, because we know a lot of consumers don’t watch linear television anymore, and so if you’re not available on the streaming platforms, then you already hit a brick wall … we have to be available where our audiences are consuming content,” Chagui said.

If you’re one of the many people intrigued by the series, but find the idea of doing nine seasons of catch-up viewing daunting — there’s no need to fear, Telemundo has got you covered.

Seizing on the show’s newfound increase in popularity, the network created a special episode of “El Señor de los Cielos” that recaps all nine seasons of the series in under two hours.

“We needed a catch-up strategy because core fans are going to want to catch up before the premiere of the new season, but we’re going to bring in all these new eyeballs with the World Cup, and so we had to have something that is easy for them to understand what the series is about so they can hit the ground running,” Chagui said. “That’s where we had this idea to do this 90-minute recap of all nine seasons and so since we launched that on Peacock and the consumption has been off the charts.”

But the appeal of the “El Señor de los Cielos,” which began airing back in 2013 and is inspired by the real-life escapades of Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, goes beyond just the viral marketing.

“I think for a lot of the folks that were not watching it, but that now are interested and fascinated by the show, [the appeal] is that it’s based loosely on a true story,” Castañeda said. “That’s one of the things that in talking to some of the elders in the community is what connects them to the story itself, it feels like it’s something relevant and contemporary because it’s based on the potential of a true story that’s taking place.”

Castañeda added that the program’s high production value and explosive action scenes make “El Señor de los Cielos” seem like “a fun show to watch.”

Amaya’s turn as the sinister yet family-focused Aurelio Casillas has drawn comparisons to James Gandolfini’s portrayal of mob boss Tony Soprano — a distinction the actor dubbed an “honor” as “The Sopranos” is one of his favorite series.

In a conversation with The Times, Amaya embodied the corporate synergy that has piqued interest in his show.

“Our World Cup are TV series and I think that we’ve scored a bunch of goals during the decade that we’ve been telling a story that always been buzz-worthy and that has passed from generation to generation,” Amaya said. “All that is thanks to the viewers and to the characters who have evolved and remained relevant.”

In addition to the plethora of ads, the “El Señor de los Cielos” lead actor contributed to Telemundo’s World Cup coverage through a special program titled “Diarios de Fútbol con Rafael Amaya.” The show follows Amaya around L.A. as he speaks with soccer legends about the transformative power of the sport.

When asked what new viewers of the show should expect, Amaya kept it simple.

“They’re obviously going to see a series filled with adrenaline, betrayal, unexpected turns,” Amaya said. “In this 10th season there are a lot of changes, and I think it’s the best season yet.”

The imposition of Venezuelan state sovereignty over the oil industry was one of the pillars of the Bolivarian Revolution from the get-go.

This edition of Tatuy Tv’s “Chávez the Radical” compiles several speeches by Comandante Chávez where he discusses the multiple policies that had subordinated the Venezuelan oil industry to transnational corporate interests and their nefarious consequences.

Issues like state ownership, royalties, taxes, and international arbitration are as relevant as ever today as the country undergoes major pro-business reforms in the oil sector.

Source: Tatuy Tv

Once he got into power, Hugo Chávez spared no effort to reverse the neoliberal policies implemented in the 80s and 90s. This meant impressive advances for the Venezuelan working class.

In this 2006 speech, Chávez paid special attention to the Fourth Republic’s policies to increase the precariousness of the workers and favor business interests, particularly by replacing wages with bonuses.

With the economy under merciless US attacks in recent years, the Venezuelan government has favored non-wage bonuses, sparking widespread debate within Chavismo and criticism from trade unions.

Source: Tatuy Tv