Months after Venezuela earthquakes, a family refuses to give up search for their missing relative

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Antonella Molina, her nephew Pedro Molina and a group of friends set out at 8:00 a.m. on a recent Saturday, hands full of flyers, walking carefully through the rubble that remains throughout La Guaira after two catastrophic back-to-back earthquakes 10 weeks ago.

Their mission is to find 18-year-old Andrés Molina — Antonella’s nephew and Pedro’s cousin — who they haven’t heard from since the double earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24.

Andrés is among tens of thousands who remain missing, according to an independent account, far surpassing the government estimate of 1,500.

Weeks before, Antonella and other relatives pulled the bodies of Andrés’ mother and brother from the collapsed remains of their 10-storey apartment building that collapsed in La Guaira, the coastal area just north of the capital Caracas that was one of the hardest hit.

The building once housed more than 30 people but there was no sign of Andrés, not even the backpack he always carried.

Neighbours told the family they have seen Andrés wandering the destruction collecting scrap metal; they hold out hope that he survived.

“There are a lot of things that give us hope,” Antonella said. “And one of those is love.”

Government figures of 6,500 dead and 1,500 have been widely questioned by people on the ground, although the Venezuelan government has said its response was quick and statistics are “rigorously verified.”

With little trust in authorities, Andrés’ family and friends are the ones taking charge to get the answers they need.

“We’ve never had support from the government to help us find the people disappeared. Never,” Antonella said.

And they are determined to keep searching on their own until they find him.

In the days after the quakes, neighbours said they saw Andrés wandering around with an apparent head injury. The family called shelters, hospitals and morgues but there was no news of Andrés.

They turned to putting up flyers around the area with his photo and a number to call. The calls rolled in, reporting sightings at a nearby golf course, park or restaurant. But Andrés was never there when they showed up. When they would ask around, people told them stories of seeing the young man in the photo, often trying to give food to cats, his favorite animal.

Just the day before the search, police told Antonella they saw him collecting scrap material nearby, further fueling their optimism.

On the Saturday of the renewed search, about 15 friends and relatives walked the streets, past the busted windows and collapsed walls as the noise of ongoing construction equipment rumbled in the background.

Antonella approached neighbors and construction crews with a warm, Venezuelan greeting of “how are you, mi amor?” She explained her hunt for information about her nephew.

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