Published at: 29/07/2026 09:00 PM

(AFP, The Venezuelan Journal and Observatory of Fake News, July 10 and 16, 2026)

“Neither falsehood nor exaggeration belong to history, only truth... We must be wary of mythical distortion or rhetorical excess when narrating the facts.”

Simon Bolivar, The Liberator

• On June 30, one of the first matrices of opinion generated by disinformation assassins appeared to cause greater confusion and discouragement among the population, in the midst of the greatest seismic tragedy that Venezuela has experienced.
• The false positive communication was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on some alleged statements offered by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, dated December 3, 1957 and published on a false cover of the Diario de Caracas, about the instability of the soils of La Guaira.
• The Fake News was a crude and vulgar montage with the following headline: “DECEMBER 2 URBANIZATION WILL BE BUILT IN WESTERN CARACAS... GIVEN THAT GEOLOGICAL STUDIES SHOW THAT LA GUAIRA IS NOT STABLE SOIL”.
• The Diario de Caracas, as a newspaper with a large national circulation, did not exist at the time, it began to circulate 22 years later, in 1979. And the work to which the montage refers was inaugurated two years earlier, in December 1955.
• Contrary to all the ethical norms that govern the professional practice of journalism, this hoax was massively disseminated in the first hours of the earthquake and replicated by more than 3,000 users, generating a communication fuss that gave rise to thousands of comments aimed at discrediting the government of the President (e) of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, and the Great Venezuela Housing Mission (GMVV). Emblematic mission of the Bolivarian Revolution, which since its inception the recalcitrant right has declared as a strategic enemy to be demolished.
• The truth is that the iconic December 2 Urbanization, which was ironically renamed January 23, to celebrate the overthrow of its author, was actually inaugurated on December 2, 1955 and from the beginning it was planned on land in western Caracas. Regardless of its name change, it has gone down in history as the first large housing complex built to house thousands of working class families in the popular areas of Caracas, under the architectural design of Carlos Raúl Villanueva.
• The real truth is that Pérez Jiménez never said that La Guaira was uninhabitable. Far from the fuss created by necrophagous “influencers” to generate noise in social networks and trade with the death of the victims of the 24J, the incontestable reality of the events shows that several “indestructible and eternal” works built during the dictator's golden era collapsed under the impact of the double earthquake of 24J, including:
  • Block 3 of La Páez, in Catia la Mar, completely collapsed.
  • The building of the Laguna Beach residential complex, built in 1952 in Caraballeda, collapsed as a result of two consecutive earthquakes of magnitude 7.1 and 7.5 on the Richter scale.
  • A third case occurred 59 years earlier, the Charaima Mansion building, built in 1954 and located in Caraballeda in front of the Macuto Sheraton hotel, which collapsed during a smaller earthquake (6.5) that occurred on July 29, 1967, which also collapsed in Caracas four buildings built during the urban boom of the dictatorial government.
• Other media matrices, manufactured in the early hours of the earthquake by cognitive warfare laboratories that have helped to further aggravate the 24J tragedy, are:
  • The government's alleged ineptitude to arrive in time to rescue survivors. This matrix was refuted by the prompt response that same night.
  • In Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 7,039 of the same day, June 24, 2026, a State of Emergency was declared in the national territory in order to deploy all human, technical, financial and material resources to immediately address the damaging effects of the double earthquake that occurred just two hours earlier.
  • A few hours after the earthquake, all State security agencies, rescue groups and firefighters from all over the country were busy working in the disaster zone.
  • The false yellow and alarmist news showing a video of a tsunami in El Puerto de La Guaira, which was taken in Japan fifteen years earlier, on March 11, 2011.
  • The coprophages of disinformation caused a state of confusion and panic among rescuers and surviving neighbors who fled the area.
  • A statement from the Venezuelan Foundation for Seismological Research (FUNVISIS), later endorsed by the U.S. National Meteorological Tsunami Warning Service, showed the video that was used to distort reality, ending the state of panic created by communication scavengers.
  • Recently, two misleading videos appeared showing the rescue of two people, after 24 and 28 days, trapped under the rubble, which in reality correspond to rescues carried out the first few hours after 24J by officials from the Civil Defense, Caracas Fire Department and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB).
  • The media also let out the hype, disproportionate to the maximum of the exaggeration, that all the buildings collapsed by the double earthquake belonged to the GMVV. Only 4% of the 198 collapsed buildings, between Caracas and La Guaira, belong to this social housing program.
  • When today we witness the collapse of the fundamental pillars of Social Communication ethics, such as Information Science and Art, it is worth remembering how Simón Bolívar, faced with the many adversities he had to face, the calamity of a possible defeat, conspiracies or disasters, always rejected distortion, and preferred sober testimonies to the chronicles that distorted the news that came to his office.
  • Faced with false versions, the political Manichaeism of opposing sides in conflict and courtly flattery, Bolívar always compared and weighed the balance of news storms with documentary sources, always trying to separate reality from the black or golden legends that always raged around his person and his work.

Mazo News Team