With hands full of flyers, Antonella Molina, her nephew Pedro Molina, and a group of friends stepped carefully through the rubble that remains throughout La Guaira after two catastrophic back-to-back earthquakes 10 weeks ago. Their goal is to find 18-year-old Andrés Molina — Antonella’s nephew and Pedro’s cousin — who has been missing since the double earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24. While the government says 1,500 are still missing, an independent account estimates that tens of thousands of people remain unaccounted for.
Weeks before, Antonella and other relatives pulled the bodies of Andrés’ mother and brother from the ruins of their 10-story apartment building 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. Neighbors told the family they had seen Andrés wandering the destruction collecting scrap metal, fueling their belief that he survived.
And they are determined to keep searching on their own until they find him. In the days after the quakes, neighbors 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. A construction worker said he saw him near the golf course. Another woman sitting outside on a plastic chair said she saw the flyers but not Andrés.
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