Renzo Román was found dead, still kneeling in prayer, among the ruins of OPP27. He was the pastor of the Caribe Christian church in La Guaira, the area that was the most devastatingly impacted by the June 24 earthquakes in Venezuela. Two days earlier, he had told his mother that Christ was coming for his children, and if God asked him to go with Him, not to give up on life as she had been tempted to do when the first of his 10 siblings had died.

“Mamita, can you make me an arepa? The boy and I are hungry and Marisela hasn’t arrived yet,” Renzo asked his mother before saying his last words: “Mamita, I’m going to tell you a joke. You know, bad times are coming and you have to stay calm. Heaven needs angels.”

Señora Iris understood those words as a goodbye, and that she wouldn’t see him again. On the afternoon of that fateful June 24, Iris left her home at a time that she wouldn’t typically go out at. Minutes later, the building where she lived was reduced to dust. Renzo died with his wife and son in one of the public housing units the government had given to those who had been displaced by a prior natural disaster in 2009 in La Guaira.

“I hope people learn a little more about God, because that is what we all want. My children practiced Santería and didn’t want to know anything about these things,” says Iris. Her son Renzo had been one of these Santería believers. She recalls how on his first day in the Christian church, he collapsed to the floor of the temple when the pastor touched his head. “He prayed over him, my son got up and he said he didn’t want anything to do with those things. He threw it all away and converted. He learned very quickly. I believed more in God after that. A lot more. I know that this was not the work of God, it was nature — and my son knew it.”

In contrast, Evis Rocío Rodríguez says she was saved by Saint John. She and her husband are business owners in Pueblo Arriba, the part of Naiguatá where the home of the saint’s caretaker is located, an altar that opens its doors to devotees.

“Many people were saved because everyone who was here was from Caribe, Tanaguarenas or Caraballeda — the areas that saw the highest number of collapsed buildings. They survived because they were in the community church when their buildings fell. They didn’t find out until they got back,” says Evis.

The Festival of Saint John the Baptist is an Afro-Venezuelan Catholic celebration that was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2021, and has taken place in Venezuela since the colonial era. Naiguatá preserves the tradition with an image of the Christ Child carved from cedar that a Spanish landowner bought 400 years ago so that enslaved people could celebrate the solstice within the framework of the Catholic faith that was imposed on them. Since then, the coastal festival has intertwined pagan beliefs with those of the Catholic church. But after the June 24 earthquakes, the festival’s detractors began to associate its dancing and drumming with the spiritual cause of the tragedy.

“I don’t know if I want to keep celebrating Saint John,” confesses 49-year-old Adriana Castro in her new home in the Los Caracas Vacation Resort. She shares a cabin with another 10 people, among them Deisy Díaz, who had invited her to the celebration in Naiguatá, never imagining that Adriana’s building would collapse during the festivities.

“I didn’t realize it was an earthquake, because I thought it was the strong vibrations of the ceremony. But when Civil Defense told us that buildings had fallen down, I started making my way there. I began to scream, and I found my son with my dead grandson in his arms,” says Adriana.

At Naiguatá’s Saint John festival, at least 3,000 people had been celebrating when the earthquake interrupted. There were shouts of “The ground! The ground is shaking!” The video of this collective chaos went viral on social media and immediately, several Christian preachers blamed the festival for having caused the disaster.

“It was a day off. How many people wouldn’t have been in their homes? Saint John didn’t just save people — they were saved because they came to Saint John,” says Evis. A devotee interrupts the conversation as she genuflects before the saint’s image. “Those people are ignorant, they don’t know what cultural heritage is. Faith moves mountains and Saint John has worked miracles.”

Evis continues, “Many people began to misrepresent things. If this had to do with it, why did nothing happen in Naiguatá? If Saint John is to blame, why did people with nothing to do with him pay the cost? Just as good exists, so does evil. God is working, but the Devil is as well. For me, this was the work of the demon, and God jumped in to save those that he could.”

For the Universal Church — which is known for its slogan “stop your suffering” — Christians were spiritually prepared for the catastrophe, interpreting it as a manifestation of the verse in Matthew 24 that describes the end of days. “Those who look for God in fear will not find Him. I cannot convince God by shouting, and I speak with authority on this: not to condemn, but to urge people to understand which God they should seek,” says Pastor Miguel Ángel Rodríguez.

But Jhonell Hernández, an evangelical pastor from Puerto Ordaz who lives in La Guaira, sees things differently. “There is a lot of sensitivity, and we can’t exploit that. It’s important to let people experience their emotions. People understand that they must come to God because we survived. Despite the pain, neighbors are more united. They laugh, share, and have the capacity to cry and laugh at the same time.”

Nearby, in the garden of one of the shelters, two women reflect on the tragedy. One wears a rosary on her chest and says that one can only believe in God without the adoration of images. The other, an evangelical, believes in the immaculate life of the venerable Mother Mary of San José.

“I believe that when Christ comes, he won’t be looking for only Catholics, or only Christians,” reflects the former. “The Bible says you will know them by their fruit. Do you think God won’t be pleased by someone who does good work, independently of their religion?”

“I just ask myself one thing,” responds her neighbor, who gazes off into the distance. “Why was my friend with her three sons buried under the rubble, and they were there for 15 days until help arrived? I don’t understand it, it’s something that torments me. But I’m not blaming anyone. We who survived, survived, and may God guide each person through what they are going through."