Cristian knows that his mother lies lifeless beneath the rubble. The only question is where.

Using his hands, the boyish 22-year-old shows how the 12-storey building in which he used to live collapsed when a double earthquake struck Venezuela in late June. First, it tipped sideways. Then, he says, curling his fingers inward, it folded in on itself “like a flower closing”.

He was less than an hour’s drive away in Caracas when it happened. By the time he had arrived on the scene in the early morning, both the building and his mother were gone. With no rescuers in sight, that’s when he started to dig.

A month after the deadliest earthquake to hit Venezuela in more than a century, personal tragedies – compounded by what many see as a bungled response from Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government – have deepened political tensions.

For many, the disaster has been a crystallising moment, reminding them that, despite the US’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, they are living under the same regime that they blame for decades of decline.

Credit: The Vanguard/ Instagram

The disaster marked out a “before and after”, said Trino Márquez, a sociology professor at the Central University of Venezuela, adding: “From here on out, it’ll be much harder to contain public discontent. People have lost their fear.”

He said the earthquakes on June 24 could mark the Rodríguez government’s “Malvinas moment” – referring to how the 1982 Falklands war accelerated the collapse of Argentina’s military junta by exposing it as incompetent in the eyes of its own population.

According to official figures, more than 5,500 people were killed and 16,700 more were injured in the earthquakes, although those are thought to be conservative estimates.

Nasa satellite data suggest about 58,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. A World Bank report estimated that the direct damage to physical assets amounted to $19.6bn (£14.7bn), making it the deadliest and most economically damaging disaster in Venezuela since the 1812 Caracas earthquake.

Hardest hit was the state of La Guaira. Dense with social housing, it had suffered catastrophic mudslides in 1999 that made the region synonymous with one of the deadliest disasters in the continent’s history.

Four weeks after the twin quakes, the coastal area still resembles “a war zone” in the words of one resident. The dust of pulverised concrete hangs in the air; the decomposing bodies trapped in the wreckages have drawn swarms of flies.

The landscape is punctuated by what look like giant molehills, each mound a composite of concrete, rebar, personal belongings and human remains.

Scores of volunteers, mostly men, pick through the wreckage, many equipped with little more than gloves and shovels – if that. Stumbling upon a corpse is considered a breakthrough.

Lorena Laya, 24, managed to retrieve her stepmother and younger sister from the debris, but is still searching for her father and 15-year-old brother.

She said: “Even though they’re no longer with us, they deserve to come out of there. I’ve seen some ‘professionals’ toss the bodies around or handle them without proper care. They may be dead, but they deserve to be treated with respect. And so do those who survived.”

The quake is the biggest challenge yet for the interim government. Its response has been twofold.

On the one hand, it has opened the country to scores of aid organisations, US troops and foreign journalists. The deference shown to the visitors – with Ms Rodríguez issuing medals to international rescue dogs – marks a sharp break from decades of suspicion towards the outside world.

On the other, it has occasionally reverted to what one western diplomat jokingly called its “empire-strikes-back” habits.

When a Spanish journalist pushed the president to address accusations that help had been slow to arrive, a visibly irritated Ms Rodríguez criticised those trying to “politicise” the tragedy, calling it “disgraceful”.

Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, separately denounced journalists critical of the government’s earthquake response as “paid propagandists” spreading “disinformation”. But in La Guaira and elsewhere, bitter resentment towards the government is widespread.

One volunteer, who risked his job in the national guard by taking leave to join the search effort, said: “In this area alone, there are thousands of police and other security organs. If each of them spent even two hours helping out here, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Several residents recounted with satisfaction how they had heckled the mayor during a visit, one of several displays of public anger toward officials in recent weeks. A video shared online shows residents shouting “Get out!” at Ms Rodríguez during a visit to one of the affected areas in late June.

The US, however, appears set on dragging her through the crisis. In the aftermath of the January raid on Caracas, Donald Trump said the US would “run the country” until a new government was in place. Since then, he has repeatedly alluded to Venezuela becoming a “51st state”.

Shortly after the quake, John Barrett, the US chargé d’affaires, told Venezuelan media he had “a great deal of confidence” in how the authorities were handling the disaster.

Visiting generals have even shaken hands with Mr Cabello, despite the fact that he is still on a US wanted list and Maduro, his former close ally, sits in jail.

The precise extent and mechanisms of White House control over Venezuela remain opaque. But what is clear is that it runs deep.

Since the snatching of Maduro, revenue from Venezuela’s oil exports has mostly flowed through the US treasury before being allocated to the Venezuelan government. The Trump administration had collected $13bn in oil revenues alone, the Financial Times reported.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had become the “de facto viceroy of Venezuela”, weighing in on political appointments and arrests, controlling finances, and even proofreading social media posts, the New York Times recently wrote.

Most regular Venezuelans interviewed by The Telegraph appeared either indifferent to or supportive of further US control over the country, provided it produced tangible change.

In fact, many complained that Washington had exerted too little pressure since taking over, describing their day-to-day lives as largely unaltered since January, with the same faces in power as before Maduro’s snatching, and soaring inflation still among the highest in the world.

Héctor Pérez, 35, a hair stylist, said: “Where does all the money that is being made go? Not to the ordinary Venezuelan. You go to the shop in the morning it has one price, by afternoon it’s another and by evening yet another.”

Juan Carlos Baena, 26, a resident of La Guaira, said: “I’d be OK with Venezuela becoming a 51st state. Even if they [the Americans] also steal, at least they’ll do something. Ours are just corrupt.”

While many Venezuelans said they welcomed any step towards free elections, however modest, they also voiced concerns about the US commitment to democracy and real change.

At a rally organised by the Alliance for the Freedom of Political Prisoners rights group in Caracas, one woman said: “After January, we were hopeful, but seven months later it’s all about oil negotiations and nothing else.”

The US has sought to shift attention to planned talks in August between the government and opposition-minded former legislators as part of a long-promised democratic transition.

Notably, the talks will not include Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who, according to multiple reports, was thwarted in her efforts to return to Venezuela by the White House and has been sidelined from the talks.

She remains by far the most popular politician in Venezuela, with a 53 per cent approval rating, followed by Mr Trump. Only 23 per cent have a positive view of Ms Rodríguez, while Mr Rubio’s approval rating has fallen 15 percentage points since February.

In the survey, conducted for Bloomberg by the Brazilian pollster AtlasIntel in June, respondents ranked corruption and democratic erosion as their two biggest concerns for Venezuela.

Since the government passed a new amnesty law earlier this year, around 700 prisoners have been released, but hundreds more remain behind bars.

One protester, whose husband remains incarcerated, said: “US diplomats are sitting down with the exact same people that are keeping our loved ones hostage … It feels like we’re being mocked.”

Sociologist Mr Márquez said: “People expected that Maduro’s departure would usher in a quick democratic transition. It didn’t happen because it wasn’t part of Trump’s plans, but that comes at the price of discrediting the US leadership.”

In La Guaira, as a middle-aged man sitting beside a makeshift shelter let out a piercing wail, Cristian, said it could mean only one of two things.

“He’s either overwhelmed by the scope of the search, or he’s found the person he was looking for,” he remarked matter-of-factly.

With every passing day, as bodies decompose in the sweltering heat, the searchers’ chances of stumbling upon anything remotely resembling the person they once knew become smaller.

“At some point, after all this, I’ll have to see a psychologist or something,” said Cristian.

A day earlier, he had recognised a mattress among the debris and felt a surge of hope. It meant he was getting closer to finding his mother.

This article was produced with support from the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which connects journalists across the company’s news brands.