La Guaira is, for Venezuelans, synonymous with sun, sand, sea, fried fish, drums and, of course, baseball. The coastal state, neighboring Caracas, is not only the home of the Tiburones de La Guaira, one of the eight teams that make up the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, but it is also home to a wide network of schools where children learn from a very early age to hold a wooden bat and hit a ball with all their strength.

Among these academies, Criollitos de Venezuela stands out, a sports organization with more than six decades and that is considered by many in the South American country as an authentic “factory of baseball players.”

"We were a reference for those who organize sporting events in La Guaira. We could carry out activities that brought together between 2,000 and 4,000 children," Jhorny Sojo, president of the organization in La Guaira, told BBC Mundo.

However, the future of the institution in the coastal territory looks uncertain. The earthquakes that shook Venezuela on June 24 devastated large areas of La Guaira, leaving more than 4,500 dead and almost 17,000 injured, according to the latest official balance, and hit the Criollitos hard.

Hours after the earthquakes, the sports organization claimed that dozens of the 1,110 children who trained in one of the 22 schools that the organization had throughout La Guaira had died or were missing. Some local media have assured that the preliminary balance could exceed one hundred victims.

“We have many deceased children, just as we have leaders and coaches, but we also have many missing and those of us who remain are left dead inside,” Sojo said.

“The System” of baseball

But what are the Creoles of Venezuela? It is a private non-profit organization founded in 1962 by former baseball player Luis “Mono” Zuloaga and doctor José Del Vecchio with the purpose of promoting children's baseball in the country.

“‘Mono’ Zuloaga, after retiring from professional baseball, opened a sporting goods store and thought: ‘If we put together a team, I can sell the uniforms, bats and other equipment.’ That idea became something great,” said Venezuelan sports commentator Ramón Corro in his video blog “La Voz del Fanático.”

However, at first, the authorities did not view the initiative favorably, because they considered that it interfered with the functions of the National Sports Institute (IND) and the Minor Baseball Federation, which promoted sports at a competitive level.

“Our philosophy is different, we use baseball to form good citizens who are useful to the country,” Delida Yépez de Quevedo, national president of the organization, told BBC Mundo.

Sojo spoke in similar terms, stating: “Los Criollitos are one of the largest factories of Major League baseball players in the country, but it was the country itself, because it was so competitive in baseball terms, that led us to that,” he noted.

Perhaps for this reason, the directors consider it valid to compare the organization with the famous National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras, created in the 1970s to musically train children from the less favored classes and thus prevent them from falling into the hands of crime.

Today, more than six decades later, Criollitos has schools and sports academies in the 24 states of Venezuela, where around 40,000 children and young people between 4 and 18 years old participate in the hundreds of teams that make up its 600 leagues, Yépez stated.

However, the president assured that before the covid-19 pandemic and the mass migration of Venezuelans occurred, they had 100,000 children in their ranks.

Over the years, sports stars such as Andrés Galarraga, Omar Vizquel, Bob Abreu and Johan Santana have emerged from the Criollitos' playing fields, who not only played for the main Venezuelan teams, but also in the United States Major Leagues.

Another notable former Creole is Omar López, the coach who led the Venezuelan team to win the World Baseball Classic this year, Yépez recalled.

Hit the seedbed

More than two weeks after the earthquakes, of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, respectively, the Criollitos of Venezuela still do not have a definitive balance of victims.

“We need to take a census, we need to know how many of us are left, who is left, where we are and what condition we are in (…) but now our priority is to help those who still remain,” explained Sojo.

However, the sports leader pointed out that preliminary data indicating that dozens of children died, are missing or injured were obtained from those enrolled in schools located in the different areas affected by the earthquakes.

For his part, Yépez admitted that the final number of victims “could be higher” than the hundred reported and assured that the information they have indicates that the so-called “seedbed” was the hardest hit group.

“I have received information that the most affected have been the smallest, those in the initial category,” he told BBC Mundo.

“We are talking about children between four and five years old,” he lamented.

But how did the little athletes lose their lives?

"That day was a holiday and the children were with their families. They did not participate in any of the organization's activities," he said.

"In Catia La Mar, for example, a popular area where there are several schools affiliated with our institution and where the destruction of buildings and homes was total, we had the case of a child who was going to participate in a competition that began on July 1. He was trapped in the rubble of what was his house, with part of his body buried above his waist," he said.

“This case has been in the news because the boy lost his parents and his grandmother, while he managed to survive,” he highlighted.

The two managers consulted assured that they are already aware that several of the children who were injured during the earthquakes remain hospitalized, some with injuries that could prevent them from playing sports again.

“We are all in the street”

The magnitude of the crisis is what has made it difficult for the Criollitos to draw up a precise balance of victims and those affected, said their national president.

“This has been terrible and has caused enormous trauma in our leadership,” he said.

"The Baseball Federation asked us to do a census of the victims, and it has been almost impossible, because they are distributed in different shelters; some have been moved to other states; there are people who lost their phones and have not been able to contact each other; but, above all, many are still in a state of shock," he said.

“When you ask school directors to count how many children are missing, they break down,” Yépez acknowledged.

Two days after the earthquakes, the president in charge Delcy Rodríguez announced that the Venapp application and the 0800-Rescate telephone line would be used to report missing persons, but so far the authorities have not published that information.

Over the weekend, the president and her brother, the president of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, announced the launch of a registry of people who are in shelters to assign them new homes and grant them financial aid.

However, no authority has clarified whether this census will be published to allow relatives and acquaintances of the survivors and victims to locate them.

But not only the players and their families were affected by the earthquakes.

"All our regional leaders suffered serious damage, because they all lost their homes. Some, like one of our commissioners, Mr. Rafael Pacheco, who had been with us all his life, died buried in the rubble," said Yépez.

This was confirmed by Sojo, who reported that he himself managed to escape alive, almost miraculously, from the 19-story building where he lived, in the Playa Grande sector, near the Maiquetía airport, the main airport in the country.

"Once everything calmed down, the titanic struggle to go down the stairs began. The building was crumbling from the inside and debris was falling. When we reached the second floor we couldn't continue because the stairs were blocked. We didn't know that the building had sunk two stories," he said.

"A boy took the initiative and said: 'I'm going to go to the janitor's office to look for tools.' We all owe that boy our lives, because shortly afterward he returned with pickaxes and mallets, and that's how we managed to open an exit and escape. When we left, we realized the devastation; it looked like a war field," he added.

With a broken voice, he concluded: "We all ended up on the street. We all lost everything."

Is the game over?

Although the area already experienced another major natural tragedy in 1999, caused by intense rains, Sojo fears that, this time, recovery will be much more arduous.

"The baseball fields have become shelters for victims and I believe that many people will no longer want to continue living in La Guaira. Many will leave, and those who remain will do so without a home, without a job, without family and without friends. Reconstruction will be very difficult," he predicted.

And, therefore, he asked that the world not forget the region or its children.

"My only wish is that they help those of us left so that baseball in La Guaira does not disappear; that within a week they forget about these children and leave them alone," he expressed.

A BBC team recently visited the Miguel Ángel Montes stadium in Playa Grande, which now houses dozens of people who lost their homes due to the earthquakes, and there they spoke with one of the “criollitos” who is taking refuge with his family.

“(I feel) sadness, because we are here, on the baseball field, under the sun, but many of my friends have died,” Jeferson Seijas said.

Despite the pain, in the images you can see the little boy, 12 years old, with a glove, throwing the ball to another child between the mats and tents scattered across the dusty stadium field.

Other Venezuelan journalists and volunteers who have visited other shelters in La Guaira assured BBC Mundo that similar scenes were found in all those where there were children.

“Baseball will always be hope,” wrote volunteer Rodolfo Dordelly.

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