Aníbal Isturdes’ hand on the stump of a felled rubber tree. Photo by Estefanía Salazar, used with permission.

This article is part of the “Environmental Defenders” series, co-published by Latin America Bureau and Global Voices.

¿Qué he de hacer como ciudadano para amar y cuidar la naturaleza

y el azul cielo mar del verde planeta tierra?

– Aníbal Isturdes, Árboles talados de la Candelaria, 26 de abril de 2025

What must I do as a citizen to love and care for nature

and the blue sky sea of green planet earth?

– Aníbal Isturdes, ‘The Felled Trees of Candelaria’, April 26, 2025

Eighty-two year-old poet and activist Aníbal Isturdes finds in the trees of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, a constant source of inspiration for both his verses and the literary workshop he leads every Saturday beneath a historic tree outside Venezuela's National Library.

But sometimes, reality forces Isturdes to create from the pain mistreated trees endure – like the three enormous rubber trees in the northern section of Plaza La Candelaria, a busy historic square in the center of Caracas founded in 1708, and the location of the church of the Virgin of Candelaria, where Aníbal got married in 1977.

The three Ficus elastica, towering at the height of a seven-story building, were reduced to three stumps of no larger than five meters, after a night of incessant cutting that began at nine o'clock on March 17, and continued – without rest – until 6:00 a.m. the following day. A seven-man crew felled the trees, using a lorry equipped with a mechanical arm to reach high areas, often called a bucket truck or cherry picker. It is not known who they were working for.

La Candelaria square, once covered with vegetation. Public archive

Videos and photos of the event, captured by citizens, caused outrage on the social media networks of environmentally-conscious Venezuelans. Due to their size and lush foliage, the three rubber trees had for years been a familiar vista for passers-by on the nearby Urdaneta Avenue, one of Caracas’ main thoroughfares.

José Gregorio Cabello, who would look out at the trees from his apartment for the last 25 years, said that the rubber trees “were a hundred years old and they were healthy. They were cut down and no one consulted the community. The elderly would sit here as we waited to vote [there is a polling station nearby] and many people would come to sit and talk, among this very fresh air.”

On the night the trees were leveled, Cabello and a neighbor tried to approach the men to find out what was going on: “[The men] signaled at us to leave them alone and shouted insults at us. We weren’t able to ask them who they were or if they had legal permission.”

The next day, however, Cabello heard other neighbors discussing the reason behind the trees’ removal: “Supposedly, it was because of the rats – people leave garbage in the planters that surround the rubber trees – and the trees were being used as urinals.”

Cabello is unaware of any community request for the intervention, a fact confirmed by Gerardino Barrachini, parish priest of the Candelaria Church.

Environmental defenders at the forefront

After seeing the images that fellow environmentalists showed him on their phones, Isturdes decided to post a public call on X/Twitter to rally “anyone sensitive to these issues” who would want to participate in a protest arranged for March 26.

About a dozen environmental defenders – from the blocks surrounding the rubber trees as well as from different parts of the city – answered the call. The digital news portal Aporrea shared video footage of the meeting, at which the protesters voiced their indignation and ideas for possible follow-up actions. 

“Whoever attacks a tree, attacks a living being,” one participant said. “We have to defend this living being that gave us probably 200 kilos of oxygen.”

Protesters gather next to the felled trees on March 26, 2025. Photo: Luis Domínguez – Diario VEA, used with permission.

Luis Sánchez, a member of the Citizens in Defense of Los Caobos Park Association, an important urban park in Caracas, added, “Who among us can raise our hands and say, ‘I produce oxygen?’ No one, only the trees.”

Some of those present, including Sánchez, decided to file a formal complaint with the attorney general's office. Emboldened by the experience of the protest, Isturdes penned – the very same day – the poem “The Felled Trees of Candelaria”, in which he expressed his sadness over the mutilated trees: 

¿Qué hay de nosotros?

¿Qué hay de nosotras?

¿Por qué cortan o maltratan árboles cercanos al patrimonio natural intangible de Caracas?

What will become of us?

What will become of us?

Why do they cut down or mistreat trees close to the intangible natural heritage of Caracas?

Who is responsible for the felling?

The poet's question has still not received an official answer. Some community sources stated that, according to Venezuelan law regarding public trees, the cutting crew worked for the Alcaldía de Libertador, the Caracas mayor's office.

The mayoral department for Ecosocialism and Environmental Control states on its social media networks that it is in charge of supervising different trees in the municipality. According to the VEA newspaper, its president, José Ramírez, personally attended the protest on March 26, where he denied his department’s involvement in the felling:

Desconozco. Completamente desconozco. Yo vengo a atender la necesidad, a ordenar, a organizar y a ver cómo nosotros vamos a superar esta dificultad (…) Yo vengo a invitarlos a organizarnos, a atender, a vincularnos.

I don't know. I really have no idea. I am here to attend to the needs, to find order, to organize and to see how we are going to overcome this problem […] I’ve come here to invite you to join me in getting organized, to connect, to build relationships.

However, Ramírez did not respond to written communications sent to his office in the hope of getting his perspective for this article. Meanwhile, officials of Venezuela’s 87th National Prosecutor's Office for environmental matters confirmed there is an open case regarding the Candelaria rubber trees, but declined to provide an update on its progress.

The pending matter of open data

For the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), urban trees strengthen the capacity of cities to mitigate the effects of climate change, cooling down temperatures and improving people’s health.

In other Latin American cities such as Bogotá, the capital of neighboring Colombia, authorities have made updated data on urban trees accessible to citizens. Via their smartphones, Colombians can find information that includes species identification, geolocation of different trees, and dominant species by area on the Urban Tree Management System (SIGAU). They can even report tree issues via the ArbolApp Bogotá mobile application.

A cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) catalogued at Quinta de Bolívar, Bogotá, Colombia. Photo by Estefanía Salazar, used with permission.

Caracas, however, does not offer current data – either publicly or privately – on the quantity and quality of the trees in its five municipalities, according to agronomist Eduardo Cudisevich, who is a volunteer guide for some of these initiatives:

 La última aproximación a un censo general y arbolado urbano fue hecha por la organización no gubernamental Vitalis en 2014 y a partir de entonces esfuerzos puntuales de censo y reforestación voluntaria de árboles puntuales por parte de comunidades interesadas.

The last attempt at a general census on urban trees was made by an NGO called Vitalis in 2014; since then there have only been voluntary and localized efforts for a census and for the reforestation of specific trees by interested communities.

According to Vitalis, a decade ago Caracas had approximately 1.2 square meters of green space (m²) per inhabitant. “The World Health Organization recommends between 10 and 15 m² per inhabitant,” Cudisevich explained.

Thanks, however, to the research of geographer and professor at the Central University of Venezuela, Karenia Córdova Sáez, there is now more recent data captured in satellite images of the city.

For over 15 years, Córdova has studied Caracas’ “superficial urban heat island” – the contrast in temperature between densely occupied and built-up urban spaces and the rural periphery of the city. The former can be up to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than the latter. Córdova says that:

La isla de calor existe en Caracas debido a la sustitución de la cobertura vegetal por superficies impermeables como concreto y asfalto (más otras causas). Implica mayores riesgos de salud, como las enfermedades cardiovasculares y respiratorias. 

The heat island exists in Caracas due to vegetation cover being replaced with impermeable surfaces such as concrete and asphalt (alongside other causes). It implicates greater health risks, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Although a single event, such as the felling of the Candelaria rubber trees, does not cause such an effect, the parish of La Candelaria is already living in the Caracas heat island – and suffering its consequences – corroborating Córdova’s insistence that “we need to increase the vegetation cover.”

Looking to the future

According to biologist Raúl Pulido, head of the municipal plant nursery in Chacao, a Caracas neighbourhood where he and his colleagues are carrying out a tree census, there may be more life in store for the trees Caracas has lost. He personally examined the three mutilated rubber trunks in La Candelaria:

Esto es una poda severa. No llegó a ser una tala (…) Quienes los dejaron así, no eran expertos: no les aplicaron ningún curativo. Si hubo ratas a sus alrededores, no fue por los propios árboles, sino por la basura que las personas dejan aquí.

What we see here is severe pruning. It did not reach a full felling […] Those who left the stumps like this were not experts; they didn’t finish the job. If there were rats around the tree, it wasn't because of the trees themselves, but because of the rubbish that people dropped here.

Aníbal Isturdes next to the razed ficus trees. Photo by Estefanía Salazar, used with permission.

Providing additional data on Ficus elastica, Pulido revealed that it is not a species native to Venezuela; rather, it was brought over from South Asia for ornamental purposes, especially during the 1960s. Its wood is not suitable for carpentry, but its resistant leaves are useful for gardening:Los ficus elastica son de gran belleza: sus troncos principales hacen crecer de forma natural otros auxiliares, como zancos de acróbatas, para sostener el gran peso de su tallo. Con suficiente espacio en jardineras, como la que ya tienen los cauchos de La Candelaria, no rompen aceras o estructuras de concreto.

Los ficus elastica son de gran belleza: sus troncos principales hacen crecer de forma natural otros auxiliares, como zancos de acróbatas, para sostener el gran peso de su tallo. Con suficiente espacio en jardineras, como la que ya tienen los cauchos de La Candelaria, no rompen aceras o estructuras de concreto.

Ficus elastica are beautiful trees: secondary trunks naturally grow from their main trunks to support the weight of the tree, like an acrobat’s stilts. They grow very fast, so these trees may not be as old as the community claims. With enough space in the planters – like the Candelaria rubber trees have – their roots do not break pavements or other concrete structures.

So, will the Candelaria rubber trees die completely? While Pulido does not think they will regain their seven-story height, he added, “If we leave them to grow, in a year we could see them full of leaves.”

Historian Guillermo Durand, who was the city’s “official chronicler” until 2017, pointed out that “trees are also part of a country’s history, and public administrations owe citizens their uniform preservation as historical heritage.”

En Caracas conservamos árboles históricos —como la Ceiba de San Francisco, en el centro de Caracas— pero también destruimos inexplicablemente ejemplares como los sauces de la Plaza Las Tres Gracias, que está al lado de un Patrimonio Universal de la Humanidad (la Universidad Central de Venezuela).

In Caracas we preserve historic trees – such as the San Francisco ceiba in the center of Caracas – but we also inexplicably destroy specimens such as the willows of Tres Gracias Square, located beside a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Central University of Venezuela.

So what needs to be done to restore and improve the city’s tree cover, especially in the context of climate change? “Caracas is a narrow valley that was urbanized very quickly, without sufficient planning around green areas,” Pulido explained, but Venezuela voluntarily signed climate commitments, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement. “To make up for its lack of trees, Caracas needs public policies, trained personnel, and political will – as well as involved citizens.”

Leaves of a healthy Ficus elastica. Photo from Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

For his part, Isturdes trusts the literary communities and environmental activists he has worked with for over 10 years, as well as the neighbors who for decades lived alongside the rubber trees of La Candelaria, promising, “We will bring these rubber trees back to life”:

Sin embargo… aún del ecocidio tasajeado…

surge alegría resiliente de esperanza… 

Veo a niños o jóvenes de escuelas y de familias vecinas,

que se acercan a los árboles cortados, 

los niños saben que una gotita de amor es cuido hermoso de fe en la vida

de un árbol de sabiduría popular llamado caucho.

However… even from the knife of ecocide… 

the resilient joy of hope arises… 

I see children and young people coming out of school, and neighbouring families leaving their homes to visit the felled trees.

Children know that a drop of love is a faithful and beautiful act of care

in the life of a tree of folk wisdom called rubber.