Reviewed by Carlos Vargas, Texas Licensed Funeral Director (TFSC #119648) ·
No Venezuelan office in Texas, and the directory settles it
The Texas Secretary of State publishes a directory of consular offices in Texas. It carries a hundred and one country entries today, and Venezuela is not one of them. That is a checked absence: ten of South America's twelve countries are on the same list, including Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Guyana. Only Venezuela and Suriname are missing.
A family searching for one usually finds venezuela-us.org. We opened it on September 23, 2026: it serves a Plesk Obsidian hosting control-panel login, the administrative screen of a web server. Nothing on it is consular, and no document should be sent there.
Something may be changing. A Venezuelan newspaper reported on September 14, 2026 that the State Department had confirmed Venezuela may accredit representatives in the United States to reactivate consular posts, and that images had circulated of remodelling at the consulate general in New York. The same report says there is no calendar for appointments, no confirmed opening to the public, and that passport issuance remains suspended. That is press reporting, not an official notice, and it names no Texas office.
The apostille road is open, and Texas names the mortuary form
Here Venezuela is easier than most destinations in these guides. The HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention carries it as a Contracting Party: acceded 1 July 1998, in force for Venezuela on 16 March 1999. Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Mexico appear in the same copy we searched, which is how we know the search was working.
That matters because of what Texas publishes about its own role: the Secretary of State is the only agency in the state that can authenticate Texas public records for use abroad, and its universal apostille acts as both. For a Convention country the chain stops there; no federal step is added.
One line on that page is worth the section. Among the recordable documents the office will authenticate, it lists Burial Transit Forms by name. No other destination guide in this set found a state naming a mortuary document.
The fee is fifteen dollars per document, expressly per document and not per page, maximum ten in one transaction. With an appointment the payment must be made seventy-two business hours beforehand and cannot be taken at the counter.
| Piece | Who produces it |
|---|---|
| Texas death certificate | Texas vital records |
| Universal apostille on that certificate | Texas Secretary of State, fifteen dollars |
| Sworn Spanish translation | A sworn translator, per the Paris page below |
| Burial transit form | Your funeral home; Texas will apostille one |
| Receiving funeral home in Venezuela | The family, from the mission list |
| Transport permit inside Venezuela | That funeral home, from the health authorities |
| Venezuelan consular endorsement | No office in the United States publishes one |
The only Venezuelan page on this subject is written for France
One Venezuelan consular page publishes a remains procedure, and it belongs to the mission in Paris; the shared domain consuladovenezuela.org loads that mission. Its page is titled repatriation of mortal remains or ashes, written for its own district.
Two things on it are not about France. To register the death in Venezuela you need the foreign death certificate apostilled and translated into Spanish by a sworn translator. And the transport permit inside Venezuela belongs to the family or its funeral home, from the competent health authorities, with six listed items: the family's written authorisation to the funeral home, the permit request, a copy of the death registration, a cold-storage certificate issued after forty-eight hours, identity copies for the deceased, the relative and the driver, and the release certificate from the morgue. The permit is completed with the civil registrar's signature, seal and the death-entry number.
The rest does not travel. Its sanitary permits are French, it names a French assistance company, and it offers a choice a Dallas family does not have: declare the death at the consular section, or at a civil registry in Venezuela. There is no consular section here. We are quoting this page, not converting it into a Texas checklist.
What the United States mission publishes runs the other way
The United States Embassy in Caracas is operating, and its homepage carries the current advisory summary: the level decreased to 3, reconsider travel, with the wrongful detention, unrest and other risk indicators removed, and the summary updated to reflect changes to embassy operations. That wording was read on September 23, 2026.
Its page on the death of a United States citizen lists what remains need to cross a border: a consular mortuary certificate, an affidavit of the local funeral director, and a transit permit, with the Centers for Disease Control rules turning on whether the body was embalmed or cremated. Every line of it describes remains leaving Venezuela for the United States, the opposite journey from this one. We are not turning it around; an inverted checklist is a guess wearing a citation. The same page states the Department of State has no funds to assist in the return of remains.
One part does help in this direction. The mission publishes a list of funeral homes, crematoriums and cemeteries in Venezuela, dated February 2026, by state: Caracas and Miranda, Nueva Esparta, Carabobo, Bolívar and Zulia. A shipment from Dallas needs a receiver, and that list is where to start.
The programme families find first is not for this
Search for repatriation to Venezuela in Spanish and the foreign ministry's Plan Vuelta a la Patria comes up early. It is free of charge, and it is not for this. Its requirements ask for a letter setting out the case, the current address and contact number of the citizen to be repatriated, identity documents, travel authorisations for a minor, and medical reports where a condition has been diagnosed. A death certificate appears once, and only where a minor's parent has died. It is a programme for living people.
What no source publishes is the arrival side of a shipment starting in the United States: which authority clears remains into the country, what a receiving funeral home must produce at the port, whether any fee applies, and whether an apostilled Texas death certificate is enough alone. Venezuela's own consular network would normally answer that, and it is the part not answering yet. We state the gap rather than fill it.
Questions families ask about a return to Venezuela
- Is there a Venezuelan consulate in Texas?
- No. The Texas Secretary of State directory lists a hundred and one countries and Venezuela is not among them, although ten of South America's twelve are.
- Does a Texas apostille work for Venezuela?
- Venezuela is a Contracting Party to the Apostille Convention, in force since 16 March 1999, so the Texas universal apostille is the whole chain. It costs fifteen dollars per document, not per page.
- What is not settled?
- What Venezuela requires when the shipment arrives. No source we read states who clears remains into the country or what the receiving funeral home must produce there.
Sources checked and case confirmation
Sources checked September 23, 2026: the Texas Secretary of State consular directory and its authentication and apostille pages; the HCCH status table; the Venezuelan mission in Paris on repatriation of remains; the United States Embassy in Caracas homepage, its death-of-a-citizen page and its February 2026 funeral home list; and the ministry page for Plan Vuelta a la Patria. This page does not claim what Venezuela requires on arrival, that any Venezuelan office in the United States can accept a file today, or anything drawn from reversing the outbound Caracas list. The September 2026 consular reactivation is carried as press reporting. No individual is named. Contact Vargas-London with the state in Venezuela and where your relative is now, without sending medical or identity documents through the inquiry form.
