Clean up begins on Venezuela-Colombia border
after unrest
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO and LUIS ANDRES HENAO
A
woman carries a cross during clashes between the opposition and the Bolivarian
National Guard in Urena, Venezuela, near the border with Colombia, Saturday,
Feb. 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — Venezuelan migrants on Sunday
helped clean debris from a bridge where troops loyal to President Nicolas
Maduro a day earlier fired tear gas on activists trying to deliver humanitarian
aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.
Colombian President Ivan Duque reinforced security around
two international bridges near the city of Cucuta and ordered them closed for
48 hours to allow for the clean-up effort.
He said that acts of “barbarism” committed by Maduro’s
troops in blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid required a forceful
international response — something that could come as early as Monday, when
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travels to the Colombian capital for an
emergency summit on Venezuela with foreign ministers from more than a dozen
mostly conservative Latin American and Caribbean states.
“Yesterday the dictatorship sealed its moral and
diplomatic defeat before the eyes of the world,” said Duque after surveying
damage on the Simon Bolivar bridge. Below the concrete roadway, a group of
Venezuelan migrants were removing metal barriers normally used to guide foot
traffic across the bridge that had been thrown into the Tachira river during
Saturday’s mayhem.
Maduro is blocking the U.S.-backed aid that is meant to
weaken his control over the country and to enhance the standing of opposition
leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized by more than 50 countries as the nation’s
legitimate ruler.
Across the border in Venezuela, few people were seen
walking streets scattered with shattered glass and burnt trash. In the town of
Urena, most businesses remained shuttered, fearing more violence from
motorcycle-riding gunmen loyal to the government.
As night fell Saturday, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan
Guaido refrained from asking supporters to continue risking their lives trying
to break through the government’s barricades at the Colombian and Brazilian
borders.
But he did make one last appeal to troops to let the aid
in. He also urged the international community to keep “all options open” in the
fight to oust Maduro , echoing comments from the Trump administration, which
has hinted it may be prepared to use military force.
“How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother?
How many have kids in school without food,” he said, standing alongside a
warehouse in the Colombian city of Cucuta where 600 tons of mostly
U.S.-supplied boxes of food and medicine have been stockpiled. “You don’t owe
any obedience to a sadist ... who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the
country needs.”
Earlier, Maduro, who considers the aid part of a coup
plot and has refused to let it in, struck a defiant tone, breaking diplomatic
relations with Colombia, accusing its “fascist” government of serving as a
staging ground for a U.S.-led effort to oust him from power and possibly a
military invasion.
“My patience has run out,” Maduro said, speaking at a
rally of red-shirted supporters in Caracas and giving Colombian diplomats 24
hours to leave the country.
Throughout a turbulent Saturday, as police and protesters
squared off on two bridges connecting Venezuela to Colombia, Guaido made
repeated calls for the military to join him in the fight against Maduro’s
“dictatorship.” Colombian authorities said more than 60 soldiers answered his call
and deserted their posts, though most were lower in rank and didn’t appear to
dent the higher command’s continued loyalty to Maduro’s socialist government.
At one point, a group of activists led by exiled
lawmakers managed to escort three flatbed trucks of aid past the halfway point
into Venezuela, but they were repelled by security forces. In a flash the cargo
caught fire, with some eyewitnesses claiming the National Guardsmen doused a
tarp covering the boxes with gas before setting it on fire. As a black cloud
rose above, the activists — protecting their faces from the fumes with
vinegar-soaked cloths — unloaded the boxes by hand in a human chain stretching
back to the Colombian side of the bridge.
“They burned the aid and fired on their own people,” said
39-year-old David Hernandez, who was hit in the forehead with a tear gas
canister that left a bloody wound and growing welt. “That’s the definition of
dictatorship.”
For weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration
and its regional allies have been amassing emergency food and medical supplies
on three of Venezuela’s borders with the aim of launching a “humanitarian
avalanche.” It comes exactly one month after Guaido, in a direct challenge to
Maduro’s rule, declared himself interim president at an outdoor rally.
The 35-year-old lawmaker has won the backing of more than
50 governments around the world, but he’s so far been unable to cause a major
rift inside the military — Maduro’s most important remaining plank of support
in a country ravaged by hyperinflation and widespread shortages.
At least 60 members of security forces, most of them
lower-ranked soldiers, deserted and took refuge inside Colombia, according to
migration officials. One was a National Guard major. Colombian officials said
285 people were injured, most left with wounds caused by tear gas and metal
pellets that Venezuelan security forces fired.
A video provided by Colombian authorities showed three
soldiers at the Simon Bolivar bridge wading through a crowd with their assault
rifles and pistols held above their heads in a sign of surrender. The young
soldiers were then ordered to lie face down on the ground as migration
officials urged angry onlookers to keep a safe distance.
“I’ve spent days thinking about this,” said one of the
soldiers, whose identity was not immediately known. He called on his comrades
to join him: “There is a lot of discontent inside the forces, but also lots of
fear.”
Guaido, who has offered amnesty to soldiers who join the
opposition’s fight, applauded their bravery, saying it was a sign that support
for Maduro was crumbling. Later, he greeted five of the military members, who
in turn offered a salute, calling the opposition leader Venezuela’s
“constitutional president” and their commander in chief.
“They aren’t deserters,” Guaido said. “They’ve decided to
put themselves on the side of the people and the constitution. ... The arrival
of liberty and democracy to Venezuela can’t be detained.”
Analysts say that there may be no clear victor and
humanitarian groups have criticized the opposition as using the aid as a
political weapon.
“Today marked a further blow to the Maduro regime, but
perhaps not the final blow that Guaido, the U.S. and Colombia were hoping for,”
said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.
“Threats and ultimatums from Washington directed to the generals may not be the
best way to get them to flip. In fact, they are likely to have the opposite
effect.”
International leaders including U.N. Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres are appealing for the sides to avoid violence. But at least
two people were killed and another 21 injured in the town of Santa Elena de
Uairen, near the border with Brazil, according to local health officials.
Late Saturday, Guaido tweeted that the day’s events had
obliged him to “propose in a formal manner to the international community that
we keep all options open to liberate this country which struggles and will keep
on struggling.”
