Following a violent weekend, the border area is suffering convulsions, with thousands of Venezuelans stranded in Colombia. Over the weekend, after supporters of opposition clashed with security forces, President Nicolas Maduro shut down bridges that cross the frontier into Colombia.
That weekend drive turned violent as supporters of the opposition clashed with Venezuelan security forces on the borders with Colombia and Brazil, leaving four people dead. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro later shut down four bridges that cross the frontier into Colombia. One of those volunteers is Nicolasa Gil, 71, who says she does not mind having to sleep on the streets of the border town of Cucuta. “What scares me is going over into my country, because we are safer here than there,” she said. Citizens who came across to volunteer in the aid shipment effort, or who work in Colombia but live in Venezuela, are now trapped on the other side of the border.
“Those animals burned them,” said Gil. In the clashes that took place with the security forces, around 300 people were wounded. On the streets of the Cucuta neighborhood closest to the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge, Colombian riot police are on patrol. One walks past a woman named Elizabeth Machua as she tells her story.
She is Colombian, and for 30 years has lived across the border in the Venezuelan town of Urena. That was her job in Venezuela too, but hyperinflation there has reduced people's wages to almost nothing. On Thursday she kissed her three-year-old son Adan Alejandro goodbye before leaving him at a nursery, and crossed the border into Colombia. Now, because of all the unrest, she can't get back home.
Machua says she is having a hard time reaching the babysitter who is now looking after her boy. She can't reach anyone else, either. “I imagine they are blocking calls,” said Machua, who is 40. She said she is so furious she is considering supporting the idea of the use of military force to oust Maduro. US President Donald Trump says he has not ruled out this option.
“What must happen, let it happen,” said Machua. On the same street, John Carlos Gaitan, 31, is drinking water out of a plastic bag. He and some friends came to Colombia Friday for a fund-raising concert supported by Guaido and the opposition. Now he can't get home either and for the first time in his life is living on the street.