Attempts to haul aid across the border are meant to test the military’s loyalty to President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government.
CÚCUTA, Colombia — A high-stakes showdown over humanitarian aid began unfolding on Venezuela’s western frontier on Saturday, with bursts of tear gas from President Nicolás Maduro’s military forces and defiant vows from Juan Guaidó and the opposition to end a blockade of U. S. and other foreign aid.
Saturday’s operation has been billed by the opposition and its allies in the Trump administration as a pivotal moment in its bid to topple Maduro’s socialists. The attempts to haul in aid from neighboring nations are meant to test the military’s loyalty by encouraging the armed forces to disobey Maduro’s order to keep the aid out.
At one border crossing blocked by Maduro’s forces – the Simón Bolívar bridge linking Colombia and Venezuela – the opposition plan to divide Maduro’s military began to take shape with four members of the Venezuela National Guard abandoning their posts. They walked across the border as members of the Colombian armed forces wrapped fraternal arms around them.
“They have just deserted the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro,” declared Migración Colombia – Colombian’s migration agency – in a statement.
A convoy of 14 trucks bearing 280 tons of aid was being prepped near a warehouse loading dock here in Cúcuta, where thousands of volunteers had camped overnight following a massive benefit concert for Venezuela put on by British billionaire Richard Branson. Guaidó – the opposition leader who claimed the nation’s legitimate mantel of power exactly one month ago – was poised to lead an attempt to get the trucks over a bridge where Maduro’s forces had welded containers together to physically block aid from getting across.
“Venezuela, the day has arrived in which we will take the step to enter humanitarian aid. From our borders, by land and sea, we will bring hope, food and medicines for the ones who need it the most,” Guaidó tweeted Saturday. “We call everyone to go out massively to the streets in the whole country, to protest in peace at barracks, to urge the armed forces to let humanitarian aid in.”
Yet after an attack by the Venezuelan military near the Brazilian border that left two civilians dead and 11 wounded, fears mounted that the attempt could be marred by further violence in this collapsing socialist state. The Venezuelan government late Friday announced the temporary closing of three key border crossings with Colombia. Just before the 8 a.m. start time for the effort to try to break the blockade, a violent confrontation broke out on the Santander bridge in the western border town in Urena – one of the crossings to Colombia ordered closed by the Maduro government on Friday.
About 200 people – a mixture of protesters seeking to bring in aid and Venezuelan workers with jobs on the Colombian side of the border – began throwing rocks at border guards, who responded with volleys of tear gas.
“They think they are the owners of Venezuela,” Maria Zambrano, a 46-year-old engineer who arrived in Urena to join the aid effort, said of the guards.
