UPDATE:
New York Times - Some Aid From Brazil Pierces Venezuela’s Blockade, but Deadly Violence Erupts
By Nicholas Casey, Albinson Linares and Anatoly Kurmanaev
Feb. 23, 2019
CÚCUTA, Colombia — An ambitious plan by Venezuela’s opposition to peacefully import foreign aid in truck convoys degenerated into deadly skirmishes Saturday along the impoverished country’s borders, with a smattering of supplies getting through but most of it blocked by armed loyalists of President Nicolás Maduro.
The aid deliveries, promised by the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, have been viewed as a major test of his credibility in the month since he declared himself president and promised to call for new elections and end Venezuela’s economic free-fall.
“The humanitarian aid is definitely on its way to Venezuela, in a peaceful manner, to save lives right now,” said Mr. Guaidó, standing in front of the warehouse on the Colombian side of the border.
As the day progressed, some of the humanitarian aid pierced Mr. Maduro’s blockade — one truck got through on a remote section of the border with Brazil — but most of it did not. And although a few members of the security forces defected, Mr. Guaidó’s hope that the armed forces would step aside and even join his flag-waving supporters did not come to pass.
A day that was billed by the opposition as decisive in the struggle with Mr. Maduro over the country’s leadership turned chaotic and inconclusive. Mr. Maduro, furious that Colombia had helped the opposition, broke relations with its government and gave its diplomats 24 hours to get out.
There also was no guarantee that the 35-year-old opposition leader, who has emerged as the biggest political threat to Mr. Maduro, would even be allowed back into Venezuela by the authorities, who had barred him from traveling abroad.
Mr. Maduro, who has called Mr. Guaidó a Trump administration stooge, said the promises of emergency aid masked an American plot to invade Venezuela, and he vowed to thwart it.
As protesters clashed with security forces at various points along the border with Brazil in the south and Colombia in the west, a defiant Mr. Maduro took to a stage in the capital Caracas, dancing the salsa with his wife and addressing supporters in an event carried on national television.
“I am stronger than ever,” he said, before asking, “Why am I here? Because you are the ones who decide, not Donald Trump.”
He also called Mr. Guaidó a “puppet of imperialism,” and explained the break with Colombia, which effectively sealed Venezuela off, as the borders with Brazil and three Caribbean islands were already closed.
“We can’t keep putting up with the Colombian territory being used for attacks against Venezuela,” Mr. Maduro said. “For that reason, I have decided to break all political and diplomatic relations with Colombia’s fascist government.”
The White House condemned the use of force by Mr. Maduro’s government, warning that rights violations “will not go unpunished,” and urging the military to “uphold its constitutional duty to protect the citizens of Venezuela” and allow aid to enter the country.
Mike Pence, the vice president, is scheduled to visit Colombia and meet with Iván Duque, the country’s president, on Monday. He is expected to continue urging Mr. Maduro to step down.
Earlier on Saturday, on the borders with Colombia and Brazil, opposition protesters waved banners and chanted anti-government slogans as they waited to escort trucks full of humanitarian aid across several bridges into Venezuela.
Two pickup trucks of aid crossed into Venezuela from the Brazilian town of Pacaraima in the country’s north, in what opposition figures said was a small but symbolic puncture of Mr. Maduro’s pledge to keep unauthorized assistance out.
“We did it,” said María Teresa Belandria, who is the Brazil envoy of Mr. Guaidó. “This is a major victory.”
But as of Saturday night, the trucks remained stranded on the border, according to Jesús Bobadillo, a Catholic priest in the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima.
“This whole thing has failed,” Mr. Bobadillo said Saturday night in a phone interview, lamenting that with the borders shut, the crisis could worsen for the neediest people. “The drama of hunger and lack of medicine continues, but now it’s even worse because at least before, people had an escape valve.”
On Friday, Venezuelan forces there had opened fire on a crowd blocking access to a road, killing two people. On Saturday, the National Guard continued to attack, firing tear gas and live ammunition at civilians, according to opposition lawmaker Américo de Grazia.
By the end of the day Saturday, at least two people were dead, according to Alfredo Romero, the head of Foro Penal, an organization that tracks violence in Venezuela. And Colombia’s migration authorities said 23 members of the security forces had crossed the border and defected from Mr. Maduro’s authoritarian regime.
But there were no signs of major breaches in the blockade. Trouble erupted as a march near a footbridge to Colombia degenerated into running battles between young protesters and security forces, underscoring the risks Mr. Maduro’s adversaries are taking in their campaign against him.
That march, in the Venezuelan border town of Ureña, was meant to clear a path for aid to be delivered via a footbridge blocked by Mr. Maduro’s forces. Local residents tried to storm the bridge, but Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas to disperse them, and clashes left a trail of damage and burning vehicles.
“I just couldn’t keep quiet anymore,” said Edilson Cisneros, who was hit with buckshot as he walked with opposition lawmakers in Ureña. “Too many people are having a hard time here. This can’t go on like that anymore.”
The border showdown has become one of the most tense and unusual in the region’s history.
Mr. Guaidó has been recognized as Venezuela’s interim president by more than 50 countries, including the United States. He has staked his challenge to Mr. Maduro on a promise that he will do what the president refuses to: open the country, which suffers from deadly shortages of food and medicine, to international aid shipments.
The White House has waded deep into the standoff, authorizing shipments of aid on military planes and holding a rally at which President Trump warned Venezuela’s military to abandon Mr. Maduro or “lose everything.”
Mr. Maduro now claims that the aid containers are part of a plot that will lead to an American invasion. His government erected shipping containers on the Tienditas Bridge to keep the aid out.
Before the border closure, Mr. Guaidó himself slipped over the border into Colombia, where he was greeted like a rock star at a Latin pop music concert in support of the opposition that was sponsored by the British billionaire Richard Branson.
Several hundred Venezuelans had gathered on Friday night in an empty lot beside the Tienditas Bridge here in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta, under a massive flag hung from a crane. Many slept on open ground in the makeshift camp as opposition activists organized prayer circles and danced to salsa music, calling for the downfall of Mr. Maduro.
“I know it’s been a long night but we are moving ahead,” an opposition member, Adolfo Marín, said to the crowd. “Remember we have a blockade, but manpower is supernatural, believe me, with a small group of people we can move these containers with a push and a shove.”
Victor Barboza, an organizer in the camp, said: “The soldiers of the lower and middle classes today need humanitarian aid, too,” referring to the security forces waiting on the other side of the bridge. “They have a child who eats just one meal a day. They have a sister who can’t get medication for her illness.”
Many Colombians expressed sympathy with Mr. Guaidó’s cause and solidarity with those on the other side of the border. But many others, like Mr. Bobadillo, the priest, lamented that humanitarian aid has become heavily politicized as the standoff between Mr. Maduro and Mr. Guaidó escalates.
“It’s been used abused by both sides,” Mr. Bobadillo said. “I am not a political analyst but I fear that in the end this may leave us with Maudro feeling stronger and more arrogant.”
Nicholas Casey and Albinson Linares reported from Cúcuta, Colombia, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Ureña, Venezuela. Reporting was contributed by Isayen Herrera from Cúcuta, Ana Vanessa Herrero from Caracas, Venezuela, Ernesto Londoño from Rio de Janeiro, and Megan Specia and Rick Gladstone from New York.
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At the New York Times I saw a video. Venezuelan soldiers were shooting and killing protesters. What a bunch of stupid fucking assholes. The socialist dictator needs to be tortured and killed.
LIVE
Venezuela Updates: Aid Enters at Brazil Border, but Elsewhere It’s Violence and Standoffs
By The New York Times
Feb. 23, 2019 - Updated just now
RIGHT NOW
Throngs of Venezuelan opposition supporters surrounded aid trucks as they attempted to cross the border from Colombia into Venezuela, on the Simón Bolívar bridge.
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has been in a standoff for weeks with political opponents, who question the legitimacy of his election to a second term in office and are forcibly trying to bring tons of humanitarian aid into the country.
The opposition, led by Juan Guaidó — who drew international support when he declared himself Venezuela’s interim president last month — began moving the supplies into Venezuela on Saturday. Getting the aid in would be a symbolic victory for the opposition, and signal Mr. Maduro’s loosening grip on power.
The aid, including food and medicine, is desperately needed in Venezuela, where conditions have grown steadily worse in recent months. Inflation has skyrocketed, hunger is endemic, and hospitals are without medicine. More than three million people have fled the country, many on foot.
Aid inches toward Venezuela from Colombia, one truck enters from Brazil.
Mr. Guaidó urged the Venezuelan military to allow trucks to cross the border while standing alongside the presidents of Paraguay, Colombia, and Chile — who are among the more than 50 heads of government to support him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
“The humanitarian aid is definitely on its way to Venezuela, in a peaceful manner, to save lives right now,” Mr. Guaidó said in a short statement made in front of the warehouse on the Colombian side of the border where the aid had been stored for days.
“I’ve made a clear call to the armed forces. They are welcome to join the correct side of history,” Mr. Guaidó said, later leaping behind the wheel of one of the trucks and waved and gave a thumbs up from the vehicle before it proceeded toward the Venezuelan border.
A short time later, a large crowd surrounded several aid trucks as they made their way toward the Venezuelan border at the Simón Bolívar International Bridge. They waved flags and chanted, “Freedom, freedom.”
In San Antonio, a Venezuelan town across the Simón Bolívar bridge from Colombia where several opposition leaders had gathered, pro-government militia members drove around in motorcycles and cars, their faces covered in black masks, and fired into the air, scaring protesters.
On the Tienditas bridge, which also links Venezuela and Colombia, the momentum that had built up as people gathered on both sides for rival concerts held by Mr. Maduro and the opposition had waned in the middle of the day Saturday.
Some Venezuelans clambered on the shipping containers that block its lanes, painting “Queremos Paz,” or we want peace, on one of them. There were no soldiers visible as hundreds of people milled around, waiting in the hot sun to accompany the aid — which had not arrived.
But soon, a vanguard of activists in blue berets and holding white flowers linked arms in a chain. In the sweltering heat, the flowers had started to wilt — but the music was blaring and the energy had picked up.
“No one can stop this from passing now,” said Wilmer Azuaje, an opposition politician who was leading the crowd with a megaphone.
In a video posted on social media, María Teresa Belandria, Mr. Guaidó’s envoy in Brazil, said the opposition managed to get a truck with humanitarian aid across the border town of Pacaraima in northern Brazil shortly before 11 a.m.
“We did it,” she said. “This is a major victory.”
In Santa Elena de Uairén, on Venezuela’s border with Brazil near where the truck bearing aid was able to get through, the National Guard fired tear gas and live ammunition at civilians and charged against them in armed vehicles, said opposition lawmaker Américo de Grazia,
The crackdown is in reprisal for the “triumphant entry” of aid across the border with Brazil, he said.
About 15 people were injured and taken to the hospital there.
— Nicholas Casey, Ernesto Londoño and Megan Specia
Tear gas fired on protesters in Venezuela border town.
Just after dawn in the Venezuelan border town of Ureña, locals defied the orders of the government and tried to storm a closed footbridge to Colombia, hoping to make way for humanitarian aid to pass through.
Members of the Venezuela National Guard fired tear gas on the group as they attempted to remove fencing and barriers blocking the bridge.
The standoff between stone-throwing bare-chested youth, many with their faces covered, and lines of military police was reminiscent of the large-scale waves of anti-government protests that gripped the country in 2014 and 2017, which left hundreds of people dead.
A group of about 300 mostly-female protesters, known as “Women in White” had gathered to march on the bridge to Colombia. Elsewhere in Ureña, protesters stormed a school occupied by about 100 government militia members, mostly pensioners, and forced them to surrender. Some joined the protesters. One militiamen was seriously injured after falling while trying to flee.
Opposition leaders, who had planned an organized march, said this is not what they wanted. Some local residents agreed.
“This is not the way to do it,” said Humberto Manrique, a Ureña resident, as he watched masked youths burning tires and setting fire to buses in front of a National Guard cordon.
The opposition leader, Mr. Guaidó, posted on Twitter that “several members" of the National Guard assigned to the Simón Bolívar International Bridge that connects Venezuela and Colombia have joined the opposition. He posted a video showing three men wearing Venezuelan military police uniforms being escorted by a police officer on the Colombian side of the border.
“They have decided to stand on the side of the people and the Constitution!” he wrote in another tweet. “Welcome! The arrival of freedom and democracy to Venezuela is already unstoppable.”
A video posted later showed the four men detailing their reasons for defection before urging others to join them.
“We are fathers, we are sons,” one of the men said. “We’ve had enough of so much uncertainty.”
— Anatoly Kurmanaev, Megan Specia and Juliana Barbassa
Deadly violence erupted on the border with Brazil.
Security forces on Friday fired on a group of indigenous Venezuelans, who were protesting near the border with Brazil against Mr. Maduro’s decision to block aid.
At least two civilians were killed and more than a dozen wounded in the confrontation in the Gran Sabana area, according to Américo de Grazia, an opposition lawmaker from the state of Bolívar. The Gran Sabana area is inhabited by the Pemón, an indigenous community.
Ricardo Delgado, a Pemón leader, said the tensions that led to the confrontation began in the early morning when a military convoy tried to reach a checkpoint on the border as reinforcement. A group of indigenous protesters blocked their passage. The convoy left but later returned and the military began shooting at the protesters.
Later in the day, Mr. de Grazia and another opposition lawmaker, Olivia Lozano, said the head of Bolívar’s National Guard force, Gen. José Miguel Montoya Ramirez, along with a few deputies, were seized by indigenous leaders.
The lawmakers said in interviews that it was unclear how long the indigenous leaders intended to detain the general and his deputies. — Ana Vanessa Herrero
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