Venezuelans cross border in food hunt
Print Edition
CARAVANS of Venezuelan families drove for hours yesterday on bandit-plagued highways to a checkpoint on the Colombian border where they’ll be able to cross and hunt for food and medicine that are in short supply at home.
It’s the second weekend in a row the Venezuela government has opened the long-closed border connecting Venezuela to Colombia, and by 6am, a line of would-be shoppers snaked through the entire town of San Antonio del Tachira. Some had traveled in chartered buses from cities eight hours away.
On Saturday, about 35,000 Venezuelans crossed the border on the first day of what Colombian government is calling a humanitarian corridor.
Venezuela’s socialist government closed all crossings a year ago to crack down on smuggling along the 2,219-kilometer border. It complained that speculators were causing shortages by buying up subsidized food and gasoline in Venezuela and taking them to Colombia, where they could be sold for far higher prices.
But shortages have continued to mount in Venezuela amid triple-digit inflation, currency controls that have restricted imports and investment and a collapse in the oil prices that fund government spending.
Venezuela’s government is trying to deflate any talk of a humanitarian crisis and instead blames its political enemies and self-serving smugglers for the shortages. President Nicolas Maduro dismissed as a “media show” the jarring images a few weeks ago of 500 women pushing through the checkpoint, saying they were desperate to buy food.
Yesterday, state TV ran footage of Venezuelans returning from Colombia empty-handed, dissuaded by what they said was price-gouging and mistreatment by their neighbors.
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