Maduro's crackdown suspended Guaidó's humanitarian aid to Venezuela

(Correspondent) –"Yes, you can, yes, you can!" Venezuelan exiles sang over trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Cucuta to Caracas. People of good heart, without political experience, they thought they could cross the border without problems and that Nicolás Maduro had fallen in the days to come. His illusion was bruised in the face of Maduro's system of unlawful repression on the bridges of Simón Bolívar and Ureña.

The populist leader had no compbadion: he fired tear gas, was attacked by self-defense groups, was murdered in cold blood and set fire to two trucks carrying drugs and the food. Maduro's replica puts Venezuela's interim president Juan Guaidó at the crossroads: Repeat the road to the border with the militants as advanced tactics or open the possibility of a coup designed and funded by the United States.

Until last night, Guaidó opted for caution. The trucks were left in the area of ​​the Tienditas bridge, the humanitarian aid stored in the warehouse 1 and the project of resumption of shipments to Venezuela was suspended until the summit of Grupo Lima in Bogotá, which will have the special participation of the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence and President Guaidó himself, who decided to stay in Colombia until Monday night.

The shipments of humanitarian aid to Venezuela have been suspended, but it has also been decided to expel the most active bridges of Cúcuta to prevent young opponents of Maduro from being at the mercy of the self-defense groups who operate on the other side of the border. "I asked the local authorities to clean the Simón Bolívar bridge and, in the same way, the Francisco de Paula Santander Bridge (Ureña)," said Colombian President Ivan Duarte.

In this context, Maduro repressed and killed, burned for humanitarian aid, managed to suspend their expeditions until further notice and severed their diplomatic relations with Colombia. Too much for a dictator who faces the United States, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, Chile, Israel and the United Kingdom, among other countries. The international system will settle accounts with Maduro and that will happen in Bogotá at the end of the deliberations of the Lima Group, but for the White House, a new multilateral sanction will have a taste of nothing.

Donald Trump has never ruled out the invasion of Venezuela or a lavish state coup to overthrow Maduro. However, the US president has maintained the forms and expected the results of a diplomatic strategy reinforced by financial and economic sanctions against the populist regime. However, the events that took place yesterday in Cúcuta accelerated the times: its leaders Mauricio Claver, Eliott Abrams and John Bolton, hawks of the birth, they are more related to iron than to the books of Emmanuel Kantand with respect to Maduro, they believe that the time of the sword has come.

The United States has experience of coups and military invasions, but at this point, he should convince the members of the Lima group. Overall, Trump has a shortcut called Juan Guaidó. The acting president has bet an important part of his internal credibility that food and medicine would arrive – "yes or yes" – in Venezuela, and that promise now looks like a hunting trophy that Maduro would have happily hung on Miraflores. Guaidó rejects foreign interference, concept varies according to the American experience in such controversial issues of foreign policy.

Presidents Duarte, Guaidó, Sebastián Pinera (Chile) and Mario Abdo (Paraguay) arrived early yesterday at the Tienditas Bridge which was protecting the humanitarian aid provided by USAID. They were surrounded by dozens of journalists then Duarte officially announced that the aid had been delivered to Guaido. It was a moving moment: the engines of the trucks with trailer were lit and, in a long line, they started to walk towards the bridges of Simón Bolívar and Ureña.

"Compatriots," said an announcer at the Tienditas Bridge gates, "we fear they are stealing our help or destroying it. we ask you to get on the trucks and accompany us to the bridges"

In one second, hundreds of Venezuelans boarded the buses and remembered Maduro's family. Truck 9 – which was loaded by Infobae at the exit of Tienditas– was directed by Pedro and accompanied by a handful of teenagers who vociferated against the populist leader: "Maduro …" shouted one. "Concha tu madre", all answered. Above the truck, everything was party. And down, on the roadside, the party continued with a free faucet.

An hour later, Pedro parked his truck a hundred meters from the border with Venezuela. He did not worry. He was happy and talked about his family in Montevideo. It was very hot and people sang against the Maduro regime and in favor of Venezuela's freedom. The trucks did not move and Pedro caught his attention. He got out of the truck and came back with two bottles of vinegar, a cooking ingredient used to mitigate the effects of tear gas..

This is why the trucks did not move on the Simón Bolívar bridge: Maduro repressed and impossible to cross the border.
Guaidó had promised an impressive mobilization to accompany the transfer of humanitarian aid and to face Maduro's working groups. That did not happen On the contrary, A hundred teenagers who were fighting the Maduro repressors with a stone or puteada stood in front of the trucks. And nothing more. Pure courage, anger and hatred in the face of the populist regime, which had worked hard to prevent trucks from moving forward.

Guaidó's strategy has a driving problem. The young militants have resumed operations and an example of this fact is that they have successfully resisted the decision to remove the trucks from the bridges of Simón Bolívar and Ureña. At the end of the afternoon, under pressure from the Colombian police, they were able to get the trucks out and take them waiting for one of the Tienditas Bridge bridges.

Without a crowd on the bridges and without a unified leadership, Guaidó will struggle to implement its strategy of mitigating the humanitarian crisis, break the Maduro military front and impose a pueblada leading to a democratic transition. Guaidó has good intentions, but yesterday he gave a political triumph to the populist leader, who does not care about the bloodshed, illegal repression, world diplomacy and hunger of Venezuelans.

Faced with such a correlation of forces, Guaidó must recover the vertical and rethink its master plan against Maduro. Pedro, the driver of the 9 truck that took away Infobae, did not understand the failure. "I thought we won today," he said with innocence and tenderness. He believed in the speech of his elected president and now he does not know how to continue and what to trust. "Tomorrow (for today), I stay at home all day, the truck is handled by another," he said.

Guaidó has a political reason and international support. But he underestimated Maduro and his repressive apparatus. He must now restore the confidence of Venezuelans and establish new means of action against the populist leader. You will have to prepare yourself and be faithful to your ideals: it is not easy to say no to the White House, let alone after a geopolitical maneuver endorsed by 50 countries that failed directly and directly.