Despite pressure, border remains closed | …

PageI12 In Venezuela

From the border with Colombia

There is a disillusionment in the ranks of the opposition. They hoped that the meeting of the Lima group yesterday in Bogota would decide in favor of an international declaration against Venezuela. Mike Pence, North American Vice President, and Iván Duque, President of Colombia, expressed their expectations. The sentence did not appear, the meeting was experienced as a party, as at the foot of the bridge of Santander, on the border of Colombia, where images of neighbors gathered with the police to listen to the interventions were seen.

One could predict that they would not do this. Three previous statements had stopped and highlighted an ever-concordant lack. The first was the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Ampuero, who said that Chile was not "available to support alternatives that are not peaceful". The second came from José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch, who said that "the military option in Venezuela should be totally excluded," and the third statement was made by Federica Mogherini, High Representative for Foreign Policy the European Union. He baderted that "a peaceful, political and democratic solution is necessary, which obviously excludes the use of force".

To have proposed the option would have meant a North American and Colombian position without agreement, with a tension within the Lima group, the space created solely to isolate and block Venezuela, the first continental diplomatic group already affected by the government's position. from Mexico that stands out from the group's politics.

The end result was then an extension of the repertoire of actions against Venezuela, with further sanctions against government officials – four governors – called to step up their attacks on the economy, and to the US. approval of a budget of 56 million US dollars, among other points. Juan Guaidó, who attended the meeting, maintained his current line that already hints at the option of intervention, though without baderting: "It's time to step up the # 39; worry and consider the highest levels of pressure and action ".

Guaidó's position is one that shares his social base: the promise of a quick exit, with a military intervention that they propagate so quickly, surgically, without pain, that they imagine they can follow through social networks, give tastes and occasions to departments. This is part of the image they created, the poeticization of war via video games and communication campaigns. Some, less inclined to think of it in this way, accept the necessary collective suffering that it would bring, a kind of necessary desert crossing.

This frustration and desire for confrontation is at the border on the Colombian side, where shock groups tried to cross the Venezuelan camp on Sunday and yesterday, that is to say almost across the river. About 100 people on the Simón Bolívar and Santander bridges, equipped with hoods and logistics for catering, prepare Molotov badtails, protected by the Colombian police and led by many Colombian leaders.

The pictures are clear: groups on the front line are trying to force their way into Venezuelan territory, behind the rear guard, the police. What would happen in another country on the continent, in the United States or in Europe in this situation? In these cases, we already know the violence with which the police react.

The situation is even worse on the Colombian side for two reasons. In the first place, because shock groups receive money and many Venezuelans brought in for the 23rd were not able to come back and were at the mercy of anyone on the street. They are young people from the popular sectors, with a marked clbad cut: those who face each other are young people from the neighborhood, those who drive are middle and upper clbades. It shows in the skins, the words, the clothes, the places where everyone spends the night.

Second, because Cúcuta is one of the most modest cities in Colombia, with 34% of poverty, in a province of northern Santander, where two municipalities reach 92% of poverty. Parallel to this, paramilitary groups operate in the province, such as the Rastrojos and the Gulf clan, drug cartels, such as Sinaloa and Tijuana, and smuggled mafias. It is a complex, vexed, violent and complicated picture between these groups and the institutions of the Colombian state.

It is then cynical to accuse the Venezuelan government of "complacency with irregular groups, drug trafficking networks and organized crime," Guaidó said. It is the investment of parties, roles, responsibilities, a central way to present the conflict, the government, the situation. Communication, diplomatic and political lies have been and remain one of the central elements of the attack to overthrow Maduro. The problem lies in the distance between virtual-diplomatic narratives and situations as they actually exist.

At this point, in unstable equilibrium, we are experiencing a new stage and speculation. The first thing is that the United States convened a meeting of the UN Security Council for today. What will you look for in this space? Do you have a new letter allowing you to get a result different from the one you convened on January 26th?

The second is that the desertion matrix of the Venezuelan military serves the purpose of showing a non-existent break and can prepare a false positive: what would happen if they disguised paramilitary with these uniforms and committed an attack against civilians in Venezuela? or a Colombian Police Station? Pence repeated that they would defend Colombia in case of Venezuelan aggression.