Colombia and Venezuela negotiate partial reopening of border

The Venezuelan regime announced on Monday the “commercial opening“From the wide land border with Colombia, closed since 2019 in the middle of a political and diplomatic dispute with the neighboring country.

“From tomorrow, we will open trade between our countries”, said the vice-president of the Chavist dictatorship, Delcy Rodriguez, in a message on state television, hours after the containers that were blocking traffic were removed from the main binational bridge, the agency found AFP.

The Chavist official specified that the exchanges must be carried out with “strict biosecurity measures”, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Concretely, he specified that traders must have a vaccination card to carry out commercial exchange operations at the border.

The border was closed to the passage of vehicles in August 2015 by order of Caracas and movement of people was suspended after Maduro broke off relations on February 23, 2019, when opposition leader Juan Guaidó tried to enter a humanitarian aid caravan from Cúcuta.

Rodríguez stressed that the common border is “extended” and, in it, The countries maintain a “shared responsibility” and “differentiated from what is involved in safeguarding” this region.

In this sense, he said that on the Colombian side “there are paramilitary gangs, drug traffickers and criminals”.

The presence of these groups was the reason given in 2015 by the Venezuelan authorities. close the stage with Colombia, whose president was then Juan Manuel Santos.

The vice-president of the Venezuelan dictatorship asked her fellow citizens to be “vigilant” against the possible arrival of Colombian criminal gangs.

“But despite what the planned violence against our homeland has meant, President Nicolás Maduro, always thinking of our people, thinking of brotherhood and cooperation (…) made the decision to open the trade route binational “, he stressed.

He recalled that, “historically, trade between Colombia and Venezuela has even exceeded $ 7,000 million”, in a period that he did not specify, for which he considered that openness “is a very direct message to the productive forces” of the two countries and, above all, “to binational commercial actors”, to whom he asked “a healthy exchange” and “biosecurity”.

Regarding the decision taken in 2019, after the severance of relations with Colombia, Rodríguez estimated that the border had been closed “since February 2019, because the American government of Donald Trump”, in conjunction “with those of the so-called Lima group,” they took the terrible “decision” to undermine the territorial integrity of Venezuela.

Shortly after his announcement, the vice president contacted Freddy Bernal, protector of the state of Táchira, a figure parallel to that of the governor and who is directly appointed by the dictator in areas where the opposition has won the elections.

Bernal made public the decision to lift the containers blocking the passage of binational bridges, a task which, according to the agency, was able to verify EFE, started early today.

The former deputy of the National Assembly Karim Vera confirmed to “El Tiempo”, that cranes work to clear the Francisco de Paula Santander and Simón Bolívar bridges, although it is still not clear “whether they will allow the passage of heavy goods transport to allow international trade or only for the passage of pedestrians.”

Via her Twitter account, Vera shared a few images of the displaced containers and pointed out that they are “the bad memory of the loss of human life and millions of dollars thrown in the water which caused the economic and social routine of the most active border in Latin America “. “Its openness is the joy of the inhabitants of Tachira”.

Following the announcement of the Chavista authorities, the President of Colombia, Ivan Duque, assured this Monday that his country was ready to begin “an orderly process” to guarantee commercial transit through the main border crossing with Venezuela.

“Colombia is ready to start an orderly process so that we can guarantee this border crossing. But I will be very clear, it will not be with ‘chambonadas’ (errors produced by clumsiness) and it will not be sudden”, Duque said during a government act.

With information from AFP and EFE

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