Crisis in Venezuela: How did the day of terror and repression on the Venezuelan side of the border go?

At dawn this Sunday, no one wanders in the usually lively border town of San Antonio de Táchira.

The streets, normally home to hawkers and walkers crossing Venezuela's border with Colombia, are deserted this Sunday.

Something reveals that the day before was not normal.

There are cobblestones and bricks bursting in every corner, burnt rubbers and improvised trenches at the entrance to many streets.

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This would be the day of arrival of humanitarian aid to Venezuela. But the only thing he left was violence, chaos and terror.

A bloody day that left the dead and wounded and whose protagonists were the National Guard and masked gunmen identified by the locals as "collectives", groups of armed civilians operating in Venezuela for the Nicolás government Maduro.

This is what was experienced in San Antonio de Táchira, Tienditas and Ureña, the cities surrounding the bridges by which most of the aid promised by opposition leader Juan Guaidó and his international allies should have arrived.

Since dawn, it was a border under siege.

President Maduro, whom Guaidó, the opposition and a large part of the international community consider an illegitimate leader, had announced hours before the closure of the three bridges.

Maduro has always said that the Venezuelan army would reject what he sees as an "attempt at intervention" devised by Donald Trump's "supremacist government".

Workers' claims

The clashes started at dawn.

On the bridge Francisco de Paula Santander, in the small town of Ureña, a checkpoint of the National Guard blocked dozens of people.

The livelihood of many people here depends on their ability to enter Colombia and work there as street vendors and other trades.

"Let us go, we have to work," shouted some of the guards more and more tensed behind their riot shields.

An opposition sympathizer confronted one of the guards and asked, "Why do you serve a dictator instead of serving your own people?"

Then the detonations sounded.

These were the tear gas bombs launched by the guards who had decided to act.

Crowds fled into the street amid the theft of tear gas and shooting agents.

Thus began a battle that lasted all day.

The situation worsened with the arrival of the well-known "ladies in white", a group of women whose members wanted to put pressure on the guards and thus allow the help to get in. in Venezuela.

Itamar Rosales, a student from the nearby city of San Cristóbal for the same purpose, recounted what he had seen at BBC Mundo.

"We saw that the guard was waiting and we decided that they would start by trying to chat, but the guards immediately started throwing gasoline."

But it was not only Ureña.

Just ten minutes from the highway, in San Antonio de Táchira, violent clashes have also occurred.

From the road to the city, you could see the smoke from the burned tires and detonations.

The witnesses listened to try to distinguish whether it was pellets, gas or real ammunition.

Witnesses and journalists in the area reported on the social networks the actions of irregular armed groups who opened fire on the protesters and who campaigned freely in the town and Ureña.

At various locations along the San Antonio de Táchira-Ureña road, protesters were gathered, waving Venezuelan flags and chanting slogans against Maduro.

In one of them, a woman shouted the reasons for her participation: "Here there is no food or medicine, and people disappear only because they do not are not in agreement with the government. "

His explanation was interrupted by the cry of one of his companions.

"The collectives, the collectives come!"

The collective questionnaires

The action of these controversial groups marked the day.

They are defined as organizations dedicated to managing social benefits and defending the so-called Bolivarian revolution.

But on many occasions, it has been denounced that they act as mere gangs of thugs who intimidate, badault and sometimes murder those who are not of this opinion.

According to the witnesses of Saturday's hood performance, they behaved rather like the latter.

Orlando Uribe, a cameraman with local television channel Venevisión, told BBC Mundo how he was the victim of violence by violent people in San Antonio de Táchira.

"I was recording the buses that were in a corner when this group of people jumped on us, I ran out but with the camera I could not go very fast."

"Then I felt that someone was slapping me in the camera and was making me fall to the ground".

"When I raised my head, a hooded boy pointed a gun at me and took my camera."

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"Then another group of motorized hoods arrived and I hurried to a barber's where they opened the door."

"We heard kicks, pebbles and shots, we threw ourselves on the floor and the hairdresser's glbades fell on us because they were shooting."

"They told me to give them the camera, the owner of the hairdresser asked me to give it to him because they would not kill us all, but I had already given it to him, "he recalls, in tears.

Only when he delivered his tripod, the raiders were satisfied.

Armed motorized vehicles also attacked the hotel Paraíso Suite.

According to the employees, a group of them would have reduced them by pointing the weapon to them before stealing the guests and forcibly entering certain rooms in search of valuables.

A few meters away, at the Tienditas Bridge, the National Guard was used in depth, apparently in coordination with these elements.

But the whole region looked like a war zone.

"Puppet president"

Ambulances of the Táchira State Civil Protection Service have gone both ways.

Others were the National Guard motorcycles, accompanied by those supposedly "collective", those who had made batidas firing tear gas bombs that sometimes fell inside the houses and other properties. where many had found refuge.

In one of them, the bademblies saw on public television the appearance of Maduro in front of a multitude of followers gathered in Caracas, several kilometers away.

Maduro's words proclaiming "the defeat of the coup d'etat" and "the puppet president", in reference to Guaidó, coexisted with echoing off salutes and detonations.

While the Colombian authorities reported the runoff of desertions by the Venezuelan army, chaos continued to reign in Ureña.

The locals seized one of the government-chartered buses to displace sympathizers from the concert that Chavismo wanted to counter with Friday's in Cucuta and walked triumphantly into the city honking left and right.

Those who wanted help did not give up, but their hopes were burned in battle.

Images of clashes on the Venezuelan border on the day of the attempted entry of humanitarian aid

Dr. Indira Medina had joined as a volunteer the call of Guaidó and the opposition.

The politician had badured that help would come in "yes or yes".

Medina announced Saturday that it has treated more than 50 wounded, most of them shot by the National Guard at a medical center in Ureña.

"It was a very unequal war," he sums up.

"The National Guard shot at us when we were treating wounded on the street."

Estigos said the trucks that had managed to cross the bridge arriving at Táchira from the Colombian side had been looted by armed government supporters who had finally burned them down.

Freddy Bernal, leader of the Chavista designated "Protector of Tachira", made a completely different badessment on state television.

It was the day of tension riots and clashes in Venezuela before the attempt of the entrance of the humanitarian aid

After accusing "hundreds of criminals supported by Colombian paramilitaries besieging the National Guard" from causing incidents and injuring 42 people, he said the region was "under the control of the patriots".

Bernal has been repeatedly accused of leading violent actions on the part of "collectives". After the events of this Saturday, he praised the "stoic resistance" of "popular power".

For his part, Jorge Rodríguez, Minister of Communication and Information of Maduro, said Sunday that the National Guard and the police had been "exemplary behavior" and that they had been attacked by " addicted protesters ".

The image then circulated, becoming almost a symbol of the failure of Guaidó's attempt and his supporters, but also an image that alarmed the international community that rejects Maduro.

Rubén Rincón, a young university student who had left the city of San Cristobal to help with the distribution of aid, told BBC Mundo: "We would never have thought of going that far, we were not going to get away from it. would never have thought that they would burn the families so need it "

At dusk, as unidentified gunfire whistled over his head, he summed up his mood in a nutshell. "Frustration, what I feel is a frustration."

Dr. Medina also does not balance well: "We have put a lot of good things on this day, and now people are filled with fear and despair."