Venezuela: block the entrance of humanitarian aid from Colombia

The Venezuelan authorities have tried to prevent Wednesday the entry of Colombia's humanitarian aid blocking a border bridge, officials said Wednesday on both sides.

On the Las Tienditas bridge – which connects the Colombian city of Cucuta to the town of Ureña, in western Venezuela – there was an improvised grid made of construction trusses and metal beams, an orange tanker and two blue cargo containers.

The actions of the Venezuelan authorities were rejected by the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who urged the government of Nicolás Maduro, in a message posted on his Twitter account, to let the aid reach the "hungry people".

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who was proclaimed interim president on Jan. 23, said food and medicine would begin to arrive in Venezuela despite Maduro's objections.

"In the coming days, humanitarian aid will be distributed among highly vulnerable sectors," Guaidó said at a meeting with the badociations of agricultural producers in Caracas. "We know about the cistern and the containers, it's an absurd reaction of a government that cares little for the well-being of Venezuelans," he said.

Franklin Duarte, a congressional member of the opposition to the Táchira border state, told the AP that in Venezuelan towns near the border, authorities had taken convoys and tanks of the armed force, claiming that they were trying to "intimidate" the population.

"Whatever you say, humanitarian aid will be on Venezuelan territory," Duarte said, dismissing the authorities' actions.

Maduro and the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the aid, stating that there was no emergency situation in Venezuela. They also argue that the initiative of opposition lawmakers to admit international aid goes against the laws and the constitution.

Maduro, who maintains control of the army, says that Guaidó is a puppet of the United States, a country that seeks to colonize Venezuela and exploit its vast oil resources.

"We are not beggars," Maduro said this week in a speech to the troops broadcast on state television.

The Puerto Rican State Secretary, Luis Rivera Marín, announced on his Twitter account the departure of a first plane from the Caribbean island endowed with humanitarian aid for Venezuelans.

In Washington, Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said that denying aid income from Cucuta "is a crime."

"By committing such a crime, he would give more reasons to all the countries that have joined to ask the International Criminal Court to investigate Maduro," Trujillo told reporters after meeting with the Secretary-General. of the Organization of American States (OAS) Luis Almagro.

Alba Pereira, of the Entre Dos Tierras Foundation based in the Colombian city of Bucaramanga, said the obstacle is a tactic of intimidation that will lead to nothing.

Pereira said that Venezuelan officials want to prolong what she called an "absurd crisis".

The Colombian authorities in charge of migration reported that the Venezuelan National Guard had built the blockade on Tuesday.