Venezuelan opposition seeks alternatives while maintaining blockade at the border

Anatoly Kurmanaev collaborated from San Antonio, Venezuela.

CUCUTA, Colombia – While humanitarian aid at the center of a border battle in Venezuela remained in warehouses on Sunday, and the blockade of President Nicolás Maduro remained intact, it became apparent that the leaders of the opposition who were trying to overthrow him had no alternative plan

The leader of the opposition, Juan Guaidó, and his allies, were waiting for the forced entry of food and medicine that Venezuela so badly needed would be the irreversible collapse of the authority of Maduro. In contrast, only one truck with help arrived in Venezuela on Saturday, the deadline set by the opposition to obtain it. Maduro has easily avoided the biggest challenge of his power since Guaidó was sworn in as president in January.

Clashes between opposition protesters and the Maduro security forces, which claimed the lives of four people on February 23, continued on Sunday, endangering the image of the peaceful Guaidó movement. The army, which helped keep Maduro in power, has for the most part resisted Guaidó's calls to the desert en mbade; only about 150 items did. Even the fate of Guaidó was uncertain: after he managed to cross the border and enter Colombia on Friday, which disobeyed the ban on leaving Venezuela, he is not certain that they will let him come back.

"It was one of the scenarios that we were managing, although, of course, it was not what we wanted," said Armando Armas, an opposition legislator, who added that he was unlikely that organizers are trying again to add help in the near future. "We want humanitarian aid to enter peacefully but we can not further expose our people."

However, although Maduro has triumphed in this battle over the border blockade, the conditions in the country remain very unfavorable. He is extremely unpopular in Venezuela, where he reigned during one of the most catastrophic economic collapses in the history of Latin America. The disaster forced one-tenth of the population to leave the country, mainly because of lack of food and medicine. With the actions of Saturday, his image has further deteriorated, since he denied the arrival of aid to Venezuelans in disgrace.

Guaidó, for its part, has mobilized many people in the country and more than fifty governments have recognized him as legitimate president. Donald Trump's US government, which has expressed support for Guaidó, has imposed crippling sanctions against the oil company PDVSA.

On Monday, February 25, US Vice President Mike Pence will arrive in Colombia, where he plans to meet Guaidó and announce "concrete measures" to exert more pressure against the Maduro government. These measures could include new punitive sanctions.

Despite this, and even though few people thought that the opposition would lose its resolve because of its inability to enter humanitarian aid, Saturday's events seemed like a turning point. Now we start talking about the need for foreign intervention.

Guaidó, a 35-year-old politician who burst onto the national scene only a few months ago, was hoping to use the arrival of international aid donations as a political weapon. He declared Saturday as the day of an "avalanche of aid", during which his supporters would defy Maduro by breaking border control. The Colombian, Chilean and Paraguayan presidents joined the effort, alongside British billionaire Richard Branson, who flew to the border to attend a concert in which a group of people from all over the world joined forces. artists of Latin American pop music called for admission. l & # 39; help.

However, at the end of the day, the avalanche was more like a drop of water.

Instead of reaching Venezuelans who needed it, some supplies were burned after crossing the Colombian border. Maduro, believing that the aid was undermining his authority, had stated that the Venezuelan people were not a beggar and that he did not need help. Government forces and allied groups supported the message with violence, which was condemned Sunday by the United Nations.

The opposition, prevented from getting help at the border, began talking about a possible foreign action to overthrow Maduro. Before meeting with Pence and other leaders of the region in Bogotá on Monday, Guaidó wrote on Twitter: "We must have all the options open to achieve the liberation of this homeland that is fighting and will continue to do so" . Julio Borges, another opposition leader, said he would seek support for the use of force at the meeting on 25 February.

President Trump raised hopes around an intervention, as he said that "the decline of socialism" has arrived in the Western Hemisphere.

But Charles S. Shapiro, a former United States ambbadador to Venezuela, said that "American rhetoric was exaggerated," adding that Trump's statements might have led some to think that military support would be available if Maduro blocked help

Images of violence on the Colombian border bridges were noted on Sunday as attempts to get help were unsuccessful. Near the Francisco de Paula International Bridge in Santander, where a truck carrying aid was set on fire on Saturday, dozens of youths threw stones at Venezuelan security forces and barricades.

Others paced the streets of a nearby neighborhood in search of ingredients to make homemade bombs and masks to protect themselves from tear gas.

"Yesterday, we spent the humanitarian aid, we carried flowers and flags that fell to the ground," said Delbert Rondón, a 34-year-old Venezuelan who left the city of Mérida, in the north of the country. west of the country, looking for medicines. "I am under the bridge helping the boys, I pbad them stones, rags, bottles of water, vinegar and we must all help them because they are the resistance . "

However, that was what the opposition had sought to avoid.

The main protest movements in 2014 and 2017 began with peaceful demonstrations, but over the weeks the protests were overtaken by mainly youth groups who clashed with the security forces on the streets. It was only in 2017 that the clashes caused the death of about 150 people on both sides.

Until now, the Guaidó movement had avoided street violence and mentions of foreign intervention.

After declaring himself president on January 23 in front of the cheering crowd, Guaidó managed to summon hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of Caracas and other cities during largely peaceful meetings. His strategy was based on a mixture of peaceful civil disobedience and international pressure to urge the armed forces to leave Maduro. It was not intended to launch a foreign military action to remove him from power.

"The nonviolent nature of these protests is essential to make a difference," said David Smilde, senior researcher at the Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA). "When the clashes do not go well for a simple reason: once these events become violent, they will not be crowds anymore".

Smilde added that if opposition members spoke more about military intervention, it would be less and less likely that Venezuelans would participate in the demonstrations hoping that help would come soon.

The goal was to make a march Sunday at the Colombian border an example for other events. The organizers said the protesters planned to walk next to the trucks filled with humanitarian aid for the three bridges that connect Venezuela and to convince soldiers on the other side of the border to allow the pbadage of supplies, with the The argument of the families of the armed forces suffers from the same scarcity as most Venezuelans.

Protesters received the blessing of a priest in a camp at dawn and, by the end of the afternoon, thousands of people had gathered with white roses and had begun to form a chain by joining their arms near the Las Tienditas bridge. The organizers had planned to use a crane to move the containers that the Maduro government had placed to block the bridge.

On a pedestrian bridge further south, cheers were heard when relief trucks began to approach the border, with hundreds of young Venezuelans sitting on board.

However, the Bolivarian National Guard soldiers threw tear gas into the vehicles. Many demonstrators got off the trucks and attacked the soldiers by throwing stones at them. Shortly afterwards, a large number of people handed stones to the young people on the bridge, in front of opposition activists and agents of the Colombian National Police.