Maduro blocks border route to stop US aid
The Maduro regime has blocked one of the main roads into the country to try and halt the delivery of international aid to Venezuela promised by the opposition and the United States.
Two large shipping containers, a fuel tanker, concrete and metal fences were placed by troops on the Simon Bolivar Bridge, the main road link between Colombia and Venezuela, blocking all access. It appears to be an attempt to halt any deliveries of aid that a western alliance backing the opposition leader, Juan Guaido, has pledged to make available to Venezuelans.
Yesteray Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, demanded that the roadblock be lifted tweeting: ‘‘The Maduro regime must let the aid reach the people. The Venezuelan people desperately need humanitarian aid. The US and other countries are trying to help, but Venezuela’s military under Maduro’s orders is blocking aid with trucks and shipping tankers.’’
Guaido, who is recognised as the country’s president by more than 40 countries, including Britain, the US and Venezuela’s neighbours, says that hundreds of tonnes of aid will be stockpiled at the borders ready to enter.
He has challenged the army to let in the aid in defiance of Maduro, who has refused to accept assistance on the basis that it amounts to an ‘‘imperialist’’ interference in the nation’s affairs. Guaido has appealed directly to the military: ‘‘Soldier, are you going to deny your family humanitarian aid?’’
Millions have fled the country, where the economy has been wrecked by hyperinflation and there are severe shortages of food and other essentials.
Venezuela is printing money at an unprecedented rate in a sign that Maduro’s administration is panicking in the face of international sanctions. The money supply grew 31 per cent in a week at the end of last month, official figures from the central bank show, suggesting that the administration has scaled up a printing operation that will exacerbate the country’s hyperinflation, now running at 1.7 million per cent a year. Cash in Venezuela is almost worthless. The country’s presses have failed to keep up with the need for new higherdenomination notes and the government has struggled to order banknotes from overseas.
In December a large delivery of cash is understood to have arrived via air freight from the British money printer De La Rue. By the time the notes entered circulation the denominations were worthless.
The banknotes were used by some protesters as a form of confetti during mass demonstrations in Caracas against the regime last week. ‘‘This government doesn’t govern, it loots,’’ Alberto Contreras, 58, a lorry driver, told The Times as he held a fistful of notes.
Since early last month, when Guaido, the head of Venezuela’s parliament, announced his intention to take over on the basis that Maduro had rigged elections last year, the regime has held what appears to be a fire sale of state assets. The central bank tried to sell 10 per cent of its gold reserves last month, most of it in exchange for euros, in cash, before at least one major purchase was cancelled for fear of breaching US sanctions.
– The Times smallest nearly