Hungry Venezuelans swarm across border
Colombia now a lifeline for tens of thousands without basic goods amid economic collapse
CÚCUTA, Colombia — It wasn’t much, but it was all she could afford — a sack of laundry detergent, a package of tampons and 18 rolls of Colombian toilet paper. Marys Rosalba was carrying the prized goods back to Venezuela with a tight grip and a fierce look that said: Don’t even think of trying to rob me.
The three items had cost her an entire week’s wages. “I used to have my own little market,” said Rosalba, 50. “Now I clean houses from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. when I’m not standing in line.”
Up ahead on the bridge over the Táchira River was the border checkpoint, and on the other side an oil-rich country of empty cupboards and supermarket queues stretching for blocks.
Cúcuta, long known as a city of contraband goods, has suddenly became a lifeline for desperate shoppers in neighboring Venezuela, and one of the starkest illustrations yet of its panicky hunger.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans like Rosalba have streamed across the border for basic goods in recent weeks as their country’s economy collapses under the weight of the world’s highest inflation rate and chronic mismanagement, which has produced shortages of everything from diapers to milk.
Just days before Rosalba made her meager purchases, more than 120,000 Venezuelans poured across the border as both countries agreed to briefly reopen several crossings that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ordered shut last August. An additional 35,000 shoppers did the same on July 10.
“They used to come here to sell. Now they come to buy,” said Colombian shopkeeper Viviana Lozano, who had to hire 10 friends to cope with the crush of shoppers. She needed a money-counting machine to process their giant wads of Venezuelan bolivars, whose largest de nomination bank note, a 100 bill, is worth only 10 U.S. cents. “It was too crazy,” Lozano said. Some Venezuelans traveled hundreds of miles through the night on long-distance buses to swarm through the crossing during the weekend openings. They hugged Colombian border guards and went racing for the supermarkets. Stuffing suitcases and duffel bags with as many items as they could fit and their bolivars could buy, they went home with sacks of rice, sugar, corn meal and milk powder, like sailors preparing for a long voyage at sea.
It was a short reprieve. In recent days, border traffic has been much more limited. Colombian authorities — worried the growing crowds could spiral out of control — say they want to end the ad hoc crossings and reopen the border on a long-term basis.
Maduro officials have bristled at the Colombians’ depiction of Cúcuta as a “humanitarian corridor.” They insist the claims of spreading hunger are part of a smear campaign by Venezuela’s opposition. But on Cúcuta’s border bridges in recent days, where a smaller but steady trickle of people are allowed to pass, stories of hardship and indignity appeared to be the only thing in abundance. Venezuelans with doctors’ notes, kids in enrolled in Colombian schools and Venezuelans with dual nationality were among the lucky ones still allowed to cross.
The Venezuelan economy is projected to shrink 10 percent this year, according to a recent International Monetary Fund report, and consumer prices are on pace for a 700 percent increase.
“Over there, you wait in line all day for a kilo of rice and sometimes it runs out before your turn comes, so it’s all for nothing,” said Carlos Ortega, 68, a retired geology professor trudging back home after a doctor’s appointment in Colombia.
“This government has looted our country,” he said, glaring at the Venezuelan border guards. “And they’re still doing it.”
Maduro ordered the border closed after three Venezuelan soldiers were injured in a shootout last August with alleged smugglers. The president claimed that up to 40 percent of Venezuelan goods were being leeched out of the country by people seeking to take advantage of how cheap they are — thanks to the socialist-inspired government’s subsidies and price caps. But those same policies have contributed to shortages that have grown ever more severe as low oil prices crimp Venezuelan government finances, limiting the import-dependent country’s supply of basic items.
Carlos Luna, president of the Cúcuta Chamber of Commerce, said he expected the border would be permanently reopened within 15 days, and that both countries were more committed to cooperation on enforcement.
Carolina Higuera, 34, who runs a money-changing operation at the border, noted how the economic crisis in Venezuela had altered the longtime dynamic between the neighboring nations.
For as long as she could remember, “Venezuela was the rich country, and Colombia was poor. People went there to find jobs.”
“Now it’s the other way around,” she said.
Venezuelans’ bolivars have depreciated so fast that many who arrive in Colombia find they can’t stock up on much. Venezuela’s currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value in the past two years.
Several Venezuelans, including Rosalba, the house cleaner, said they weren’t getting enough to eat, admitting that many of their meals now consist of little more than cornmeal cakes and fruit.
“I’m 50 years old, and I’ve never been hungry like this before,” she said.