Hungry Venezuelans forced to turn to Colombia for a humble plate of food
CUCUTA, Colombia — Under a scorching sun just a short walk from Colombia’s border with Venezuela, hundreds of hungry men, women and children line up for bowls of chicken and rice — the first full meal some have eaten in days.
An estimated 25,000 Venezuelans make the trek across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge into Colombia each day. Many come for a few hours to work or trade goods on the black market, looking for household supplies they cannot find back home.
But increasingly, they are coming to eat in one of a halfdozen facilities offering struggling Venezuelans a free plate of food.
“I never thought I’d say this,” said Erick Oropeza, 29, a former worker with Venezuela’s Ministry of Education who recently began crossing the bridge each day. “But I’m more grateful for what Colombia has offered me in this short time than what I ever received from Venezuela my entire life.”
As Venezuela’s economy verges on collapse and its political upheaval worsens, cities like Cucuta along Colombia’s porous, 2,200-kilometre border with Venezuela have become firsthand witnesses to the neighbouring South American nation’s escalating humanitarian crisis.
According to one recent survey, about 75 per cent of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds last year.
The Colombian government has crafted contingency plans in the event of a sudden, mass exodus, but already church groups and non-profit organizations are stepping in, moved by images of mothers carrying starving babies and skinny men trying to make a few bucks on Cucuta’s streets to bring back home.
Paulina Toledo, 47, a Colombian hairstylist who recently helped feed lunch to 900 Venezuelans, said seeing how hungry they were “hurt my soul.”
“Those of us here on the border are seeing their pain,” she said.
People living on either side of the Colombia-Venezuela border have long had a foot in both countries: A Colombian who lives in Cucuta might cross to visit relatives in San Cristobal; a Venezuelan might make the reverse trip to work or go to school.
In the years when Venezuela’s oil industry was booming and Colombia entangled in a halfcentury armed conflict, an estimated four million Colombians migrated to Venezuela. Many started coming back as Venezuela’s economy began to implode and after President Nicolas Maduro closed the border in 2015 and expelled 20,000 Colombians overnight.
Oropeza said he earned about $70 a month working at the Ministry of Education and selling hamburgers on the side — twice Venezuela’s minimum wage but still not enough to feed a family of four. Once a month his family receives a bundle of food provided by the government, but it only lasts a week.
“So the other three weeks, like most Venezuelans, we have to make magic happen,” he said.