Could women sway Venezuelan soldiers blocking crucial aid?

THE SOLDIERS blocking humanitarian aid from entering Venezuela look unlikely to give any ground, but Maria Acevedo thinks she knows how to make them let the shipments through.

Acevedo, 26, wants to join together with fellow Venezuelan women and escort the food and medicine across the border from Colombia.

Her bet is that a group of hungry and suffering mothers, sisters and daughters can convince the soldiers to break with President Nicolas Maduro and let the US aid shipments pass.

Maduro, who is locked in a power struggle with opposition leader and selfdeclared interim president Juan Guaido, refuses to let the aid through. He calls it a “show” and says Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis has been manufactured by Washington to justify a “coup.”

What happens to the sea of shiny white plastic bags filled with vital supplies -- and to Venezuela itself -now hinges on the military, which has so far stood by Maduro.

But Acevedo, who has three children, thinks she and her fellow Venezuelan women can change that.

She should know -- she comes from a family of soldiers.

“I come from a military family, too. And my family is against this, against the army blocking humanitarian aid.

“But my family can’t do anything. Only the top brass,” Acevedo told AFP in Cucuta, on the Colombian side of the border.

She regularly travels there to buy the food she can no longer find in Venezuela, a once booming oil giant that has skidded into a devastating economic crisis under Maduro.

“We women are the ones who have to help get this humanitarian aid through. Not the men,” she added.

“They may be strong, but they can’t do much because the authorities would immediately attack them.” ‘We’re counting on you’

There is history behind Acevedo’s hope.

In 2016, Maduro also closed the border at Cucuta, accusing Colombia of plotting to destabilize his socialist government.

In July that year, hundreds of women dressed in white broke through the military cordon and crossed to Colombia, the only place they could buy enough food for their families.

Women protesting in white, a tradition dating to at least the suffrage movement in the United States a century ago, has reemerged as a trend.