Venezuela aid at border; what’s the next step?
CUCUTA, Colombia — Millions of dollars worth of food and medical supplies remained stuck at the border of Venezuela on Friday in a high-stakes showdown between the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition and President Nicolás Maduro.
Despite the socialist leader’s refusal to allow in the humanitarian aid, Venezuelan opposition leaders are making increasingly ambitious promises about the delivery of U.S. assistance with no clear plan for making it happen.
“This aid is going to be arriving in Venezuela, in the hospitals, for the Venezuelans and into the hands of the most vulnerable, have no doubt,” said Lester Toledo, a representative of Juan Guaidó, the self-declared interim president of Venezuela who has secured the backing of more than 40 countries.
At a news conference on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, Toledo stood beside a vast warehouse filled with white plastic sacks of rice, beans and sugar labeled “from the American people.”
He said three more warehouses would be opening up in the region shortly and that his countrymen could count on aid arriving “as soon as they open the border gates in the next few days.”
But the Venezuelan military has blocked the Tienditas International Bridge linking the two countries with two shipping containers and a tanker, which has become a symbol of Maduro’s standoff with the United States and its European and South American allies.
Despite growing international political support for the opposition, the Venezuelan military has not defected en masse, and it remains unclear where the United States and the opposition go from here.
Maduro, who enjoys the support of China and Russia, rebuffed calls to let the aid into the country on Friday in a dueling news conference in Caracas.
“The reality is there is no help. It’s a message of humiliation to the people. If they really wanted to help they should lift all the economic sanctions, the financial persecution, and cancel the economic ban that robs us of billions of dollars,” Maduro said.
He insisted that Venezuela is not facing a crisis, though during the news conference, the power went out twice.
The Trump administration has meanwhile reiterated its implicit military threat against Maduro and warned him to leave U.S. diplomats and Venezuelan opposition figures unharmed. On Friday, national security adviser John Bolton reaffirmed in a tweet that “all options are on the table.”
Despite the warning, U.S. and Colombian officials have said they do not plan to use military force to get tens of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid into Venezuela.