Survival Under the Shadow of Paramilitaries and Closed Bridges

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By Indira Guerrero

Táchira (Venezuela/Colombia Border).– The 160 linear kilometers of the border with Colombia in the western Venezuelan state of Táchira have been, for years, an open channel for crime and organized gangs. It is a place where paramilitaries govern omnipresently from the shadows.

This story takes place in 2015, a pivotal year that marked the beginning of the definitive collapse of the Venezuelan border. Before the bridges were filled with millions of migrants fleeing the country, they were the stage for a silent war for control, smuggling, and survival.

“The military calls them ‘Los Urabeños’ and ‘Los Rastrojos,’ but to us, they are all the same because here one never knows who is who,” says Ernesto, sitting in front of his shack. It is a tin hut from which, standing on the porch, he can see part of the Venezuelan town of San Antonio, and from the patio, the savannas of the Colombian fields.

The farmer, who attributes with admiration the creation of the “self-defense” forces to the Castaño brothers as armed anti-subversive groups protecting locals from guerrillas, adds a clarification.

“Look, pay attention. Those who are here call themselves paramilitaries, but that is just arming a gang, giving it a name, taking a territory, and charging the vacuna.”

Ernesto refers to those operating in the zone as paramilitary gangs—armed groups that have controlled all commercial activities on the Colombian-Venezuelan border for years, dictating their own tax order in the territory.

“If you have a lot, you pay a lot. If you have a little, you pay a little. We pay 50 bolivars a week,” says a neighbor referring to the vacuna—the vaccine—a sacred tax that inhabitants of all towns along the border axis hand over.

It is a fee in exchange for which these gangs guarantee “security and surveillance.”

“Now, those who have bodegas or sell ice, beer, or any business pay more than the others,” explains the neighbor from the barrio who, like everyone else, fears being identified.

On the border, people hardly speak of paramilitaries in groups. If there are more than two people, no one takes the initiative to refer to them. They do not question them. They are an open secret because, for the neighbors, the running child, the neighbor next door, or the motorcyclist passing by are the eyes and ears of the paramilitaries.

“Here it is like this. You don’t know who people work for. You don’t know if they pass information and say you are talking about them, and then they come and put a bullet in you for that,” says another man from the community, taking advantage of the noise of the truck collecting the neighborhood’s trash, accumulated for more than 15 days.

This parallel order governing several Venezuelan towns bordering Colombia’s Norte de Santander is repeated in other border territories where, depending on the zone, inhabitants attribute it to paramilitaries or guerrillas.

In this zone of Táchira, smuggling food and fuel is the main trade, the most important source of income, and what fills the coffers of armed groups.

The Venezuelan government itself has recognized that the area is a sieve through which 40 percent of food and medicines destined for the Venezuelan market escape. Many are taken out through illegal trails—trochas—opened by local farmers, and many others through military checkpoints with the consent of Venezuelan soldiers corrupted by enormous profits.

Food, mainly basics subsidized by the Venezuelan government, is the easiest product to find on the other side, in La Parada, a Colombian settlement that is more of a massive open-air market than a town.

There, economic distortions generated by the currency exchange control ruling over Venezuelan money and excessive price regulations on basic basket products make contraband the big business.

While in Venezuela a tube of toothpaste is sold at what the government calls a “fair price”—pennies on the dollar—in La Parada it can be sold at international market value. The profit margin is staggering, simply by crossing a river.

This profitable business became the trade of a good part of the border population, most of them Colombians living in the border territory whom the locals call “maleteros” (porters), alluding to the large loads of merchandise they carry on their shoulders in the early morning across the river.

The passage of goods is also regulated by paramilitary groups who, according to locals, control the crossings through the trochas and establish schedules for trafficking.

It was precisely the excuse of fighting these mafias that led the government of Nicolás Maduro to order a sudden military intervention.

The Closed Door

The government’s response to this “invisible government” was to shut down the official crossings. A state of exception was decreed, and the bridges were blocked with containers. But closing a bridge does not stop hunger, nor does it stop business. It only pushes it underground.

Gladys, without luggage and with her identity document tucked into her bra, crossed an illegal path to go from Colombia to Venezuela, urged to open her shop. It had been closed for a week since the border closure surprised her at her home in the Colombian town of Villa del Rosario.

The woman, Colombian by birth, sells purses in the town of San Antonio del Táchira, on the Venezuelan side of the border. She is the only one on her block who has opened since President Maduro ordered the closure of the bridge linking both countries.

The news announced at midnight caught many merchants by surprise—their shops on the Venezuelan border, but their pillows, beds, and families on the Colombian side. For generations, the river was not a barrier, but a bridge; living in one country and working in the other was as natural as breathing.

Although not all shops are owned by Colombians, commerce in the area has dwindled because it depends on the border. If not for the owners, then for their suppliers, employees, or buyers who were left on the other side of the river.

Since then, the last eight days in the Venezuelan town have passed with an unusual tranquility for a place that until a week ago was, along with Cúcuta, a major corridor for commerce, drug trafficking, and smuggling.

Now in San Antonio, large groups of people can only be found in three circumstances.

The first is Colombians formed in long lines in front of a Venezuelan military checkpoint at the town’s entrance, hoping to be allowed to pass into Colombia.

Then there are two other frequent possibilities. Either crossing the clandestine trochas where neither Colombians nor Venezuelans need permission to cross the border, or in front of food stores forming enormous lines to try to buy scarce products in the area.

“People are terrified. They call me all the time asking, ‘Look, how is it over there?’ and I tell them it’s calm, but for us, calm is not normal,” says Gladys from her shop.

The transit of people, prohibited almost entirely across this international corridor, has had its first consequences on local commerce, which in the last week has been nonexistent.

“People don’t want to come to buy or sell anymore. They are scared. As the saying goes, we aren’t selling enough even to buy food,” says the vendor sitting next to a computer from where she watches over her sister’s shop, which she has had to tend to while Emilia manages to cross the border.

A shoe manufacturer, with a shop very close to the Simón Bolívar International Bridge, is Venezuelan and has not closed his shop despite the border closure. However, he assures that he only sits “to watch people pass by” because the raw material he uses is Colombian and he has nothing to offer.

“Here we depend on Colombia, and they depend on us. Because here you can’t find material, you can’t find glue, you can’t find a tack, you can’t find anything,” says the shoemaker who preferred to identify himself only as José.

“Here we are paralyzed, we are, as they say, dead,” adds a customer in the shop before leaving disappointed at not having found a heel for his shoe.

On the other hand, there are the micro-smugglers dedicated to buying food or regulated articles in Venezuela to take them to the Colombian border, resell them at international prices, and return. It is a vicious cycle Venezuelans call “bachaqueo.”

However, the militarization of San Antonio and rigorous border controls have made this form of smuggling—which locals attribute to Colombians and the corruption of Venezuelan military personnel—an uphill battle.

While everyone waits for things to get worse, Gladys waits for nightfall, hoping the military surveillance lowers its guard so she can go home to Colombia for dinner. If she succeeds, perhaps her shop will dawn closed again tomorrow. EFE