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As Venezuela Aid Standoff Turns Deadly, Maduro Severs Ties With Colombia

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Venezuelan security forces and protesters faced off in the border town of Ureña as locals tried to clear a path for humanitarian aid to enter the country from Colombia.CreditCredit...Marco Bello/Reuters
  • President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has been in a standoff for weeks with political opponents, who question the legitimacy of his election to a second term in office and are forcibly trying to bring tons of humanitarian aid into the country.

  • The opposition, led by Juan Guaidó — who drew international support when he declared himself Venezuela’s interim president last month — began moving the supplies into Venezuela on Saturday. Getting the aid in would be a symbolic victory and signal Mr. Maduro’s loosening grip on power.

  • The aid, including food and medicine, is desperately needed in Venezuela, where conditions have grown steadily worse in recent months. Inflation has skyrocketed, hunger is endemic, and hospitals are without medicine. More than three million people have fled the country, many on foot.

  • We are updating our story on the clashes on the border. These are the highlights:

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President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela during a pro-government march in Caracas.Credit...Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Maduro, speaking from the capital Caracas, severed diplomatic ties with Colombia and ordered the diplomats of the neighboring nation out of his country within the next 24 hours.

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Maduro and a close ally of the United States, and his country was the main staging point for the opposition’s efforts to bring humanitarian aid across the border.

Mr. Maduro danced the salsa with his wife on stage in an event that was broadcast on national television. Even as the National Guard clashed with protesters elsewhere in the country, he told Venezuelans, “I am stronger than ever.”

He criticized the opposition and called Mr. Guaidó a “puppet of imperialism.”

“Why am I here? Because you are the ones who decide, not Donald Trump,” he said.

Despite a handful of defections, the country’s National Guard has so far not deserted Mr. Maduro en masse as the opposition had hoped.

Ana Vanessa Herrero

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A truck with humanitarian aid from the Brazilian government at the border of Venezuela.Credit...Ivan Valencia/Associated Press

Mr. Guaidó, standing alongside the presidents of Paraguay, Colombia, and Chile urged the Venezuelan military to allow trucks to cross the border. The leaders are among more than 50 heads of government who support him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

“The humanitarian aid is definitely on its way to Venezuela, in a peaceful manner, to save lives right now,” Mr. Guaidó said, standing in front of the warehouse on the Colombian side of the border, where the aid had been stored for days.

“I’ve made a clear call to the armed forces. They are welcome to join the correct side of history,” Mr. Guaidó said.

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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó with a truck carrying humanitarian aid for Venezuela.Credit...Marco Bello/Reuters

A short time later, a large crowd surrounded several aid trucks as they made their way toward the Venezuelan border at the Simón Bolívar International Bridge. They waved flags and chanted, “Freedom, freedom.”

But a few hours later, the trucks turned back to the Colombian side of the border, chased away by tear gas fired from the Venezuelan side. The crowd walked back fairly obediently, looking a bit tired.

“We are optimistic,” said Claudia Zarraga, a 40-year-old engineer. “We knew this wouldn’t be a fast process. We’ll keep trying.”

In San Antonio, a Venezuelan town across the Simón Bolívar bridge from Colombia where several opposition leaders had gathered, pro-government militia members drove around in motorcycles and cars, their faces covered in black masks, and fired into the air, scaring protesters.

On the Tienditas bridge, which also links Venezuela and Colombia, the momentum that had built up as people gathered on both sides for rival concerts held by Mr. Maduro and the opposition had waned in the middle of the day Saturday.

Some Venezuelans clambered on the shipping containers that block its lanes, painting “Queremos Paz,” or “We Want Peace,” on one of them. There were no soldiers visible as hundreds of people milled around, waiting in the hot sun to accompany the aid — which had not arrived.

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Venezuelans riding on aid trucks, in Cúcuta, Colombia.Credit...Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda/EPA, via Shutterstock

But soon, a vanguard of activists in blue berets and holding white flowers linked arms in a chain. In the sweltering heat, the flowers had started to wilt — but the music was blaring and the energy had picked up.

“No one can stop this from passing now,” said Wilmer Azuaje, an opposition politician who was leading the crowd with a megaphone.

In a video posted on social media, María Teresa Belandria, Mr. Guaidó’s envoy in Brazil, said the opposition managed to get a truck with humanitarian aid across the border town of Pacaraima in northern Brazil shortly before 11 a.m.

“We did it,” she said. “This is a major victory.”

On the southern border with Brazil, the violence turned deadly. In Santa Elena de Uairén, the National Guard fired tear gas and live ammunition at civilians and charged against them in armed vehicles, said opposition lawmaker Américo de Grazia. At least two protesters were killed in the clashes at the Brazilian border, hospital officials said.

The crackdown is in reprisal for the “triumphant entry” of aid across the border with Brazil, he said. About 15 people were injured and taken to the hospital there.

— Nicholas Casey, Ernesto Londoño and Megan Specia

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Protesters run for cover from tear gas in Ureña, a border town with Colombia, on Saturday.Credit...Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

Just after dawn in the Venezuelan border town of Ureña, local residents defied the orders of the government and tried to storm a closed footbridge to Colombia, hoping to make way for humanitarian aid to pass.

Members of the Venezuela National Guard fired tear gas on the group as some attempted to remove fencing and barriers blocking the bridge.

The standoff between stone-throwing bare-chested youth, many with their faces covered, and lines of military police was reminiscent of waves of deadly anti-government protests that gripped the country in 2014 and 2017.

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Venezuelans clashing with national guards in the border town of Urena on Saturday.Credit...Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A group of about 300 mostly female protesters, known as “Women in White” had gathered to march on the bridge to Colombia. Elsewhere in Ureña, protesters stormed a school occupied by about 100 government militia members, mostly retirees, and forced them to surrender. Some joined the protesters. One militiamen was seriously injured after falling while trying to flee.

Opposition leaders, who had planned an organized march, said this is not what they wanted. Some local residents agreed.

“This is not the way to do it,” said Humberto Manrique, a Ureña resident, as he watched masked youths burning tires and setting fire to buses in front of a National Guard cordon.

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Memebers of Venezuela’s National Guard detained a man.Credit...Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press

The opposition leader, Mr. Guaidó, posted on Twitter that several members of the National Guard assigned to the Simón Bolívar International Bridge that connects Venezuela and Colombia have joined the opposition. He posted a video showing three men wearing Venezuelan military police uniforms being escorted by a police officer on the Colombian side of the border.

“They have decided to stand on the side of the people and the Constitution!” he wrote in another tweet. “Welcome! The arrival of freedom and democracy to Venezuela is already unstoppable.”

A video posted later showed the four men detailing their reasons for defection before urging others to join them.

“We are fathers, we are sons,” one of the men said. “We’ve had enough of so much uncertainty.”

— Anatoly Kurmanaev, Megan Specia and Juliana Barbassa

Security forces on Friday fired on a group of indigenous Venezuelans, who were protesting near the border with Brazil against Mr. Maduro’s decision to block aid.

At least two civilians were killed and more than a dozen wounded in the confrontation in the Gran Sabana area, according to Américo de Grazia, an opposition lawmaker from the state of Bolívar. The Gran Sabana area is inhabited by the Pemón, an indigenous community.

Ricardo Delgado, a Pemón leader, said the tensions that led to the confrontation began in the early morning when a military convoy tried to reach a checkpoint on the border as reinforcement. A group of indigenous protesters blocked their passage. The convoy left but later returned and the military began shooting at the protesters. — Ana Vanessa Herrero

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Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

For days, the humanitarian aid has been stockpiled on the Colombian side of the border with Venezuela, warehoused near a bridge in the major border town of Cúcuta. The Venezuelan authorities have blocked lanes on the bridge with tanker trucks to prevent the aid from being brought across.

Two competing concerts have added to the dramatic scene.

On Friday morning, thousands of Venezuelans streamed across footbridges to Cúcuta, to attend the opposition-supported Venezuela Live Aid concert organized by the billionaire Richard Branson. The event was aimed at raising money for food and medical supplies.

The presidents of Colombia, Chile and Paraguay attended the concert, rallying support for the opposition and calling for an end to Mr. Maduro’s presidency.

“Maduro is part of the problem and not part of the solution,” President Sebastián Piñera of Chile told the crowd. “Democracy is the solution for Venezuela.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Maduro’s government had plans for rival concerts over the weekend on the Venezuelan side of the border. — Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ana Vanessa Herrero and Nicholas Casey

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