[News] Venezuela’s Borderlands Have Been Assaulted by COVID-19

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/venezuelas-borderlands-have-been-assaulted-by-covid-19/
Venezuela’s
Borderlands Have Been Assaulted by COVID-19
by Vijay Prashad, Eduardo Viloria Daboín, Ana Maldonado, and Zoe PC
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/vjydrdnmld9491/>
July 3, 2020
------------------------------

Sixty percent <https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3> of Venezuela’s COVID-19 cases
are in its border states of Apure, Bolívar, Táchira, and Zulia. Roughly
70,000 Venezuelans who had moved to nearby countries of Brazil, Colombia,
Ecuador, and Peru (largely in response to crippling U.S. sanctions) have
returned <https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3> in the last two months via these
Venezuelan border states since the COVID-19 crisis exploded in their new
countries. Abandoned by their new homes during the pandemic, and many of
them infected there, they are now returning in large numbers to Venezuela.

As part of the U.S. government-Lima Group offensive to overthrow the
Venezuelan government led by President Nicolás Maduro, the countries that
neighbor Venezuela began to welcome migrants in order to prove that the
government in Caracas had failed. But as thousands of Venezuelans crossed
the border at these four points—Apure, Bolívar, Táchira, and Zulia—they
found themselves treated in these countries as second-class citizens.
Before the pandemic, many of them were struggling with informal work and
homelessness; when COVID-19 struck South America, and as the governments of
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru utterly failed to tackle the spread of
the disease, the migrants found themselves without social protection and
without access to public health. Many were infected as community
transmission lifted the curve of infections. Unable to get treatment in
their new homes, these Venezuelans began to drift home.

But they were helped along by Colombian paramilitaries and mafia groups (
*trochas*). Freddy Bernal, who is a government representative in Táchira,
said <https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCAFrAoga1k/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link>
that the Venezuelan state has been trying to prevent the illegal smuggling
of Venezuelans into Venezuela. The Venezuelan government welcomes its
citizens, but only through a proper epidemiological screening
<https://tinyurl.com/y8hnd7ry>. The smugglers, who are experienced in
drug-trafficking and paramilitary operations, have used cable cars
<https://www.instagram.com/p/CCAFc6fM_Vh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link> and
trucks
<https://www.instagram.com/p/CCAEY-XgY0Z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link> to
avoid the official border checkpoints, thereby bringing Venezuelans who are
infected with the COVID-19 virus into the country without allowing them to
be properly screened.

The numbers of those infected with coronavirus in the countries that
surround Venezuela are very high: Brazil (1.28 million), Peru (272,000),
Colombia (84,442), and Ecuador (53,856), with a total of more than 1.69
million people infected. Venezuela, meanwhile, has only 4,563 infected
people. The reason why Venezuela’s overall numbers are low is that the
government has followed the World Health Organization recommendations and
employed proven methods to break the chain of infection that government
officials have learned from health care workers and medical experts in
China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia. Of the 4,563 cases in Venezuela, almost
two-thirds <https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3> are in the border states; it is
likely that the reason for this pattern stems from people who have crossed
into the country from the neighboring countries unchecked. Outside the
border states, COVID-19 has nearly been contained, with community
transmission low and with the health care system working hard to heal the
infected.

*Mistreatment of Venezuelans*

On May 21, President Maduro accused
<https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2020/05/21/5ec5c63afdddff7b268b4685.html>
Colombia’s Iván Duque of negligence in his government’s treatment of
Venezuelan migrants. Maduro said Colombia was sending Venezuelan migrants
back to Venezuela on buses that had not been disinfected, and on the buses,
they were not afforded the necessity of physical distancing. At the
Rumichaca bridge that links Ecuador to Colombia, the Colombian police fired
tear gas at Colombian and Venezuelan nationals as they tried
<https://twitter.com/higuerahernan/status/1256013101834686466> to return to
their home countries and escape the runaway pandemic in Ecuador. Unable to
get bus tickets from Ecuador to Venezuela, the Venezuelan migrants were
forced to gather in large groups, sleep outside, and walk—at each point
putting themselves in danger of contagion. None of Venezuela’s neighboring
governments offered any straightforward policy for the migrants to return
home.

Instead, politicians in Colombia who are committed to regime change in
Venezuela began to make the argument that it was the government in Caracas
that would not take its own citizens back home. Carlos Valero, a
congressman for the Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) party (who says in his Twitter
bio that he is “working for Venezuelan migrants”), tweeted
<https://twitter.com/CarlosValero08/status/1270330675326001152> that
“Venezuelans are in these inhumane conditions in public places in Cúcuta[,
Colombia,] after being unable to enter Venezuela” because the Venezuelan
border had been closed. This came after the Colombian government prevented
its own citizens from returning home from Ecuador at the Rumichaca bridge;
and it was during a period when the Venezuelan government welcomed its
citizens home in the thousands. But it allowed the Colombian far right to
play a political game that went along with the U.S. hybrid war and regime
change strategy.

The United States has wrongly used the ideas of the “humanitarian crisis”
and the “migrant crisis” as justifications for regime change against
Venezuela. There is little mention by politicians and the media of the
suffering created by the U.S. unilateral sanctions that caused Venezuelans
to leave their country in the first place, or of the mistreatment of the
Venezuelan migrants in the neighboring countries. Nor is there any
attention to the fact that the majority of Venezuelans who left the country
have returned home—or tried to.

*Venezuela’s Policy on the Border*

Rather than deny Venezuelans’ return to their country, the Venezuelan
government (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela), a variety of social
movements (such as Red Popular de Ayuda Solidaria), community organizers,
and various social missions all mobilized at the border to welcome migrants
and to test them for the coronavirus. Epidemiological checkpoints were
created along the border to protect the country from infection; those who
tested positive were sent to health centers to be treated and to live in
quarantine for two weeks. In Apure State, 300 Venezuelan and 100 Cuban
medical workers created <https://tinyurl.com/y8hnd7ry> 23 Comprehensive
Social Assistance Points (*Puntos de Atención Social Integral*, or PASI) to
conduct these diagnostic tests and to ensure that infected Venezuelans are
prevented from spreading COVID-19 into the general population. In this one
state, there are about 3,400 people in these PASIs, where they are offered
free lodging and food. These posts have been in operation for more than 100
days and have processed at least 14,000 migrants. The infected patients are
treated with chloroquine and interferon.

Venezuela’s rate of infection remains low, despite the U.S. unilateral
sanctions that have denied the country the right to import drugs and tests
for the population. On top of that, Venezuela’s neighbors have denied the
basic human rights of expatriate Venezuelans and sent them—with little
regard for their safety or public health, during a pandemic—back to their
country of origin.

*This article was produced by **Globetrotter*
<https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/>*, a project of the
Independent Media Institute.*
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