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<div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/venezuelas-borderlands-have-been-assaulted-by-covid-19/" target="_blank">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/venezuelas-borderlands-have-been-assaulted-by-covid-19/</a>
</font><h1>Venezuela’s Borderlands Have Been Assaulted by COVID-19 <br></h1>
<span>by</span> <span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/vjydrdnmld9491/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vijay Prashad, Eduardo Viloria Daboín, Ana Maldonado, and Zoe PC </a><br></span></div><div>July 3, 2020<br></div><div dir="ltr"><span></span>
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<p><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3" target="_blank">Sixty percent</a> 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 <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3" target="_blank">returned</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But they were helped along by Colombian paramilitaries and mafia groups (<i>trochas</i>). Freddy Bernal, who is a government representative in Táchira, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCAFrAoga1k/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link" target="_blank">said</a>
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 <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8hnd7ry" target="_blank">screening</a>. The smugglers, who are experienced in drug-trafficking and paramilitary operations, have used <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CCAFc6fM_Vh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link" target="_blank">cable cars</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CCAEY-XgY0Z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link" target="_blank">trucks</a>
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.</p>
<p>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, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yc76vcp3" target="_blank">almost two-thirds</a>
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.</p>
<p><b>Mistreatment of Venezuelans</b></p>
<p>On May 21, President Maduro <a href="https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2020/05/21/5ec5c63afdddff7b268b4685.html" target="_blank">accused</a>
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 <a href="https://twitter.com/higuerahernan/status/1256013101834686466" target="_blank">tried</a>
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.</p>
<p>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”), <a href="https://twitter.com/CarlosValero08/status/1270330675326001152" target="_blank">tweeted</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><b>Venezuela’s Policy on the Border</b></p>
<p>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 <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8hnd7ry" target="_blank">created</a> 23 Comprehensive Social Assistance Points (<i>Puntos de Atención Social Integral</i>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><i>This article was produced by </i><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/" target="_blank"><i>Globetrotter</i></a><i>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</i></p></div></div></div></div>
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