CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) — Three members of the Venezuelan National Guard defected Saturday at Venezuela’s border with Colombia, the Colombian immigration department said.

The troops abandoned their posts at the Simon Bolivar International Bridge on the Colombia-Venezuela border and requested help from Colombia’s immigration officials.

Also Saturday, soldiers with Venezuela’s National Guard fired tear gas at workers who were demanding to cross the border at Ureña into Colombia to work, according to a CNN crew that witnessed the scene at the Tienditas Bridge.

The workers faced off with the soldiers, chanting, “we want to work!” before being dispersed by the tear gas. Men with shirts covering their faces started throwing rocks toward the guard.

These tense scenes played out Saturday, a day after violence broke out at a Venezuelan town near the border with Brazil over aid delivery, leaving two people dead and 17 others injured, local authorities said.

Tensions are running high at Venezuela’s borders amid opposition plans to usher aid into the country this weekend in defiance of President Nicolas Maduro’s wishes. Maduro called on Venezuelans to “mobilize” Saturday. “Let’s all take to the streets to defend our independence with conscience and joy,” Maduro said on his official Twitter account. US argues momentum for change in Venezuela is growing despite border violence On Friday, a standoff occurred between a local indigenous community and the military over aid delivery near Gran Sabana, on the Brazil-Venezuela border, said the town’s mayor, Emilio Gonzalez. He told CNN the military opened fire on an indigenous group trying to facilitate the passage of aid into Venezuela. Gonzalez said soldiers shot and killed a 34-year-old indigenous Venezuelan woman and injured 17 others. National Assembly member Americo De Grazia said on his official Twitter feed that two people had died. The second victim was an indigenous man, according to De Grazia. Gonzalez said indigenous guards detained 27 Venezuelan military members. Venezuela’s Ministry of Defense told CNN it had no information on the incident. </s> The Venezuelan National Guard (GNB) clashed with citizens in Urena, Venezuela, on the border with Colombia.

Protesters threw projectiles at the armed forces, who replied by firing in their directions.

The armed forces closed a road to control the border and prevent humanitarian aid, which has been stockpiled for days on the Colombian side of the border, to enter Venezuela.

The aid has been sent by Colombia and the US to help Venezuelan citizens, who are suffering from widespread shortages of food and medicine caused by an economic crisis.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro denies that the country is economically struggling and has refused that aid crosses the border into Venezuela, shutting the country's border with Brazil and blocking the border with Colombia with shipping containers. </s> Cucuta, Colombia, Feb 23 (EFE).- Venezuela’s National Police on Saturday impeded a human cordon that formed on a border crossing to accompany several trucks carrying humanitarian aid from this northeastern Colombia city.



In blocking the aid deliveries, the security forces fired tear gas at hundreds of civilians who had taken up positions on the Simon Bolivar International Bridge in the early-morning hours.



The civilians, who had demanded that the aid be allowed to cross and also called on the police to abandon their posts, responded by throwing rocks at the security forces.



Colombia’s police did not intervene in the conflict and remained positioned at the Migracion Colombia (migration agency) posts set up on that bridge to control the movement of people and goods across the border.



Several members of the National Police who were assigned to that border crossing deserted on Saturday and crossed over to the Colombian side of the frontier.



Several Colombian police escorted their Venezuelan counterparts to the other side amid the applause of Venezuelans gathered in the area.

 Migracion Colombia confirmed that at least 11 members of Venezuela’s National Guard and two police deserted on Saturday amid the attempts to deliver humanitarian aid from Colombia to Venezuela, which has been racked by severe food and medicine shortages and hyperinflation.



“At this time, Migracion Colombia, in Norte de Santander province, is expediting interviews with 10 members of the Venezuelan National Guard and two women with the Bolivarian National Police who arrived in the country fleeing Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship,” that migration agency said.



One other member of Venezuela’s security forces deserted and crossed the border into the northeastern Colombian province of Arauca, according to the official report.



These isolated instances notwithstanding, the vast majority of Venezuela’s armed forces have remained loyal to leftist President Nicolas Maduro.



Separately, Venezuelan authorities on Saturday blocked the entry of trucks being used to carry humanitarian aid over two other border crossings – the Francisco de Paula Santander and Tienditas bridges.



They fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators on both of those bridges.



The speaker of Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly, Juan Guaido, who proclaimed himself interim president last month, traveled to Cucuta on Friday for a massive aid concert organized by British businessman Richard Branson and also to receive the international humanitarian aid stockpiled in Colombia.



He said Saturday that the trucks carrying the aid from Colombia were already in Venezuelan territory but that the leftist government was impeding their advance.



“The usurper regime is blocking (the trucks). They can’t deal with our irreversible decision to live in freedom,” Guaido wrote on Twitter.



The opposition leader said earlier Saturday that humanitarian aid trucks had entered Venezuela via that country’s border with Brazil.



Maduro has ordered both of those borders closed, saying that the humanitarian aid is a Trojan horse for a US-led military intervention.



Venezuela’s opposition, as well as the United States and much of the international community, regards Maduro’s May 2018 re-election victory to be fraudulent.



The US has also imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry in a bid to expedite regime change.



The major European nations – save Italy – also are among the roughly 50 governments that have recognized Guaido.



Several dozen other countries, including Russia, China and India, continue to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s president. </s> Clashes erupted between protesters and members of the Venezuelan National Guard at the Colombia-Venezuela border on February 24, local media said. The Venezuelan government had ordered the closure of the border to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid, El Nuevo Herald reported. At least two people were killed and dozens wounded in border clashes on February 23, Colombian media reported. Footage here was captured by local reporter Gabriela Gonzalez and shows protesters on a bridge at the border between the towns of Ureña, Venezuela, and Cúcuta, Colombia, on February 24. Debris and a damaged vehicle are seen. Credit: Gabriela Gonzalez via Storyful </s> CUCUTA, Colombia/URENA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan troops fired tear gas at angry protesters unable to cross into Colombia on Saturday after President Nicolas Maduro closed the border to stop the opposition bringing U.S. humanitarian aid into the South American nation.

Demonstrators set up barricades and burned tires in the Venezuelan border town of Urena, as attention turned to whether National Guard troops stationed at the border crossing would fulfill Maduro’s orders to block humanitarian aid from reaching a sick and hungry population.

Four National Guard troops at the frontier disavowed Maduro’s socialist government on Saturday, following an appeal from Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to let aid through.

A social media video showed the troops driving armored vehicles across a bridge linking the two countries, knocking over metal barricades in the process, and then jumping out of the vehicles and running to the Colombian side.

“Among the troops, whether they are in the army, air force, navy or National Guard, many people disagree (with what is happening),” one of the troops, an officer whose uniform carried the name Linarez, told reporters after entering Colombia, according to another video on social media. “You can’t say anything against the government. It’s treason.”

Colombia’s migration authority confirmed the defection of the four Venezuelan soldiers.

Leaders of Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party call the aid effort a veiled invasion backed by Washington, and insist that the United States should instead help Venezuela by lifting crippling financial and oil sector sanctions.

Venezuela’s opposition says that while the need for basic food and medicines is desperate, the aid operation is also meant to embarrass military officers who continue to support Maduro’s increasingly isolated government.

Demonstrators in Urena who blocked roads and burned tires also threw rocks at security forces who responded with volleys of tear gas.

The troops had earlier blocked people from crossing the border into Cucuta, where many Venezuelans now work, shop or send their children to school amid Venezuela’s continued economic collapse.

“We were all going to work. We want to work: the people attempted to force their way through,” said Viviana Meza, 29, who works in a Cucuta restaurant.

Guaido, recognized by most Western nations as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state, defied court orders not to leave the country when he traveled on Friday to Cucuta, where aid from the U.S. and Colombian governments is stockpiled in warehouses.

Guaido was due to hold a news conference with the presidents of Colombia, Chile and Paraguay in Cucuta on Saturday morning before escorting the aid toward the border on foot.

A line of heavy trucks packed with aid supplies waited to attempt the crossing, in front of rows of television cameras.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton canceled plans to travel to South Korea to prepare for a summit addressing North Korea’s nuclear program in order to focus instead on events unfolding in Venezuela, his spokesman said on Friday.

“To Maduro’s military cronies attacking civilians at the Brazilian border - the world is watching and the perpetrators will face justice,” Bolton wrote on Twitter. “The Venezuelan military should protect civilians, not shoot them.

Guaido, 35, head of the opposition-run Congress, has provided few details on the transport plan. Trucks are expected to be driven by Venezuelan volunteers and some opposition figures have suggested forming human chains.

Maduro blames the country’s dire situation on U.S. sanctions that have blocked the country from obtaining financing and have hobbled the OPEC nation’s oil industry.

Concerns about the potential for violence flared on Friday when the Venezuelan army opened fire in an village near the Brazilian border after indigenous leaders attempted to prevent them from advancing, killing a woman and her husband.

The U.S. government condemned the killings.

The U.S. envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, who traveled to Cucuta on Friday, called them “a crime and a disgrace”, while the U.S. State Department said “egregious violation of human rights by Maduro and those who are following his orders will not go unpunished.”

Venezuelan troops on Saturday morning had blocked the Brazilian border despite protests by villagers in the nearby town of Santa Elena de Uairen who burned a bus, a truck and a National Guard office overnight.

“The situation is critical and we should be all united to allow the aid to pass,” said shopkeeper Jeremy Ortega, 21.

Brazil sent two small trucks with food and medicine to the border on Saturday, after the border closure foiled its plan to have more Venezuelans drive vehicles to pick up the 200 tonnes of aid it has stockpiled in the northern city of Boa Vista.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo urged Venezuela’s military to let the trucks in.

Nearly 200,000 people attended a benefit concert in Cucuta on Friday featuring Latin pop stars, including Luis Fonsi of “Despacito” fame, many of whom called on Maduro to step down.

A rival concert held by the ruling Socialist Party on the Venezuelan side was sparsely attended.

Guaido in January invoked articles of the constitution to assume interim presidency and denounced Maduro as a usurper, arguing his 2018 re-election was illegitimate. </s> Volunteers make a human chain to prepare for the arrival of aid at the foot of the Simón Bolívar International Bridge near Cúcuta, Colombia, on Feb. 23, 2019.

It started with smiling faces waving white roses and strangers linking arms with one another on Saturday. Then, thousands of supporters of Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president, climbed aboard flatbeds loaded with bags of rice, bandages and wheelchairs for their compatriots in need. Others swarmed the cabs. The engines started. With blazing sunlight beating down on them, they headed for the border.

This is the scene of the Venezuelan opposition’s challenge to strongman, and current President, Nicolas Maduro’s legitimacy. In a sticky, humid valley speckled with palm trees and dusty yellow roads, thousands of Venezuelans prepared to join caravans hauling tons of aid destined for their counterparts on the other side of the Venezuela-Colombia border.

“The idea is to talk to them first,” said 33-year-old Elio Herrera from the Tienditas bridge outside of Cúcuta, Colombia, home to the opposition’s main headquarters and where the aid was stored in warehouses. The Tienditas bridge is one of the bridges where the opposition hoped to ferry aid, but didn’t try because of the blockade. “We hope they won’t impede. The military over there is suffering just as much as all of Venezuela. If they do block us, then they’re basically complicit in a murder.”

The chance to talk seems to have passed. After arriving at the border crossings, this U.S.-backed effort to deliver tons of aid to relieve Venezuelans reeling from a political and economic crisis quickly devolved into violent clashes along the outskirts of Cúcuta, on Venezuela’s western border. At least 86 people were reported injured, according to Colombia’s National Disaster Unit. Two others were reported dead in a separate clash on the Venezuela-Brazil border.

At the border, aid caravans pressed through crowds along narrow two-lane bridges. But their momentum was halted when the Venezuelan army blocked the pass and fired canisters of tear gas into the trucks’ path. Protesters gathered and swarmed, clogging the crossings.

Atop one of the flatbeds, 29-year-old Neyerson Cisneros from Caracas insisted he would wait out the regime’s resistance for as long as it takes to get the aid in. “Depends,” he told TIME. “Four? Five? Six days? We’ll stay here until the aid gets in.”

“We’re tired of this Maduro staying in power,” said 27-year-old Yesica, an aid activist from Barquisimeto, as her fellow marcher piled rocks into the remains of a beat-up suitcase. He then dragged his load toward the center of Simon Bolivar bridge, another site of an attempted aid crossing, where others slung bricks and buried their faces in rags to fend off tear gas canisters returned by Venezuelan security forces.

Relentlessly the activists fought as the aid sat under canvas tarps and shouting buried the idling truck engines.

“We don’t want any more dictatorship,” said 35-year-old William Leal from Tachira state in Venezuela. “We don’t have anything. We’re dying from hunger.”

“They blocked us off,” 24-year-old Yondri from Caracas said about the aid impasse as he squinted through a homemade blue balaclava. “But we’ll keep fighting. We’re not going to give up that easily.”

Guaidó said on Saturday: “We’re not going to rest. We’re keeping all our cards on the table.”

Both sides seemed to dig in for what could be a prolonged confrontation. And yet fighting was never the plan.

Opposition leader Guaidó broke a travel ban Friday evening and crossed into Colombia. There, he joined Colombian President Iván Duque and Chilean President Sebastian Piñera to rally anti-Maduro supporters, in what he hoped would be a peaceful delivery of aid to opposition members on the other side of the border. He called for the military backing Maduro to rebel against the installed President’s orders, something he and other opposition leaders have appealed for in recent weeks.

“It’s clearly a loyalty test where the opposition, with the help of the United States, is throwing everything they’ve got, hoping Maduro will fall,” says Geoff Ramsey, assistant director of the Venezuela program at the Washington Office of Latin America.

Guaidó’s hope was that Venezuelan security forces guarding the border checkpoints would defect en masse once the aid trucks arrived at the border. Although some military figures did defect on Saturday, the strategy of triggering widespread defections seems to have been stymied.

“Their thrust is to turn more military figures. But the military who are truly positioned to remove Maduro seem to be staying with him,” added Ramsey.

Over 3 million have fled their homes since 2014 to escape Maduro’s Venezuela, where the right to dissent is illegal and its economy is plagued by obscene hyperinflation. A minimum wage monthly salary fails to buy even a bottle of breastmilk formula.

Elected in 2013, Maduro insists the crisis is manufactured, economic warfare authored by the United States. He points to U.S. sanctions on his loyalists and the state oil company as evidence.

Meanwhile, opposition leaders point to a slow disintegration of democratic institutions starting with Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s charismatic predecessor. Chávez was elected to office in 1998 and promoted a socialist project he hoped would spread throughout the continent. Although extreme poverty and infant mortality fell during his term, Chávez’s unbridled spending on social programs and mismanagement of the country’s currency set the stage for instability. In 2014, one year after Chávez’s death, Venezuela’s oil-based economy collapsed when the price of crude oil bottomed out.

That collapse is what Guaidó is trying to leverage against Maduro. In January, as the leader of Venezuela’s parliament, Guaidó invoked authority embedded in the country’s constitution and declared himself interim President. His touted goal is to lead a transition where Maduro would step down from power and hold free and fair elections.

Saturday’s clashes were reminiscent of earlier protests between anti-Maduro opposition and pro-government Chavistas. In 2017, clashes left 165 dead and the affair deepened hostilities on both sides, when neither would accept responsibility for the deaths.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump declared the “twilight of socialism” and urged Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro or “lose everything.” Maduro fired rebukes that the aid operation is a “show” and calls the caravans a trojan horse loaded with “contaminated” food. More, he defended his belief that Guaidó’s support for the aid is part of a U.S. conspiracy to invade Venezuela.

Trump and his advisors have hinted that a military option is on the table. “The problem is that (military involvement) could very easily lead to conflict,” says Ramsey.

“People like to point to Panamá or Granada,” he says, referring to swift and short-lived U.S. military interventions in the Western hemisphere. “But this could turn into Libya or Iraq.”

A clash on Saturday between pro-opposition aid backers and the Venezuelan National Guard on Ureña bridge, north of Cúcuta caused aid to burn. Black smoke billowed into the blue sky. The number of injured rose from the confrontations and opposition leaders called their aid trucks back to the warehouses. International humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR and Oxfam condemned Venezuelan opposition leaders for politicizing the aid effort.

Some pro-opposition marchers want to get more political. They think military intervention is the way to go.

“We feel like France in the second World War when they were waiting for the Allies to come,” said Carlos Molina Tamayo, a former Venezuelan admiral living in exile after participating in a failed attempt to remove Chavez from power in 2002.

TIME asked the former admiral what would happen if the aid doesn’t get allowed in.

“The next step is international intervention with military force to protect the humanitarian aid,” he says, his graying hair waving in the strong breeze on Tienditas bridge this afternoon.

“It’s going to be like rock n’ roll.” </s> Unrest in Venezuela is intensifying at border crossings with Colombia after embattled President Nicolas Maduro declared the borders with both Colombia and Brazil closed late this week, and after violence at a town near the border with Brazil left two dead and 17 injured when national guard soldiers opened fire on a group of civilians attempting to keep open a segment of the southern border with Brazil for deliveries of humanitarian aid.

On Saturday CNN crews filmed confrontations between protesters and Venezuela's National Guard at Ureña near Colombia over demands of workers to cross into the neighboring country to work.

"We want to work!" protesters chanted before being dispersed by tear gas and rubber bullets, after which the crowd hurled stones at the soldiers. Some among the crowed tried to dismantle a metal barrier blocking the Simon Bolivar international bridge, one of three major cross-border bridges near Urena, one of which has never been opened and was used by the US administration to claim Maduro had blockaded the country against outside aid.

It's also at this location that three members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) defected to the Colombian side on Saturday morning, later confirmed by Colombian authorities, but condemned by Caracas as an act orchestrated and staged by the opposition.

Tensions appear to be coming to head this weekend as previously US-backed Juan Guaido promised to personally lead caravans to ensure aid is brought in from both Colombia and Brazil, in order to undermine and otherthrow the Maduro government.

Footage emerged on Saturday which appears to confirm that "Interim President" Guaido is present at the Tienditas International Bridge which connects Tachira, Venezuela with Norte de Santander, Colombia.

Guaido is vowing to break the border blockade by personally entering Venezuela with an aid convoy.

He's reportedly there with with Colombian president, Iván Duque and President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera — all of which are promising to facilitate the entry of aid.

Meanwhile as unrest at multiple border towns in Venezuela grows, Maduro called on Venezuelans to "mobilize" Saturday.

"Let's all take to the streets to defend our independence with conscience and joy," Maduro said via his official Twitter account.

This further comes a day after British billionaire Richard Branson sponsored a Live Aid-inspired show in Cucuta, Colombia, involving popular Latin American singers and appearances by the presidents of Colombia, Chile, and Paraguay.

Guaido himself also made a surprise appearance at the end of the concert in defiance of a ban on him leaving Venezuela.

According to the AP, Guaido may have traveled across the border on a Colombian air force helicopter:

Last week, Guaido warned that Maduro had until February 23 to allow aid into the country, which in the US was echoed by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who told Axios on Wednesday that Saturday could ultimately decide the fate of Maduro as the standoff over aid comes to a head, given the opposition is ready to force the issue in as visible way as possible.

The provocative actions to undermine Maduro's power have been acknowledged as just that by the opposition, who've recently openly stated that the "humanitarian channel" is a direct political jab at Caracas. Though the tons of much needed aid, including food and medicine supplies, is reportedly piling up along border points especially in Colombia, it's anything but merely "benevolent" - the opposition acknowledges.

"The impact of the humanitarian aid is highly political," Juan Miguel Matheus, an MP for the opposition told CNN earlier this week. "Our first and primary goal is to provide relief for the Venezuelan population, but after that, with this move we want to checkmate Maduro."

"If the aid gets in, Maduro is shown to have lost control of the situation; if it doesn't get in, we show that Maduro doesn't care for the suffering of the people," he added.

The spotlight also remains this weekend on Cucuta, where US aid shipments are being delivered via US Air Force planes and staged for delivery. Meanwhile national security adviser John Bolton has canceled a planned trip to South Korea to "focus on events in Venezuela." </s> Sen. Marco Rubio and coup leaders claim the Venezuelan National Guard burned US aid trucks on the bridge in Colombia. But all available evidence points in the opposite direction.The Trump administration's coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID "humanitarian aid" across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge (also know as the Puente Binacional Tienditas) connecting Colombia to Venezuela.The trucks failed to reach the other side - but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border, explained to journalist Dan Cohen , the humanitarian "aid" was a purely symbolic provocation aimed at discrediting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in international eyes and generating waves of destabilizing violence.By the end of the day, the trucks lined up on the Francisca de Paula Santander bridge were flanked by gangs of guarimberos.These were the nihilistic masked youth who form the shock troops of the right-wing opposition, and who placed Caracas under siege with violent barricade protests, known as guarimbas, at several points between 2014 and 2017. A mob of guarimberos burned to death Orlando Figuera, a 22-year old black Venezuelan accused of supporting Maduro, on an eastern Caracas street in broad daylight, back in June 2017.On the Santander bridge this February 23, the guarimberos rained down a hail of rocks and molotov cocktails on Venezuelan national guardsmen holding the line against the USAID trucks. Suddenly, the trucks caught fire and the masked youth began unloading boxes of aid before they burned. Within minutes, pro-opposition media reported that the Venezuelan national guard forces were responsible for the fires.A reporter for the private anti-government channel NTN24 claimed without evidence that the Venezuelan security forces had caused the fires with tear gas:The claim was absurd on its face. I have personally witnessed tear gas canisters hit every kind of vehicle imaginable in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and I have never seen a fire like the one that erupted on the Santander bridge.In 2013, the San Bernadino Sheriff's Department deployed special incendiary teargas canisters ("burners") to torch the house where fugitive cop killer Chris Dorner had holed up. But it is highly unlikely that the Venezuelan national guardsmen had anything like this weapon in their arsenal when they confronted the rioters on February 23.The total lack of evidence of Venezuelan culpability did not stop Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio from tweeting this accusation from nearby in Cucuta, Colombia:Sen. Dianne Feinstein , who is facing calls for her own resignation after video appeared of her condescendingly browbeating a group of environmentalist children, repeated Rubio's baseless allegation, using it to call for Maduro to step down.Yet neither he nor anyone in the "whole world" had seen the national guard set the fire, as he claimed. In fact, the evidence pointed in the exact opposite direction, suggesting that the masked opposition youth had torched the trucks themselves.Colombian writer Humberto Ortiz produced footage from a pro-opposition channel showing what appears to be the exact moment when a guarimbero sets the aid on fire with a molotov cocktail:Telesur reporter Madelein Garcia published photographs showing a guarimbero with a gas canister next to one of the burning trucks:Meanwhile, the International Red Cross issued a statement condemning Venezuelan opposition activists disguising themselves as Red Cross workers - a blatant breach of humanitarian protocol. A screenshot from pro-opposition NTN24 coverage shows a fake Red Cross worker near one of the burning trucks:Days ago, self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido announced that he would lead a "human wave" across the bridge and into Venezuela. But as darkness fell on February 23, Guaido found himself at a stormy press conference with other right-wing, US-aligned Latin American leaders. By his side was Colombian President Ivan Duque, who repeated thethat Venezuelan security forces had burned the aid trucks.Having failed miserably at every phase of the coup he had attempted engineer, Rubio ended the day with a Twitter tantrum that peaked with a call for " multilateral actions " against Venezuela's government. What form that action could take is still unclear, but it will certainly be justified by a series of baseless claims about what took place on the Santander bridge. </s> This story was originally published in Spanish by Rolling Stone Colombia‘s editors. Read the original Spanish version here.

Update 2/23/18: The moment of music had long passed, and now it was nearing 7 a.m. on Saturday and the Colombian authorities were preparing to pass humanitarian aid to Venezuela. The night before, however, Delcy Rodríguez, vice president of Venezuela, announwced the closure of the Simón Bolívar, Unión and Santander bridges for “the serious and illegal threats attempted by the Government of Colombia against La Paz.”

By 8 a.m., members of the Bolivarian National Guard had already deserted, but Venezuelan soldiers, who prevented their passage to their country, guarded the same border. In Ureña, one of the municipalities closest to the Colombian-Venezuelan border, there were protests and clashes between citizens — who demanded the passage of humanitarian aid — and the military that was preventing it.

Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, handed aid over to Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s opposition leader, at a press conference, and Guaidó said: “We ask the Venezuelan military to stand on the right side and receive their brothers who are taking help to serve the people of Venezuela.” The tractors that loaded all the supplies arrived at the Simón Bolívar bridge, where hundreds of volunteers were preparing to pass humanitarian aid through a human chain.

During a demonstration in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro announced that he was breaking political and diplomatic relations with Colombia, giving all diplomatic personnel 24 hours to leave Venezuela. As the hours wore on, there were reports that at least 23 members of the Venezuelan military and police defected at the borders. Convoys of trucks carrying food aid and medical supplies set off for Venezuela from border towns in Colombia and Brazil. Volunteers, protestors and opposition leaders were met with teargas and rubber bullets, and at least three aid trucks near the Colombian border were burned.

CÚCUTA, COLOMBIA 2/22/18 — Friday’s Venezuela Aid Live, according to its website (where people can still donate), sought to bring humanitarian aid that’s in Colombia across the border to reach the most-affected Venezuelans, raise awareness of the situation in Venezuela and raise funds for a social development plan with which expatriates could return to their country.

Reymar Perdomo opened the concert with “Me Fui,” a song that has become a hymn for Venezuelan expatriates with a video that went viral in Latin America. Perdomo is Venezuelan and has been living in Lima, Peru, playing and singing in buses.

After the performance, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin and organizer of the festival, gave a speech in which he thanked the attendees for being in Cúcuta to celebrate the lives of all Venezuelans. “If we can take people into space, why is it so difficult to get people out of poverty?” he said. People chanted: “Richard, Richard, Richard!” To speed up the change of artists on the stage, there was a revolving platform: As the musicians were playing on one side, the instruments of the next were mounted.

Jose Luis Rodriguez, “El Puma,” came out and started with a very clear message. “Thanks to dear Colombia and the United States,” he said, adding, “Enough of left-wing dictatorships in Latin America!” Already the political game was installed from the beginning. He sang “Agárrense las manos/Hold Your Hands” with an instrumental track and no band.

Reinaldo Armas, Cholo Valderrama and Jorge Glem arrived to dance at the tip of llanera music. Then came Jencarlos Canela with his success “Bajito,” while improvising phrases that invited people to donate, and Danny Ocean, wearing a T-shirt that depicted Mandela eating arepa, started dancing with “Dembow” and “Me rehúso/I refuse.”

Later in the afternoon, the most anticipated names came out. Paulina Rubio brought her pop and Diego Torres sang, as would be expected, “Color Esperanza/Color of Hope.” Silvestre Dangond started the party again and Maluma, accompanied only on guitar, followed in the midst of shouts from fans.

Miguel Bosé, who was at the border 11 years ago for the Concert for Peace that Juanes organized, filled the Tienditas Bridge with emotion and tears. Then, Carlos Baute landed with “Te regalo” and, obviously, “Yo me quedo en Venezuela (I Stay in Venezuela).” Luis Fonsi finished with “Despacito” and then Juan Luis Guerra showed all his experience with “I hope it rains coffee.” Fonseca sang “Te Mando Flores/I Sent You Flowers” and gave way to Carlos Vives.

While there was a party on one side — with attendees singing on the border between Venezuela and Brazil at the Tienditas Bridge — in the state of Bolívar, two indigenous people died at the hands of the Bolivarian National Guard, according to the NGO Kapé Kapé. According Semana magazine, they were trying to keep a road open to allow the entry of humanitarian aid when special forces broke in. In addition to the two deceased, there were also 15 injured.

After 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the Venezuelan concert finally began. Composed mainly of Venezuelan artists related to the government of Maduro — such as Paul Gillman, who sang “Resistiré,” while waving the flag of his country, and Skaracas — it was also known that Grupo Niche refused to play in the “Hands Off Venezuela” concert.

Looking primarily at the music presentations, Venezuela Aid Live left much to be desired due to technical problems, instrument issues, the many instrumental tracks used and the crowd area being far from the stage. Sure, people enjoyed it, and the real goal was beyond the shows. If Branson wanted to put the eyes of the world on the border, he succeeded.

The news agencies were reporting live from Cúcuta, with journalists from all over Latin America in attendance, along with the United States, Canada, Portugal and Spain and other countries. The speeches by several of the artists against Maduro sent a clear message that would surely annoy Roger Waters. Tomorrow it will be seen if humanitarian aid finally crosses the border. </s> ARAUCA/CUCUTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Venezuela’s crisis is spilling across the border into Colombia as Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries recruit migrants to strengthen their ranks, according to five Colombian military commanders.

FILE PHOTO: People walk along a pathway near the Colombian-Venezuelan border on the outskirts of Cucuta, Colombia June 10, 2019. REUTERS/Juan Pablo Bayona/File Photo

Violence still simmers in Colombia despite a 2016 peace deal with leftist FARC rebels, meant to end five decades of conflict. Dissident FARC fighters, the rebel National Liberation Army (ELN), right-wing paramilitaries and drug-trafficking gangs are battling each other and the military.

Keen for recruits, these armed groups are targeting Venezuelans as they traverse the porous 2,219-km (1,380-mile)frontier at illegal border crossings, according to the military officials, human rights officials and migrants themselves.

Five military commanders told Reuters that as many as 30% of insurgents in Colombia’s eastern border region are Venezuelans, willing to take up arms in return for food and pay.

“Recruitment of Venezuelans is happening,” said Colonel Arnulfo Traslavina, military commander of a special unit battling armed groups in Colombia’s eastern border state of Arauca. “The ranks of illegal armed groups are increasing. It’s a major threat to Colombia.”

Nationwide, an estimated 10% of fighters are Venezuelan, the commanders said. Their estimates were based on information from informants, deserters, captured rebels and residents.

Reuters was not able to independently verify these figures.

The head of Colombia’s military and government spokesman on this issue, General Luis Fernando Navarro, told Reuters that armed groups were targeting Venezuelans because they were easier to recruit than Colombians.

At the last official count by military intelligence in May, there were 2,296 FARC dissident combatants and 2,402 fighters from the ELN in Colombia. Including their urban offshoots, the two groups total nearly 8,400 members.

Rebel numbers are small compared with the 250,000 combat troops in the armed forces but Colombia’s rugged jungle terrain - spread across a country the size of France and Spain - makes it difficult for the military to tackle small, mobile units of fighters.

The military officers say they had interrogated some Venezuelans who had defected from armed groups and identified Venezuelan nationals killed in combat. They did not provide a total number for Venezuelan casualties.

Reuters was not able independently to confirm the information provided by the commanders or speak directly to any Venezuelans who had been recruited by an armed group.

Several Venezuelan migrants told Reuters they had been approached by armed groups for recruitment on entering Colombia.

“They said I’d get clothes, food, money, accommodation, a cell phone,” said Gregorio, a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant who said he was asked to join an unspecified group in the mountains as soon as he waded across the Tachira River onto Colombian soil.

“I was tempted, but scared... I’d been told there were bad people offering such things and I didn’t want to join,” said Gregorio, who declined to give his second name for fear of reprisals.

An estimated 1.3 million Venezuelan migrants have settled in Colombia in recent years, fleeing shortages of food, electricity and water as the South American nation has seen its economy unravel amid a bloody political confrontation.

Most Venezuelans do not come to Colombia to enlist in insurgent groups but with almost nothing in their pockets, the prospect of food and shelter is enticing, said Deisson Marino, human rights ombudsman for the border region of Arauca.

“They end up enrolled in a war that has nothing to do with them,” said Marino, whose job involves traveling to remote areas and speaking to victims of the conflict and armed groups.

RECRUITING IN VENEZUELA

Colombia’s Defense Minister Guillermo Botero has said the military has more than doubled operations against armed groups since President Ivan Duque took office in August, looking to tackle a rise in illicit drug production and trafficking. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.

“The ELN has been retreating - at least its leadership - to Venezuela where it’s recruiting for greater strength, to attack us,” Botero said recently.

A FARC dissident, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters the group was also present on Venezuelan soil and was recruiting Venezuelans.

The Venezuelan information ministry - which handles media enquiries for the government - did not respond to a request for comment about the conscription of Venezuelans by Colombia’s armed groups.

Venezuela’s government has acknowledged that the ELN and dissident FARC are present on its territory. It has said it does not support the groups or tolerate their presence, and that its troops pursue them as they would any other illegal group.

Representatives of the ELN did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The FARC, which became a political party after the peace deal and kept its former acronym, has publicly expelled the armed dissidents.

Since it was founded in 1964, the ELN has funded itself from kidnapping, drug trafficking and extortion but is increasingly making money from illegal migration, the officials said.

Military officials and rights workers say the ELN and colectivos - shadowy irregular armed groups in Venezuela affiliated with President Nicolas Maduro’s Socialist Party - control most of the crossing points into Colombia and demand payment from migrants and traders.

PICKING COCA

Army Colonel Rodolfo Morales, head of the army’s 30th Brigade in the border town of Cucuta, said migrants were also being drafted by drug trafficking groups to pick coca, the raw material for cocaine.

Antonio, another Venezuelan migrant who declined to give his second name, said that after crossing the border he was offered money by unidentified men to go into the jungles around Tibu - a border town around 115 km north of Cucuta in the dangerous Catatumbo region - to pick coca leaves.

“I’d rather go hungry than go with them,” said the 33-year old from the central Venezuelan state of Carabobo.

Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups, which battled the ELN and FARC for decades, are also recruiting migrants, the military officials said.

The paramilitaries were behind most of the 260,000 killings that occurred during the nation’s half-century conflict and never fully demobilized under a 2006 peace agreement.

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Eddinson, 26, a migrant from Venezuela’s coastal state of Aragua, said he and three other Venezuelans were approached by armed men who identified themselves as paramilitaries as they trekked through the mountains of Santander province near the border.

Eddinson said the leader of the eight armed men - who were dressed in khaki uniforms - tried to recruit them.

“He said that training would last six months. We’d be given salaries according to rank,” said Eddinson, adding that he and the other Venezuelans declined the offer. “He told us that we’d know our start date but not when we could leave.”
Sixty Venezuelan National Guard personnel defect to Colombia; three of them defect after smashing a barrier at the Simón Bolívar International Bridge on the Colombia–Venezuela border in two armored vehicles, leaving some injured. A video posted on social media shows the men with their guns above their heads in a sign of surrender.