Venezuela opposition defies Maduro as aid row deepens

Bloomberg

Venezuelan security forces skirmished with protesters along the Colombian border in clashes over aid shipments between President Nicolas Maduro’s government and US-backed opponents trying to drive him out of power.
National Guard soldiers on Saturday fired volleys of tear gas and plastic pellets at supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who were trying to persuade them to defect and permit tons of food and medicine into the country. The protesters set up barricades of burning tires and hijacked buses, setting them aflame. Others confronted soldiers who formed a wall with plastic shields, pleading with them to let their countrymen march.
“This bridge of unity will help Venezuelans come together,” Guaido said at a news conference Saturday morning next to a warehouse of supplies in Cucuta, Colombia. “Humanitarian aid is on its way to Venezuela in a peaceful manner to save lives.”
The aid initiative is a watershed in Guaido’s campaign to replace Maduro, which began last month. The US says political reforms must follow, while traditional aid groups have shunned the effort as politically tainted.
On Friday, a smaller attempt to deliver aid ended in bloodshed: Venezuelan soldiers killed at least one woman and injured a dozen at the remote southern border with Brazil. Fears ran high that the operation on Saturday will end in more, possibly wider, violence.
Saturday’s flashpoint is a stretch of near-dry riverbed on the Venezuelan frontier near Cucuta. It’s crossed by four narrow international bridges over which Guaido plans to start delivering hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to the near-starving nation within hours. Others will attempt to bring food and medicine from Brazil.
US sanctions on the oil industry, Venezuela’s only real source of hard currency, threaten further suffering in a nation wracked by hyperinflation and hunger. The sanctions are part of a two-pronged approach by Guaido and his US supporters — strip Maduro of cash to buy even the scraps of food he’s been distributing to citizens, then ride to the rescue with critical supplies of their own.
“The military in Venezuela today is still behind Maduro and the question is not, ‘Does Maduro go,’ but is there civil war before that,” Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk research firm Eurasia Group, said on Bloomberg Television. “It’s really tough to make a call as to whether the path towards post-Maduro can be smooth or is going to be desperately violent.”

US Pressure
On Saturday in Caracas, opposition protesters descended on La Carlota military base. And in Pacaraima, Brazil, that nation’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo told reporters that two trucks carrying medicine and food will try to cross the border and that the nation’s “legitimate government” —Guaido’s — would be responsible for distributing it. “We don’t expect any conflict but the army will be ready should anything happen,” he said.
US President Donald Trump has said all options are open if Venezuela continues to block the supplies. Vice President Mike Pence travels to Colombia on Monday to meet with President Ivan Duque and others “to define concrete steps that support the Venezuelan people and a transition to democracy,” his office said.
Late Friday, US National Security Adviser John Bolton canceled a planned trip to South Korea to focus on Venezuela, according to his spokesman. Late Friday Bolton tweeted that “the world is watching” the situation on the Brazilian border. “The Venezuelan military should protect civilians, not shoot them,” he said.

Rice and Beans
This weekend’s confrontations cap a monthlong run of protests and sanctions aimed at unseating Maduro, 56, the hand-picked heir of the late President Hugo Chavez. After Guaido invoked Venezuela’s charter on January 23 to declare himself head of state, the US urged other nations to recognize the 35-year-old as president.
On Friday, the US State Department called on Venezuelan authorities to allow the stores of rice, beans, sugar and salt to enter.