Tension rise over border closing by Venezuela

The South American nation of Colombia is on maximum alert and its 2,000 mile border following Venezuela’s move to close the border dividing the two nations. Colombian troops are now receiving reinforcements along the mountainous and jungle-covered border between the two countries. Commercial traffic is at a standstill between Colombia and Venezuela which normally have a significant economic exchange.

In late October, 9 Colombians, a Peruvian and a Venezuelan were brutally murdered in Venezuela. Two Venezuelan police officers at El Palotal – a border check point – were also later shot to death on November 3 point-blank by four assassins who subsequently fled. Said border chief of Tachira, Jesus Alberto Berro, in a radio interview, “Closing the border is the response to a series of events that have been terrifying the residents of the region shared by the two countries.”

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro used the occasion to severely criticize the military accord recently reached by Colombia and the United States that permits the latter to use military bases in Colombia for the next ten years. According to Maduro, the Colombia/U.S. agreement not only threatens to destabilize the region, it is also “very serious” that Colombia “should have insisted in the historic mistake of failing to recognize the outcry there is on our continent that there should be United States bases in our land.” He added that the murders in question have been committed by leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries that have infiltrated into Venezuela. “We are inheriting a conflict that is not our own,” added Maduro.

In Bogota’s Semana magazine, a widely circulating opinion magazine, dedicated an extensive article on the seething warfare between Colombia and Venezuela. According to Semana, one of the theories to emerge from the massacre in Venezuela is that it was committed by Bolivarian Forces of Liberation, a leftist guerrilla organization that favors Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Another theory holds that the murders were committed by the National Liberation Army (ELN) – a leftist Colombian guerrilla organization that has long been funded by its narcotics operations. Cesar Perez Vivas, the governor of Colombia’s Tachira province which borders Venezuela, has said that ELN is able to move at will in Venezuela with the approval of that’s country’s military.

Independent sources consulted by Semana declare that the massacre at the end of October 2009 could not have been committed without the connivance of Venezuela’s armed forces. The incident took place just a mile and a half from the Santo Domingo military air base, an area that also has two National Guard posts.
So far, Colombia has not responded officially to the border closing by Venezuela.