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Following an agreement to normalize relations between the presidents of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and Colombia, Gustavo Petro, the land border between the two countries was reopened on September 26 after seven years. But there is still a long way to go. A France 24 team visited the area.
An eventual total reopening of the passage, both pedestrian and land, between Colombia and Venezuela, could put an end to a business whose informality does not take away from its buoyancy: that of the so-called silleros, who transport passengers with reduced mobility between one side and the other. of the Simón Bolívar international bridge.
Óscar Cardoza is one of them. Caracas, retired from the University of Venezuela, seven years ago he found his sustenance in the place known as La Parada, on the Colombian side of the border.
“Because of the same need of people to travel from San Antonio (Venezuela) to La Parada (Colombia) and from La Parada to San Antonio. Since the closure of the border, there was no way to cross and had to be done on foot,” he tells a France 24 team.
The pass was sealed in 2015 by order of President Nicolás Maduro, after an attack on a police station. Since then, the border has been open only to pedestrians, but with intermittent and time restrictions.
Discreet optimism on the border
A halo of optimism is breathed in Villa del Rosario, a municipality of less than 100,000 inhabitants of which La Parada is its most dynamic point, since it houses the main border post between the two countries.
It was key in those times of Colombian independence, and it is today, two centuries later, because there the inhabitants of both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border converge politically, socially and economically.
On September 26, 2022, in the midst of what the governments of both countries have classified as a definitive normalization of diplomatic and commercial relations, a handful of cargo trucks crossed that border for the first time in seven years.
It was, for many, just the first step in a broader process that will include, as the authorities have promised, the reestablishment of private and inter-municipal vehicular traffic, as well as free pedestrian circulation. But the road is fraught with challenges.
So far, neither the presidents nor other officials of both nations have given details about what the truck traffic will be like, nor what the regulations on commercial exchange will be.
Some Colombian exporters have expressed to France 24 that they are concerned about various aspects of the bilateral relationship, such as payments and compliance with sanitary and phytosanitary standards by their Venezuelan counterpart.
On the pedestrian side, those who inhabit an almost invisible border are crying out for the opening to be complete and definitive, that is, without time restrictions.
For 10,000 Colombian pesos (less than two dollars) each way, Óscar Cardoza moves between five and six passengers a day. Now that his clients are embracing the possibility of a full reopening that includes private vehicles, he says he’s not afraid of losing his job.
“My country needs it, it doesn’t matter that the work can be finished here on the border. We will invent something”, concludes Óscar, while patiently waiting for his turn among ten chairmen to help those he calls “patrons” to cross one of the many roads of a border that extends over 2,200 kilometers.
