123,000 Venezuelans Pour Into Columbia Looking for Food

What started as a trickle, with several hundred desperate women defying border guards and crossing into Columbia to retrieve badly needed supplies, has turned into a flood. The Venezuelan government has acquiesced to the demands of its people, and has started opening the border with Columbia for brief periods of time, and Venezuelans are taking advantage of that in droves.

It’s estimated that over the weekend, 123,000 Venezuelans crossed into Columbia to buy supplies that can’t be found in their own country. And this is only the second weekend in a row since the government started opening the border, after closing it nearly a year ago over a fears that smuggling was causing shortages. There were so many people, that businesses in border towns faced a few shortages of their own, and had replenish their stocks in neighboring communities.

As strange as it may sound though, while the government loosens border restrictions to allow Venezuelans to buy supplies, domestically the government is clamping down harder than ever before. President Maduro has ordered the army to watch over food processing plants, and oversee the production and distribution of dwindling food supplies. Surely, as the government exerts more control over the food supply, shortages will worsen, and we’ll see even more people trying to leave the country.