Edinson speaks with effort, because he has trouble breathing. Marcos almost lost an eye. They were shot by Venezuelan soldiers on Saturday when they were trying to break up demonstrations that demanded the release of humanitarian aid on the border between Venezuela and Colombia.
They threw tear gas, too many, the people lost strength. And when we were trying to catch air, they shot us,”
said Edinson.
The march, made up of hundreds of people, aimed to go to Francisco de Paula Santander Bridge, which connects Ureña with the Colombian city of Cúcuta, blocked by agents of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB).
A few kilometers from that place, Marcos was waiting with his chest uncovered on the Colombian side of the Simón Bolívar bridge, the main passage between the two nations that leads to the Venezuelan city of San Antonio. His friends tried to convince him to receive medical attention.
In both locations, the situation was tense since the sun came up. In Ureña, protesters asked to be allowed to cross the border to go to work before the gas bombs exploded. In Cúcuta, the repression was preceded by the crossing of a Venezuelan police tank with three deserters inside that ran over a woman crossing the Simón Bolívar bridge.
Humanitarian aid was managed by Juan Guaidó, parliamentary chief recognized as interim president of Venezuela by fifty countries. The opposition leader had said that medicines and food would cross the borders no matter what this Saturday.
The government of Nicolás Maduro flatly refused to accept it, denouncing that it is a facade that hides the beginning of a military invasion led by the United States to overthrow the socialist leader.
Violence escalated with the passing of the hours. In Ureña some hooded men assaulted buses of state lines and took them to the street that connects with the bridge with the idea of using them as rams, because the access to the border post had been blocked by a military armored vehicle that deploys metal barriers to close streets.
The youth set fire to one of the buses and the flames, before being suffocated by firemen, caused damage to a house and high voltage cables.
Three parliamentarians tried to mediate with the military in the afternoon, but were greeted with tear gas.
In Simón Bolívar, legislator José Manuel Olivares was beaten by the protesters when he tried to protect a suspected member of a paramilitary group from a lynching.
In Colombia, the injured numbers got to 285, 255 of which are Venezuelan, victims of a serious economic crisis, with a shortage of basic products and hyperinflation projected at 10,000,000% by the IMF for 2019.