Venezuela reopened its border crossing to Brazil on Friday, after its closure fo...
PACARAIMA, Brazil - Venezuela reopened its border crossing to Brazil on Friday, after its closure for nearly three months forced desperate Venezuelans to use indigenous trails to smuggle food and basic goods or to flee their crisis-stricken homeland.
The border’s closure had driven hundreds of Venezuelans to bribe National Guard officials every day to make their way into Brazil along indigenous trails that cross the sun-baked savannah, according to interviews with two dozen migrants and two former National Guard officers. Those without cash to pay the informal toll must take even longer paths, hauling their luggage on foot for up to six hours, in a desperate trek witnessed by Reuters.
More than 3.4 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2015 due to a political and economic crisis, according to the United Nations. Garate said that a lack of food and medicine, miserable wages and Maduro’s “catastrophic” policies drove him to flee. A reservation for the Pemon indigenous tribe that straddles the border is crisscrossed with dirt tracks along which cars, jeeps, vans, pickups and motor bikes ferry migrants to Brazil and return with goods.Two National Guard sergeants, who had recently deserted from their posts at the border, said that bribe taking was systematic there and that military officials would compete to be sent to the lucrative postings.
Six National Guard soldiers questioned by Reuters in Brazil said that lucrative bribe taking by military officials at border crossings and other black market activity was one reason that many troops had ignored the opposition’s call to unseat Maduro. All of the soldiers interviewed by Reuters requested not to be identified for fear of reprisals against their families.
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