Juan Guaid\u00f3<\/a>, the opposition figurehead now recognized as Venezuela\u2019s leader by dozens of governments, announced on Tuesday that caravans of volunteers will take the shipment of food and medicine across the border on 23 February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more<\/p>\n\n\n\n The move is only likely to provoke the Venezuelan government, which as Guaid\u00f3 made his announcement, was parading troops on the same international bridge<\/a> which the opposition has chosen as a staging area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is as though both sides are reading from the same script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n US officials and opposition leaders have explicitly stated that one of the goals of the aid is to weaken Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, by forcing the Venezuelan military to choose between blocking the aid caravan or disobeying their boss. The tactic also allows them to paint Maduro as a callous dictator who puts pride before his own starving people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Venezuelan authorities positioned shipping containers and a fuel tanker across the Tienditas international bridge<\/a>, opponents of Maduro \u2013 including the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and US senator Marco Rubio \u2013 highlighted images of the improvised blockade to reinforce their message that the Venezuela president was refusing to let food in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy blocking aid to the Venezuelan people, Maduro<\/a> is committing a crime against humanity. And military leaders in Venezuela<\/a> who carry out this order are disqualifying themselves from any sanctions relief or post-Maduro US-backed guarantees,\u201d tweeted Rubio<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Maduro and his circle deny there are food shortages in Venezuela \u2013 despite widespread<\/a>reports<\/a> of chronic hunger<\/a> in the country \u2013 and have portrayed the aid as a Trojan horse sent by the US and its allies. His vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, even went so far as to claim the food packages had been poisoned with carcinogens<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is no famine in Venezuela,\u201d Maduro said in a testy exchange with the BBC broadcast on Tuesday, adding that media coverage of food shortages were following a \u201cscript\u2026 established in the west to disfigure the Venezuela<\/a>situation, and justify any intervention, any aggression, as is happening right now\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The politicization of the aid has caused consternation among humanitarian groups, with over a dozen NGOs with offices in Colombia<\/a> issuing a statement reminding relevant parties that aid should be geared towards saving lives rather than achieving political goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe remind interested parties that any potential political use of humanitarian aid can generate risks, in particular for those the aid is intended to support, if this use is not based on technical and objective criteria,\u201d the statement signed by War Child, Oxfam and others read. The International Red Cross had already stated it will take no part in the delivery of aid for similar reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, the first shipment of aid sits in a warehouse next to the Tienditas bridge, which was finished in 2016 but never inaugurated. Although thousands cross the nearby Sim\u00f3n Bolivar bridge on foot every day, the border has been closed to most vehicles since 2015 following a string of disputes between the two countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, only a small part of the $20m in aid promised by the US has arrived; Canada has promised $40m and the UK has said it would provide \u00a36.5m, funneled into the country via charities and other aid organisations already in Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But analysts say that the pledges amount to a drop in the ocean compared to Venezuela\u2019s desperate needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook, no one is going to deny that getting food and medicine to people is a good thing, but it\u2019s so little and if it is being used for political point-scoring then it goes against a vital humanitarian principle,\u201d said Geoff Ramsey, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. \u201cThis aid has become politicised.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, Guaid\u00f3 and his international backers have the advantage in the propaganda war, said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based analyst and consultant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Maduro government needs a new narrative that can touch its supporters\u2019 souls,\u201d he said. \u201cTo deny the aid or to say that the country does not need \u2018charity\u2019 sounds awkward to many ears when you think about the hardship the majority of the population faces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Sim\u00f3n Bolivar bridge just outside C\u00facuta, a hungry working-class Venezuelan family was preparing yesterday to take a bus to Cali, a Colombian city where they hope to start a new life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMaduro talks of an economic war waged against Venezuela but we are already living through war,\u201d said Victor Pe\u00f1a, who was once the breadwinner but now does not make enough money to provide for his family. \u201cWhen people are starving and scared to leave their houses, how is that not a war?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guaid\u00f3 tells caravans to take food and medicine across border from Colombia but political move likely to provoke Maduro As a shipment of US aid waits in a Colombian frontier warehouse, hungry Venezuelans living nearby are wondering when they will next eat. \u201cThey should just start handing it out here,\u201d said Jorge Arr\u00e1iz, who lives on the streets in C\u00facuta,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3104,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions\/3104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nicolas](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/876cbf744ad60eeab3dcbca69d896521e14ae5f0\/0_106_3500_2100\/master\/3500.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=c939200179d21b255881fb4b594b5c98\")
<\/a>