SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition on Sunday looked toward foreign allies led by the United States to take further steps to unseat President Nicolás Maduro, a day after a plan to coax his military to abandon him and allow in hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid ended in brutal violence.
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who had secretly gone across the border into Colombia to lead the aid effort, running the risk of being barred from reentry or arrested upon return — was scheduled to meet with regional leaders including Vice President Pence in Bogota on Monday.
In a tweet late Saturday, Guaidó suggested that he would entertain more radical solutions to try to oust Maduro, a reference taken by observers to mean that he may broach the subject of additional moves by the United States, which has already imposed deep sanctions on Venezuela.
The Trump administration has also repeatedly said that a military option in Venezuela is not off the table.
“Today’s events force me to make a decision: to pose to the international community in a formal way that we must have all options open to achieve the liberation of this country that is fighting and will continue to fight,” Guaidó tweeted.
Guaidó’s comments suggested the opposition’s limitations after a plan they had hoped would cause deep fissures in Maduro’s military structure instead produced only a few cracks. In the face of Maduro’s military blockade of aid, they largely failed to bring in the live-saving assistance they had hoped to deliver to Venezuelans in the direst need.
The opposition’s strongest American backers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), sharply criticized Maduro and suggested repercussions.
“After discussions tonight with several regional leaders it is now clear that the grave crimes committed today by the Maduro regime have opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago,” Rubio tweeted late Saturday.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter denounced the trucks of aid apparently set ablaze by Maduro’s forces as “sickening.”
“What kind of a sick tyrant stops food from getting to hungry people?” Pompeo tweeted.
Colombian President Iván Duque arrived Sunday at the Simón Bolívar bridge — site of intense exchanges of tear gas and rubber bullets exchanges on Saturday — with a convoy of white SUVs and armored vehicles from the Colombian armed forces. Police said American officials were among the large delegation seen touring the bridge.
With tensions still high on the border, Colombian authorities on Sunday announced that Duque had ordered the closure of his country’s three main bridge crossings to Venezuela in the North Santander region through Monday night. Aid trucks had sought to cross there on Saturday before confrontations began between pro-government troops and operatives and the Venezuelan opposition.
The opposition, meanwhile, said one of its leaders — Freddy Superlano — had been poisoned with a drug called “burundanga” in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta and remained hospitalized. Superlano’s assistant had died of the same poison. The opposition called for an investigation into the poisonings, while making no claims on who the culprits were.
Fears mounted that Saturday’s violence could spill into Sunday. The bloodiest clashes took place on the border with Brazil, where pro-government paramilitary groups killed four people and injured 34 by gunfire, according to nonprofit legal group Foro Penal, opposition leaders, and witnesses at the hospital that received the victims in Santa Elena de Uairen. Patients and their families panicked as buses and motorbikes with armed men swarmed outside the hospital.
“Too many people shot by bullets kept coming in. It’s terrifying,” said Yolderi Garcia, a 62-year-old volunteer at the Hospital Rosario Vera Surita. “It’s a horrible day, we are very worried because this is a small town.”
George Bello, spokesman for the mayor of the Gran Sabana district on the Brazilian border, said the situation Sunday morning remained tense in the area, where pro-government militias known as colectivos ruled the streets.
“I’m in hiding,” Bello said, adding that his team believed the mayor, Emilio Gonzales, was at risk of being kidnapped.
On Sunday, the western border was also tense, with anti-Maduro protesters once again gathering on the Colombian side of the border and vowing to continue the running battles they engaged in Saturday with Maduro’s military and irregular forces. On the Colombia side, hundreds of police arrived early Sunday in dozens of buses and trucks to the Simón Bolívar bridge.
A small crowd began growing at the edge of the bridge in the morning, two hours before it opened on the Colombian side. The Venezuelan side remained closed.
Hector Abreu, 23, a former mechanic from Caracas, waited outside the bridge and said he planned to protest and challenge Venezuelan guards as he had on Saturday.
“We want a free Venezuela so that’s why we’ll continue,” he said.
Saturday was a day of fast-moving developments, with anti-Maduro crowds at a Colombian border town facing tear gas fired by Venezuelan guards and cheering as dozens of Venezuelan security forces switched sides and tried to rescue desperately needed aid packages from burning trucks.
In all, 285 people were injured and 37 hospitalized on the Colombian side of the border, according to Colombia’s foreign minister. In Venezuelan’s western border towns, 152 people were injured, according to the opposition-run governor’s office in Táchira state. At least four were killed on the Venezuela-Brazil border after clashes with pro-government militias.
In the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the embattled Maduro danced at a pro-government rally, mocked the United States and broke off ties with neighboring Colombia. Late in the day, Venezuelan navy vessels threatened to open fire on a ship carrying 200 tons of aid from Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, governor of Puerto Rico, said in a statement. He said he had ordered the vessels to abandon the area temporarily, decrying the threat as “unacceptable.”
Yet in a way, Saturday was always meant to be as much about provocation as about the aid itself.
The attempt to move humanitarian aid into Venezuela, opposition leaders hoped, would prompt members of the Venezuelan armed forces to defy Maduro by refusing to carry out orders to block delivery of aid to fellow countrymen in desperate need of food and medicine. The plan worked, to a degree: Roughly 60 members of Maduro’s military and security forces abandoned posts, denounced him and sought refuge with the opposition on Colombian soil.
But as night fell, there was no massive shipment of food and medicine headed to Venezuela’s neediest. One truckload of aid made its way into Venezuela from Brazil and several others inched across the Colombian border into Venezuela before being blocked by government forces. And there was no political resolution, with two men — Maduro and Guaidó — still claiming the presidential mantle.
“I ask for your trust, I ask to move forward, we will keep mobilizing to end tyranny,” Guaidó told reporters late Saturday. “We have said it, change is irreversible in Venezuela.”
The chaos was evident throughout towns on both sides of the border.
In San Antonio, just across the Simón Bolívar Bridge from Colombia, tear gas billowed, and protesters responded by throwing rocks at Venezuelan forces. Then a warning cry went up: “Colectivos! Colectivos!” — the name for pro-Maduro vigilantes.
Suddenly, a group of 20 large men on motorbikes, their faces partially covered by black masks, roared onto the road. They were members of the feared pro-government militias, frequently deployed by Maduro’s loyalists and widely blamed by the opposition for unleashing a torrent of fear at multiple border points on Saturday.
Protesters, aid workers, volunteers and journalists began running for shelter, dashing into buildings and cars and boarding motorcycles in an attempt to escape, as the militia members opened fire.
“It was horrifying, horrifying,” said opposition politician Carlos Valero, who was present for the San Antonio attacks. “The last thing we imagined was that Nicolás Maduro was going to put out so many irregular forces. They shot at us, and the national guards threw tear gas. We didn’t expect that level of irrationality in response to humanitarian aid.”
The events spiraled close to the realm of international conflict. On the Simón Bolívar Bridge, tear gas volleys and rocks flew from both the Venezuelan and Colombian sides, with Colombian authorities arresting at least two Venezuelan militiamen on the Colombian side of the border.
“#MaduroRegime has fired into territory of #Colombia,” Rubio, who has closely advised President Trump on Venezuela, tweeted on Saturday. “Receiving reports of injuries after this attack on sovereign Colombian territory. The United States WILL help Colombia confront any aggression against them.”
National security adviser John Bolton tweeted that Maduro’s response to trucks of humanitarian aid had been “masked thugs, civilians killed by live rounds, and the burning of trucks carrying badly-needed food and medicine.” He suggested that more sanctions were coming.
Pence, who will go to Colombia on Monday and meet with Guaidó, also tweeted in solidarity with the opposition: “Estamos con ustedes. We are with you.”
Guaidó, the opposition leader, began the day Saturday by tweeting, almost optimistically, about the mission at hand.
“Venezuela, the day has arrived in which we will take the step to enter humanitarian aid. From our borders, by land and sea, we will bring hope, food and medicines for the ones who need it the most,” he wrote. “We call everyone to go out massively to the streets in the whole country, to protest in peace at barracks, to urge the armed forces to let humanitarian aid in.”
Yet after an attack by the Venezuelan military near the Brazilian border that left two civilians dead and 11 wounded on Friday, fears mounted that the attempt to move aid into Venezuela could be marred by further violence. By Saturday morning, the Venezuelan government had temporarily closed three key border crossings with Colombia. Just before the 8 a.m. start time for the effort to try to break the blockade, a violent confrontation broke out on the Santander bridge in the western border town in Ureña — one of the crossings to Colombia ordered closed by the Maduro government.
On the Colombian side of the border near Cúcuta, the day got off to a promising start for the opposition when defectors from Maduro’s armed forces rammed a barricade installed to stop aid from getting through, then turned themselves over to Colombian authorities.
In a dramatic moment, opposition leader Jose Manuel Olivares led a throng of volunteers halfway across the Simón Bolívar bridge linking Colombia and Venezuela, prompting a rank of Venezuelan border guards to line up with riot shields. Through a bullhorn, he addressed the Venezuelan guards.
“I tell you my brothers, stand by the constitution and on the right side of history!” Olivares shouted. “I ask you to end this blockade, and let aid in. I bless you, and hope we hug when we pass.”
Soon after, though, a Venezuelan column with riot gear blocked the bridge. As protesters sought to pass anyway, the Venezuelan side began intense volleys of tear gas that sent protesters in a stampeding retreat down the bridge that left several people injured.
Then came the buzz of rubber bullets. Later, protesters who’d gone under the bridge to hurl rocks came running back out, saying colectivos and Venezuelan border guards had opened fire on them from the other side of the border. At least two young men came from under the bridge with gaping wounds.
Dozens of tear gas canisters were lobbed well across the river dividing the two countries, prompting crowds and police to fall back deeper into Colombia. Volleys of tear gas also came from the Colombian side, though it was not clear who was firing.
Beneath the bridge, dozens of young men gathered around a Colombian soldier who asked if it was true that Venezuelan guards beneath the bridge were firing weapons.
“They are there, I saw them,” said Leonard Castillo, 19. “They shot my friend in the eye.”
About 20 members of the Venezuelan guard defected and turned themselves in at the bridge, presenting themselves to a crowd that sometimes beat them before Colombian police intervened. Authorities reported that 60 members of the guard turned themselves in Saturday across all of the Colombian border.
As night fell, hundreds of people remained under and on the bridge, throwing stones and occasional fire bombs. The tear gas and smoke from a brush fire under the bridge formed a thick curtain over the Venezuelan side as protesters and organizers here attempt to regroup, clearly in lower spirits than several hours ago
Although organizers initially said they would create a human chain to hand boxes of humanitarian aid person to person across the bridge, the trucks were never unloaded. They fled the Bolívar bridge in the midafternoon as it became clear the Venezuelan guards would not yield.
As he gathered rocks to throw at the loyalists from under the bridge, a young opposition protester, Oscar Arcilla, 19, said “the war has begun.”
Anthony Faiola and Rachelle Krygier are reporting from San Cristobal, and Dylan Baddour from Cúcuta, Colombia. Mariana Zuñiga contributed from San Cristobal.
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