Being in a neighboring country gave a different perspective from the casual curiosity with which the collapse of Venezuela is discussed in the U. In terms of history, people, economic interactions and security, the fates of Colombia and Venezuela have been intertwined since the birth of both countries. From to , the two nations were part of the unified political entity Gran Colombia, a heritage reflected to this day in the similarity of their national flags.
As the economic and political chaos in Venezuela deepens, the Colombians in the security sector I spoke to had two principal concerns. The first of these is a possible destabilizing surge of refugees from Venezuela, and associated criminal violence in areas of Colombia currently wrestling with delicate mixture of criminal bands and active and demobilizing terrorists.
The second is the possibility of military aggression from Venezuela as a collapsing Venezuelan regime faces its final days and seeks to rally public support and a distraction.
An estimated 1. Yet as the crisis in Venezuela has worsened, those born in Venezuela have started to flee as well. Some Venezuelans have also fled across the Caribbean to nearby islands that they once frequented as tourists such as Aruba, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago. The border between Colombia and Venezuela has always been an area of significant interchange of people with a culture neither fully Colombian nor fully Venezuelan.
As the Venezuela crisis worsened, ironically, the flows increasingly reversed, with thousands of Venezuelans crossing into Colombia to buy goods not available in their own country. An unknown but increasing portion of those crossing the border have opted to stay in Colombia. The inflow of tens of thousands of desperate refugees provides these powerful and warring criminal groups a steady flow of potential victims and recruits.
