Contact Admin. In the thick vegetation along the Colombian border, bands of Venezuelans make their way unseen, puffing under the heavy loads of scrap metal on their backs like leaf-cutter ants, covered in filth and trying to make enough money to simply survive. Maria, a year-old single mother-of-two, recently had to stop driving the vehicle she had once used to make her living because there were no more spare parts to buy, and she had no money to buy them anyway.
Now she trudges along a muddy path through the long grasses, pushing a handcart laden with scrap metal she has scavenged from who knows where, to sell on the other side of the border. It is one of the 30 or so illegal crossings that Colombian police have identified along the border with Venezuela, close to the Colombian border town of Cucuta and the Simon Bolivar International Bridge which connects the two countries -- but is currently closed to all but pedestrian traffic.
Venezuela's economy has imploded under the stewardship of President Nicolas Maduro, and most people cannot make ends meet. With what she earns from selling the scrap, Maria -- who declined to give her last name -- will buy flour, potatoes, carrots and garlic to keep her family going for a few days, before she has to set out again on the murky trail through the weeds.
I push the cart along this path so they don't confiscate what I'm carrying," she said. As she talks, people pass by -- young and old -- carrying bundles of scrap metal. Some are wearing rags, others are shirtless.
The lucky ones have handcarts, others are bent double under the weight of the cargo they carry on their shoulders. The border has long been a center of smuggling, but it used to be focused on the much more valuable commodity of gasoline, which was massively subsidized by the state and sold at impressive mark-ups across the border. Now, the contraband is essentially junk -- old bits of metal and tires, or whatever people can carry through this steaming hot bush. EU - Website der Prostituierten.
