He has taken a false step. Juan Guaidó, the president in charge of Venezuela, has scored a goal that has endured criticism both in his country and in Colombia, while Nicolás Maduro takes advantage of his clumsiness to discredit and label him as a paramilitary. His mistake was to appear on a wooded road posing in two photographs with Albeiro Lobo Quintero, alias 'Brother', and Jairo Durán, 'El Menor', two feared men from Los Rastrojos, a paramilitary group that moves in the border area of the two countries and dedicated exclusively to cocaine trafficking.
The images released to raise a smoke screen and distract the atrocities of the Nicolás Maduro regime, according to Guaidó, were taken when he tried to cross from his country to Colombia last February 23 to attend the concert for peace.
That day - the opposition leader summarized in dialogue with the Blu Radio station in Colombia - the photographs abounded. The border residents who admire him asked for it and he agreed. " There are not only photos, also videos of that day, there were many people ... It was difficult to know who was asking me for photographs," Guaidó summed up.
He crossed trails, rivers, streams and on several occasions he stopped his car and he went down to greet the people, the people whose identity he does not know. He clarified that these two paramilitaries, today imprisoned by Colombian Justice, who asked for a photograph, did not help him cross the border.
"That day there were detainees of our team by the Bolivarian National Guard, also shooting at our vehicle. However, we managed to cross with members of our party and civil society."
His march (the day of the controversial photographs) began in Caracas and crossed with his team 11 blocks starring armed groups that repeatedly shot his vehicle, in addition to the National Guard, until he arrived in Colombian territory, he said.
And he ruled out that the criminal band Los Rastrojos has led a 24-hour armed strike in the town of Aguas Claras, north of Cúcuta (Colombia), to favor its passage through the border.
The line that separates Colombia and Venezuela is permeated by armed groups (the National Liberation Army, the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Los Rastrojos, who work allies in some areas with the Venezuelan authorities) that take advantage of the crisis in the territory Bolivarian and the National Guard corruption to cross cocaine and traffic with gasoline from Puerto Santander, Arauca, and Guajira.
However, the commander of the Army in Colombia, General Nicacio Martínez, made it clear that the authorities of this country are unaware of Los Rastrojos' participation in the arrival of Guaidó in Colombia. And he does not rule out that the opposition leader, as a public figure, has been asked for a photograph. The truth is that the two members of Los Rastrojos are behind bars in this country. The two were dedicated to the finances of the paramilitary group, were on the posters of the most wanted in the north of the country, but an internal war between the criminal group led them to surrender to the Army last March.
"I am glad that they are imprisoned, that the Colombian Justice has found it," concluded the opposition leader whose controversial photographs triggered a political war in Colombia.
Senator Gustavo Petro, an opponent of Colombian President Iván Duque, wrote on the social network Twitter: "Trying to cross the border clandestinely take pictures because yes. The clandestine crossing of a border is not a cocktail. The photos show who helped crossing the border and the worst, they were necessarily coordinated with the Government of Colombia. " And he asked that the two paramilitaries be interviewed by the International Criminal Court and the Supreme Court of Justice of this country to clarify what happened.
Colombian President Iván Duque, a political ally of Guaidó, had not yet ruled on the controversy awakened by the photos of the president in charge of Venezuela.
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