Colombia’s migration agency announced today that more than 5,200 Venezuelans traveled to their country from Colombia between July 20 and 27, in the week of Sunday’s presidential election.
Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport was the immigration control center with the largest number of departures (1,545 people), followed by the Atanasio Girardot International Bridge, in the city of Cúcuta, northern department of Santander, with 852 people.
The Venezuelan government announced that it would close the land border starting Friday, causing an unexpected disruption in the flow on the border between the two neighboring countries.
In Colombia, where more than 2.8 million Venezuelans are registered, only 7,012 were registered to vote on Sunday due to difficulties registering at consulates.
Faced with the impossibility of voting for millions of Venezuelans in Colombia, the opposition issued an appeal in Bogota for anyone able to travel to their home country to participate in the vote.
Although airspace remained open, several international representatives, including former Venezuelan presidents, were unable to travel from Panama, and a delegation of MEPs from the European People’s Party (PPE), which included Sebastião Pujalho, and Spanish MEPs from the Popular Party (PP, right, opposition).
On Friday, Angelica Lozano, a Green Party senator and former mayor of Bogota, denounced the ban on entry to Venezuela.
Venezuela, the oil-rich Latin American country facing an unprecedented economic and social crisis, holds presidential elections on Sunday, after a tense campaign marked by uncertainty about the future.
About 21 out of 30 million Venezuelans are eligible to vote to choose from 10 candidates, but the presidential race will be between two names: incumbent Nicolás Maduro (PSUV), heir to former leader Hugo Chávez, who is seeking a third consecutive six-year term, and the Caracas authorities have declared ineligible Edmundo González Urrutia (PUD), a retired diplomat who replaced charismatic opposition leader María Corina Machado in the race.
In the final phase of the election campaign, Maduro said that an opposition victory could lead to a “bloodbath,” while the opposition coalition promised to fight “to the end.”
Opinion polls show the opposition leading in voting intentions, but some observers believe the battle between Maduro, 61, and Gonzalez Urrutia, 74, is much closer than estimates suggest.
After experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis, seven million Venezuelans have fled the country, which has a large community of Portuguese and Portuguese descent.
The majority of the country’s population lives on a few dollars a month, and the health and education systems are completely deteriorating.
