Venezuela’s dictator vows to block deliveries of American aid

CORNFLOUR, HIGH-ENERGY biscuits, nappies and toilet paper are among the provisions packed into white plastic bags and piled on the floor of a customs warehouse near Cúcuta, on Colombia’s side of its border with Venezuela. Medical supplies such as syringes are stored nearby. On February 23rd, promises Juan Guaidó, whom Venezuela’s legislature and most Western governments recognise as the country’s interim president, the aid will start flowing across the Tienditas bridge into the country. If it does not come in, 300,000 Venezuelans will die for lack of food and medicine, Mr Guaidó claims, though this is surely an exaggeration.

Nicolás Maduro, who still controls the apparatus of government, including the armed forces, insists, falsely, that Venezuela has no humanitarian crisis. He deems the supplies, most of them donated by the United States’ Agency for International Development, to be the spearhead of an American invasion with the aim of unseating his socialist government. The army has placed shipping containers and a water tanker athwart the bridge to keep the Yanqui medicines out.