A border in flames: Petro and Maduro accuse each other over conflict that has displaced thousands
Bogotá insinuates that Caracas provides cover for the ELN guerrillas and Chavismo responds by accusing the Colombian authorities of sheltering members of Tren de Aragua
Gustavo Petro gripped the lectern with both hands on Wednesday. His nasal delivery was due to an ongoing bout of influenza. He asked himself, before a silent audience, how the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas had gathered such a large number of fighters on the border this week without anyone having detected them. On foot? Impossible, it would take months to cross the mountains. In vehicles? People would have seen them driving through the villages. In reality, the president played the innocent. There is no mystery about how the guerrillas gathered in the kingdom of the coca leaf to massacre their enemies. The intelligence services knew it, the president knew it, of course. They had taken the most direct route to get from one point to another: Venezuela.
