“We are not all guerrillas!” : the cry of a woman from the border to the Venezuelan military who evicted them and stole their livestock

On April 18, Venezuelan soldiers arrived in the Páez municipality of Apure state, specifically to sectors such as Arenales, El Ripial, Las Mercedes, small towns in the area, evicting their inhabitants. “We are not all guerrillas,” an indignant woman shouted at the military man who demanded that she abandon her property. As part of the actions that the Armed Forces have taken, since the bloody confrontation between the ELN guerrillas and the FARC dissidents took, is to clean the border territory of explosives, laboratories and camps that the Tenth Front has installed for years; also by evicting villagers who consider related to the FARC.

One resident of the area said, in conversation with Infobae, that “the Morillo family was rushed from the farm, which is in the sector called the island of Cuba, on the Los Arenales road, from La Capilla to the inside. If you take the Los Arenales road, there is a detour a little to the left that leads to the island of Cuba. There the soldiers have desperolated (damaged) a little things, they have knocked down houses, they have killed the cattle they had for the soldiers to eat the cattle”.

A woman assures Infobae that “the Government is installed there later than Omar's house, all over the entrance to Los Arenales. Already in Los Arenales they took out the Morillo, only William are there, the wife, the son, the grandchildren, there is Jesusa and others. The case of the Morillos was very ugly, because it was raining a lot, they tried not to be forced to leave because they have children who could get sick. The soldiers' response was: 'We don't care about that'. Desiré's husband drove the car and helped them get out of there. And it's angry because the Morillo's had nothing to do with the guerrillas.”

One of the testimonies reveals that a man surnamed Bayona, “who built that house there, the military laid them down and took away the pitchforks, the boards, the zinc sheets, everything. For the military, this was a 'kitchen' (where drugs are processed). What a kitchen or what nothing! It hurts everything that the government is doing, which now only sees guerrilla.” Another source reveals that “the Bayonne did have a relationship with the guerrillas. They burned their house.”

For his part, a resident of Guasdualito, capital of the Páez municipality, told Infobae that “here in town there was a lot of van selling meat from cattle that have been taken from the farms, since that confrontation began in January.”

In refuge

Inhabitants from various sectors coincide in the action of the military. “Now they only see FARC guerrillas, they call them Tancol, but if the military themselves were the ones who had deals, they were friends and had business with those people. What happens is that you dare not say anything, because if the guerrillas didn't catch you, the government did it, and now it's worse because the military is with the ELN, so everything that smells like FARC they throw 'baygon', you understand me, lead”.

“Those who always go wrong are the poor who are forced to survive on what little one produces. When the military tried to tear off a pipe from the Church, a woman shouted and very annoyed to the sergeant: 'We are not all guerrillas here, my mother has lived here for years, and my sister who was born here and will die here if you don't run her. What guerrillas are you talking about, if you were with the guerrillas that supported you? ' . And the military man barely said anything through his teeth.”

“You can't imagine the pain of seeing the guerrillas with the government. What a misfortune! One knows that the guerrillas were with these people, where they held the meetings and the sancochos (soup, vegetables and meat dish very common in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador) when the great leaders of the government came. They tell us that we are from the Arauca axis, which axis? we are assholes, the ones who always had a relationship with the guerrillas was the government. Do you think that does not give arre...?”

People who have been evicted by the military from the farms and homes of La Capilla and the island of Cuba, have been concentrated in the “Alirio Palacios” school, La Capilla sector. “These people here are humble, hardworking and have fought all their lives. The scoundrels and criminals are on the riverbank, dedicated to betraying or raising false testimonies against others in order to take away their property. Other people who were with the Tenth Front received support from that group and left the area.”

Confronting forces

For years, mainly with the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power, the guerrillas felt safer in Venezuelan territory, given the tolerance of the Armed Forces that stopped confronting them. The border has never been so abandoned by Venezuelan soldiers, which allowed the guerrillas to generalize the collection of the “vaccine”, as they call extortion, among all those who owned farms, companies, machinery, livestock, crops and businesses, with the excuse of providing them with protection and security. That payment was not voluntary. The population became increasingly closely related, and mainly for economic reasons, with the FARC, the ELN and the FBL/FPLN, who rose to authority and power.

After the confrontation between the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) and the Tenth Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), between March and April 2021, which left 16 soldiers dead, without any knowledge of the number of casualties suffered by the guerrillas, the strategy of the Venezuelan military institution is barely revealed beginning in 2022; the ELN and the Second Marquetalia, with FANB logistical support, confronted the Tenth Front and other FARC dissidents, causing a fierce battle along the border strip, which left numerous guerrillas dead and injured, as well as displaced civilians.

The novelty revealed in the battle that brought the FARC dissidents out of an important part of the territory of the Páez municipality of Apure state, is the joint action of officials of the Armed Forces with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the remaining stronghold of the second Marquetalia.

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