Omar Torres felt a rush of emotion as he crossed the Simón Bolívar bridge between Colombia and Venezuela with his wife and daughters. “We almost cried when we entered Colombia, and we realised we were going to be able to, at last, buy the food we lack in Venezuela,” he said. The Torres family were among an estimated 35,000 Venezuelans who poured into Colombia on Sunday after the embattled socialist government of Nicolás Maduro allowed crossings for 14 hours to let people buy basic goods amid chronic shortages in Venezuela. Mr Maduro closed the border last August, allegedly to crack down on crime and contraband.
Observers see this as a foretaste of what a humanitarian crisis would look like if nothing is done to end Venezuela’s downward spiral. Senior Colombian officials say “there is already a plan” to welcome refugees if there is a social implosion next door, where an estimated 3m Colombians live. Sunday’s exodus followed an incident last week in which at least 500 Venezuelan women — dressed in white as a “symbol of peace” in homage to the Cuban dissident movement — defied the border closure and pushed past Venezuelan guards to find basic goods for their families.