CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) – Leidy Echeverri fled the Colombian countryside six years ago with her toddler in tow after a paramilitary group threatened her husband’s life. Now she’s again taken her children and run, this time in the other direction, amid a Venezuelan crackdown on Colombian immigrants.
The 28-year-old is one of an estimated 6,000 Colombian immigrants who have scrambled back across the border this week as embattled President Nicolas Maduro blames his neighbor for problems at home, ranging from rampant crime to widespread shortages.
“Maduro was supposed to be our brother, and he’s thrown us out like garbage,” Echeverri said from one of five overcrowded emergency shelters set up along the border in Colombia to receive the exodus.
The socialist president declared a state of emergency in six western cities bordering Colombia and suspended some constitutional rights. He said the move was needed to combat a thriving contraband trade after gang members shot three soldiers.
Residents of Echeverri’s shantytown were given 72 hours to leave, prompting a frenzied decampment of immigrants carrying refrigerators, water tanks, and even doors and windows across a muddy knee-deep river dividing the two countries.