President Nicolas Maduro’s recent decision to close Venezuela’s border with Colombia was due to a qualitative intensification of the criminal activity associated with paramilitary-led smuggling.

A detachment of Venezuela’s National Guard was fired at in an ambush carried out by Colombian paramilitaries, leaving two of them with life-threatening injuries and two more with serious wounds. 

Jose Gregorio Vielma Mora, the governor of Tachira state, which borders Colombia, said on local TV that Colombian hired assassins had already killed 13 Venezuelan police officers in the border areas and several mass graves of other victims had been found in the area.

In addition to this, in recent years the openness of the border has become one the main opportunities for waging “economic war” against Venezuela’s elected government, which began in 2013 when Hugo Chavez passed away.

Venezuelan ministers have pointed out in the last few years that between 30-40 per cent of the food produced in or imported by Venezuela is smuggled out to Colombia, where it fetches spectacularly high profits.

It is not just food but also large quantities of fuel and many necessities such as soap, nappies, toilette paper, detergents and so forth — all goods subsidised in Venezuela with the aim of helping ordinary people.

It is clear that powerful economic groups — in cahoots with sectors of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition — collude with smuggling gangs closely associated with Colombian paramilitaries, who in turn have strong connections with Colombia’s extreme right. All are part of the well organised and efficiently executed economic war.

As in Chile under Allende, the economic war is about engineering shortages of basic items and fuelling inflationary pressures to erode electoral and political support for the incumbent government in the run up to the December parliamentary elections.

Leading Venezuelan opposition figures have publicly stated that their intention is to make the country ungovernable before the elections in order to win a majority in the National Assembly — their objective is to overthrow the elected government.

In this they enjoy the support of the right internationally, especially in the US, but also of US official bodies, notably the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) but also USAid, US Southern Command, CIA, International Republican Institute (IRI) and others.

Closing the border with Colombia is Venezuela’s sovereign decision taken in order to protect the lives of its people. No human rights have been violated by this course of action. In fact, there are about six million Colombians who reside in Venezuela and who not only have their legal situation regularised — many of them having been granted Venezuelan citizenship — but are the recipients of all the socio-economic benefits, including free health, free education and housing enjoyed by Venezuelans.

The Venezuela government claims with justification that the Colombian authorities have failed to secure the border against both contraband and paramilitary activity. It has also revealed that the Colombian government agreed more than a year ago to intensify its security actions on the border and that any confiscated contraband would be returned to Venezuela but “have failed to return even a kilogram of rice.”

The closing of the border was necessary given the dangerous escalation of paramilitary activity inside Venezuela, which led to the assassination of Robert Serra, an MP for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and more recently to the murder and mutiliation of Liana Hergueta by members of the right-wing opposition who have been trained by and have worked with Colombian paramilitaries.

The near economic collapse in Colombian border towns such as Cucuta only reinforces claims of the economic significance of the contraband from Venezuela. It is hoped that, as contraband is curtailed, queues and shortages will also reduce in the rest of Venezuela, although the economic war is unlikely to stop.

Mainstream media seek to present Venezuela’s decision as a sinister ploy to distract its people’s attention from domestic problems and create the conditions for suspending the December elections to the National Assembly.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The National Electoral Council is busily working on the administrative, legal and organisational preparations for the elections.

Both Venezuela’s right and the government coalition parties held primaries in May and June this year. The government has repeatedly stressed its enthusiasm for the coming elections.

Furthermore, the closing of the border with Colombia has overwhelming support in Venezuela. A recent poll conducted by Hinterlaces showed that 83 per cent of Venezuelans support Maduro’s Operation Liberation and Protection of the People, aimed at ridding the country of paramilitary activity, of which the closing of the border is but one aspect.

The poll showed that only 13 per cent were against. It has the support of 97 per cent of the respondents who defined themselves as Chavistas, 84 per cent of those who defined themselves as neither Chavista nor opposition and also 66 per cent of those who support the opposition.

Despite the severity of the measure and some verbal tussle between both sides, the closing of the border has not involved bellicosity on the part of either the Venezuelan or Colombian governments.

Most of the Colombian media has, however, adopted an intensely xenophobic and war-like stance, demanding a tough line from President Juan Manuel Santos. 

Alvaro Uribe — Colombia’s extreme right-wing former president — has staged not only marches against the peace process in Colombia but has sought to capitalise on the border difficulties engulfing the two countries by demanding that Santos exclude Venezuela from sponsorship of the internal peace process.

Yet, throughout, the foreign ministers of both countries have met regularly to keep each informed and Maduro repeatedly called on his Colombian counterpart to engage in direct dialogue to resolve the border problem and find a comprehensive solution to the twin activities of contraband and paramilitary bands operating in the border, which threaten both Venezuelan and Colombian lives and property.

Thankfully, the regional bodies Celac and Unasur managed to get Maduro and Santos to meet in Quito, Ecuador, which will be preceded by a meeting of Delcy Rodriguez and Maria Angela Holguin — the foreign ministers of Venezuela and Colombia respectively.

We must support this dialogue and Venezuela’s national sovereignty, rejecting all forms of destabilisation.

• Francisco Dominguez is senior lecturer in Spanish at Middlesex University Business School.