The day before the reopening of the border between Colombia and Venezuela, in the bustle of the bridges that join the two countries, nobody knows what will change as of Monday.
Mr. Darwin Jose Gutiérrez, a 42-year-old Venezuelan who has been in Colombia for two, is pessimistic, but with a huge smile he already sees himself leaving.
“Well, tomorrow they open, let's go:
pa'
Venezuela or ¡
pa'
USA!
The job is over."
Like him, hundreds of migrants live from the gap opened by the closing of the border to vehicles seven years ago.
Now converted into a pedestrian crossing, porters or stretcher bearers cross goods or patients from one side to another for a handful of pesos.
The coming and going is this constant Sunday.
“Sometimes I'm good, sometimes I'm bad.
At least I get something to eat faster than in Venezuela,” says Gutiérrez.
Since Gustavo Petro came to power in Colombia a month and a half ago, enormous steps have been taken to sew a deep gap between the neighboring countries.
The appointment of ambassadors or the resumption of freight transport, which begins this Monday, mark a reopening agenda that in cities like Cúcuta has a different meaning from that of Caracas or Bogotá.
The taxi driver Edgar Guillén hasn't crossed the Simón Bolívar international bridge for six years, but he still remembers the good runs that came out of him at the Venezuelan airport.
He will still have to wait to return to them.
The reopening is still working slowly, with an air more of an announcement of good intentions than of a palpable reality for a population that lives from an exchange that has never completely ceased.
Orlando Velázquez, 31, has been lucky.
Every time a yellow taxi approaches the bridge, four or five men jump on it to offer their services.
Velázquez has managed to get paid 20,000 pesos for crossing more than ten packages, which he drags with difficulty in a cart.
Until a month ago he worked in a recycler, but he lost his job and with this coming and going he supports his wife and his three children in Cúcuta.
For him, the opening has its good side: “everyone needs their step, we all have rights”.
And the bad part of him: “I'm out of a job, but I'll retrain myself”.
There are many, like Douglas Palencia, who doubt his future these days.
With his hands on the handles of an old wheelchair that he bought four years ago, this Venezuelan crosses disabled, sick or elderly people every day for 7.
A family walks to the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.GLADYS SERRANO
On Monday at nine in the morning two delegations from both countries will cross the bridge walking to the center.
They will shake hands and listen to the anthems of both countries.
So a truck will cross in one direction.
And another will do it on the contrary.
Petro had announced his presence, but finally he will not be.
Neither will Nicolás Maduro.
The meeting between presidents will have to wait.
Nor will the first commercial flight be seen, after the failure of the two attempts by Venezuelan airlines.
When the authorities leave, Mr. Gutiérrez will be able to carry suitcases to the other side again without having to dream of going to the United States so quickly.
Antonio José Grati's Venezuelan ID expired a long time ago, he has been in Colombia for eight years.
The bridge is forbidden for him.
That is why this Sunday he looks out over the trail, which starts a few meters from the Simón Bolívar, along a dirt road.
He is surprised not to see anyone and it scares him.
He turns around.
"Here they ask you for 20,000 pesos and they pass you without asking anything or asking for your ID," he says.
In return, there are other risks.
He will continue to cross illegally because he does not have the money to renew the document, but he is waiting for it to reopen so that his mother can come visit them.
14 kilometers from here, Major Fredy Molina has been in control of the Colombian half of the Francisco de Paula bridge for four years, another of the passes that connect the Colombian department of Norte de Santander and the Venezuelan state of Táchira.
He acknowledges that what happens after Monday is not defined, but believes that any sign of opening is positive.
- Do you support Petro's decision to restore relations with Venezuela?
- The policy that the president marks us, whoever it is, is the one that we obey in compliance.
But look at that girl, walking [across the bridge] so happy.
Better that way than crossing illegally in the hands of a criminal gang.
Molina also hopes that he will soon be able to resume communication with his counterparts on the other side.
The Venezuelan police, from whom he says that today “a wall” separates him, making it impossible to work together to improve security.
“We observe the need, the tragedies, the sadness.
The border environment is very harsh and many criminal groups use it to collect illegal passes, to instrumentalize women, there is human trafficking.
When you are put here, you have to assimilate the context, develop empathy and put yourself in the other's shoes”.
Workers from a funeral home move a body to Venezuela on the Simón Bolívar international bridge.GLADYS SERRANO
The sun blazes the way in the middle of the morning when a lane is opened on the bridge so that one of the few vehicles authorized until now can enter.
A Colombian funeral car carries a gray coffin halfway.
On the other side, a trunk lined with red fabric from a Venezuelan car opens.
The policemen briefly separate the bars and the transfer of the coffin of the last Venezuelan dead on Colombian soil takes less than two minutes.
On both sides, neither for those who go to Venezuela, nor for those who return to Colombia, or vice versa, the scene is nothing extraordinary.
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