Colombia reopens borders with Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The measure excludes the border with Venezuela, which will remain closed. Bilateral diplomatic relations have been suspended since 2019 by order of president Nicolás Maduro.

The government of Colombia on Wednesday, May 19, reopened its land, river and sea borders which had been closed for over a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the exception borders shared with Venezuela, announced the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The government opened the crossings with Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil “as of midnight on May 19, 2021,” stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a message to the press.

Although the virus is still widely circulating, Colombia explained the reopening as a means to “advance measures to help the economic reactivation” of the border areas.

However, the measure does not include Venezuela, a country with which the government of Iván Duque has no diplomatic or commercial relations despite a long and porous 2,200 km border, with dozens of illegal crossings controlled by smugglers and armed groups.

Caracas broke diplomatic relations with Bogota in February 2019, after Iván Duque recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela to the detriment of Nicolás Maduro, whom he considers a “dictator.”

Colombia has led diplomatic pressure in the region to remove the Chavista leader from power and is the main recipient of the 5.4 million Venezuelans who fled the economic crisis in their country since 2015. This month, Bogota began the process of legalizing close to a million undocumented migrants over the next ten years.

Colombia has land borders with Venezuela (2,219 kilometers), Brazil (1,645), Peru (1,626), Ecuador (586) and Panama (226). Except for the borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, where there is a heavy flow of people and goods, the others are located in jungle and sparsely inhabited territories.

The closure of border crossings was initially decreed on March 16, 2020, ten days after the first case of coronavirus was reported in the 50-million-inhabitant country.

With more than 3 million infections and 82,291 deaths due to Covid-19, Colombia is the sixth country with more cases and the fourth in number of deaths in proportion to its population in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a count by the French agency AFP.

Source: DW