SAN JUAN DE COLON, Venezuela — The freight company owned by Alfredo Rosales and his brothers was hustling, its 50 or so trucks constantly on the go hauling about 1 million tons of coal, cement, flour and other goods every year in commerce between Venezuela and Colombia.
Their work came to an abrupt halt in 2015, when the socialist government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shut down border crossings with its neighbor after years of deterioriating relations with conservative Colombian administrations.
“When they closed the border, we had nowhere to go to work. … It seriously hurt us,” Rosales said Thursday as he looked over the family’s quiet five-acre truck depot in the western Venezuelan community of San Juan de Colon, on a plateau with views of lush mountains. They have only a handful of trucks now, the rest sold off, some for scrap.
Yet optimism is starting to creep into the border area, now that leftist Gustavo Petro is being inaugurated as Colombia’s president Sunday promising to normalize relations with Maduro. Colombia’s incoming foreign minister and his Venezuelan counterpart announced in late July that the border will gradually reopen after the two nations restore diplomatic ties.
“And this is what remains, hope to start working,” Rosales said.
Despite those hopes, business owners and residents in the region know meaningful vehicular activity across the border will not resume overnight. Venezuela’s economic woes have only worsened in the years since border commerce was shut down and more than 6 million people left seeking better lives mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, with about 1.8 million migrating to Colombia.
Colombia and Venezuela share a border of about 1,370 miles (2,700 kilometers). Bandits, drug traffickers, paramilitary groups and guerrillas take advantage of the remote and desolate landscape to operate, though that did not deter trade before the closure.
And goods have continued to enter Venezuela, illegally over dirt roads manned by armed groups and others with the blessing of officials on both sides of the border. Similarly, illegal imports also enter Colombia, but on a smaller scale.
On Saturday, men slogged loads of soft drinks, bananas, cooking oil, specialty paper, scrap metal and other goods on carts, bicycles, motocycles and their own backs down an illegal road turned into a muddy mess by rain.
Sanctioned trade, however, would flow at a much higher rate.
Although the border is long, all but two of the…
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