One person died and at least five were injured when Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard clashed with presumed members of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) in Junín, Táchira state, near the Colombian border. The confrontation happened on Monday, 29 September. The injured went to nearby Rubio for treatment at a local clinic.
“We are hearing of five injured and one dead,” Javier Tarazona, director of the Venezuelan human-rights NGO Fundaredes, told AFP. Venezuelan outlet El Nacional named the dead man as National Guard member Andry Giovanni Vela Álvarez. As of Wednesday, neither the Venezuelan government nor the National Guard had issued an official statement; Colombian authorities hadn’t commented either. The identity and casualty count remained unconfirmed.
A disputed account of the clash
Some regional reports mentioned captures, but no authority confirmed any detention. The cause of the firefight and the ELN front involved also remained unknown. A possible link to recently mapped airstrips hasn’t been confirmed.
The report called the firefight the first confrontation between Venezuelan security forces and the ELN since Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia’s right-wing president, took office on 7 August. Under Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelan forces had largely tolerated ELN activity on their side of the border and, watchdogs said, at times abetted it. The account doesn’t identify an economic beneficiary of the armed activity or give figures for profits, wages or local employment.
Tarazona told AFP that the regional situation changed after the United States military captured Maduro in January and, above all, after De la Espriella took office in August. The Colombian president declared the ELN a military target, ended peace talks and launched an offensive in Catatumbo. That offensive began with an airstrike days after his inauguration.
Military pressure and border routes
Colombian intelligence mapped 93 clandestine airstrips used by the ELN inside Venezuela, up from about 15 points tracked at the start of the year, according to El Tiempo. Reporting linked the group’s Northeastern War Front, associated with commander Luz Amanda Payares, alias Silvana Guerrero, to positions in Zulia and Táchira. The source didn’t establish a connection between those airstrips and the Junín clash.
On 29 September, the U.S. State Department advised citizens against travel to Norte de Santander, the Colombian department facing Táchira, and within 10 kilometres of the Venezuelan border. It cited risks of drone and explosive attacks by armed groups. Washington classifies the ELN as a terrorist organisation. Colombia’s Fundación Ideas para la Paz estimated the group’s membership at 6,450.
The roughly 2,200-kilometre frontier was described as porous. Guerrillas, dissidents, traffickers and smugglers operate along it. Junín lies in a corridor where control of crossings and contraband routes has previously triggered violence. The report gives no details of a labor response, union activity or a reform proposal addressing the violence.
At publication, Caracas and Bogotá hadn’t officially confirmed the clash or the dead man’s identity. The available accounts leave the cause, the forces involved beyond the presumed ELN members and National Guard, and any detentions unresolved.