Venezuela opens new consulates in Colombia amid record migration

MEDELLIN, Colombia, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Five new consulates are offering services to Venezuelans across Colombia after a coordinated reopening over the past two weeks, another step in renewed relations between the South American neighbors under Colombia's left-wing President Gustavo Petro.

About 2.5 million Venezuelans now live in Colombia, which shares a long border and a long history with its neighbor to the east. More than 7 million have left Venezuela since 2015 due to ongoing political and economic turmoil, making it one of the world's largest refugee crises.

Except for a single consulate near the Venezuelan border that opened this spring, migrants in Colombia previously had no option to certify documents, get a passport or access other government services.

Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro broke off diplomatic ties in 2019, after former Colombian President Iván Duque recognized opposition candidate Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's true leader, among other tensions. The United States has documented a slew of human rights abuses on the behalf of Maduro's government, including politically motivated killings and torture of political prisoners.

Gisela Atencio was one of the first to get an appointment at the new consulate in Medellín, which opened Monday. More than 340,000 Venezuelan people live in Antioquia, the region of Colombia whose capital is Medellin. It's the city with the second-largest Venezuelan population behind Bogotá, the capital.

Atencio, who left Venezuela for Colombia two years ago, came to get her birth certificate authenticated so that she could have her key documents in hand as she continues to settle in and look for work. She said the opening of the consulates will help people like her.

"I have a daughter who was born here. [I have plans to] present her here, so they give her Venezuelan nationality," she said.

Atencio doesn't yet have regular status in Colombia, which requires a Venezuelan passport, which she hopes to one day get at the new consulate. It's a common barrier to becoming documented.

But the cost of a passport costs at least $216, or more than 900,000 Colombian pesos. That's only slightly less than the country's minimum monthly wage, which is still more than many Venezuelan residents earn if they work informally.

Inside the revamped consulate building, the rooms are freshly painted white, with new computer monitors set up at reception, where portraits of former President Hugo Chavez and Maduro hang on either side of a mockup of Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar.

"We have to celebrate any regularization of the relationship between the two countries," said Phil Gunson, an expert on Venezuela and senior analyst at Crisis Group. "Because the two countries are deeply intertwined."

It's critical for Venezuelan citizens to be able to access their country's services, he said, especially vulnerable migrant populations who may be living undocumented in Colombia.

However, many of those same expatriates are also "under suspicion" of opposing Maduro's government, Gunson said.

"They certainly are, generally, people who have felt that they have to leave the country because the circumstances are so difficult for them."

That casts doubt on whether the new consulates in Colombia would offer facilities for Venezuelans to vote in next year's presidential election. Maduro's 2018 re-election was largely seen as fraudulent.

For their part, Venezuelan officials recently celebrated one year of renewed relations, meeting in late September with their Colombian counterparts to discuss migration and the consulates.

"We understand the capacity, the enormous potential we can have if we move forward together," said Rander Peña, vice minister for Latin America in Venezuela's ministry of foreign affairs, pointing out more than 40 high-level meetings between Venezuelan and Colombian officials since Petro took office last August.

Trade between the two countries has also ramped up, reaching more than $700 million last year, according to the Colombian Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.

Last week, the two delegations signed more than a dozen agreements with a special focus on movement between the two countries, including a commitment to launch campaigns to promote "safe, orderly and regular" migration.

An average of 2,000 Venezuelans were still leaving their home country per day, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported earlier this year, as hyperinflation and a dearth of basic goods and services, like medical care, persist.

A record number of Venezuelans have also recently made the trip toward the U.S. border this summer, many leaving from Colombia and trekking through the dangerous Darien Gap to reach Panama and continue north. U.S. border agents encountered more than 30,000 Venezuelans at the Mexico frontier in the month of August.