In These Venezuelan Towns, Colombian Rebels Call the Shots

Soon after rebels from neighboring Colombia arrived in this Venezuelan village, they started choosing students from the local high school to harvest coca, the plant used to make cocaine, the school's principal told Reuters.

Four years later, these foreigners from the National Liberation Party, or ELN, function as both a local government and a major employer in this town in the northwestern state of Zulia, according to the educator and 14 other residents. All spoke on condition of anonymity and asked that their community not be named because they feared retaliation. The guerrillas pay villagers, including children, to staff narcotics operations, extortion rackets and wildcat gold mines in both countries, the people said. Colombian security officials say the criminal proceeds are financing the guerrillas' long-running insurrection against the Colombian government. The group's recruiting, the residents said, has intensified over the past year as the coronavirus pandemic has deepened misery in Venezuela, where the economy was already reeling from years of hyperinflation and shortages. When the armed Colombians first arrived, the villagers said, they were flanked by local Socialist Party community leaders and proclaimed they were there to bring security with the blessing of President Nicolas Maduro.