Hello stephenstillwell !

Thank you for reading. That’s a lot to unpack but lets do it chronologically.

Have you what proof of dire conditions in Venezuela?

Hundreds of hours of interviews with too many fleeing Venezuelans to count as well as six months living on the Venezuelan border in Colombia. Also conversations with humanitarian aid workers from a broad range of organizations here including Red Cross doctors who worked just across the border in Venezuela before it was closed by the government there.

Conversations with trusted colleagues and personal friends in Caracas, whom I have worked with here in Cucuta during massive riots.

I go to the border literally every single day and you are welcome to read more first-hand reporting on that here- the site includes articles published by the New Humanitarian, the Bogota City Paper and the Caracas Chronicles.

None of that is to mention a wide range of neutral reports including from the UN and from Human Rights Watch. There are hundreds of easily researchable papers from a wide spectrum of reliable sources on just how horrible life has become in that collapsing country.

The US hostile actions to destabilize a thriving economy to provide cover for unprovoked war, is at best immoral, and reasonably viewed as evil.

As we have written, Muros Invisibles does not have a horse in the race on the question of politics within Venezuela. We have also written before that US actions have worsened the situation. We are very clear in our articles that military intervention would be a horrific failure and only make the situation worse. We often find ourselves in the position of explaining to critics who don’t understand the complexity of the situation that telling the truth about how horrible life is in Venezuela does not signal that we support the Trump administration's position there.

But the Venezuelan people lack self-determination in their government and there are no vestiges of Democracy left in what has essentially become an authoritarian kleptocracy that oppresses dissent with violence.

Do we not have a moral obligation to alleviate a very real humanitarian crisis? Jacobin, a socialist magazine, makes this point very succinctly in a great op-ed calling for leftist solidarity.

Over unneeded aid, that may well contain arms for internal conflict?

Maduro himself finally acknowledged this week that aid is badly needed as he finally allowed the Red Cross to begin delivering shipments.

As for weapons, I was personally on the bridge where the aid trucks were burnt. I saw the Aid packages in person. They contained food…somewhat underwhelmingly tasting food actually.

I understand the mistrust of Elliot Abrams’ history and share your skepticism.

This is a coup, complete with disinformation campaign…

As I stated above, whatever you want to call the revolution happening within Venezuela, we report only the truth as we hear it and see it first-hand from the ground here on the Venezuelan border.

The truth is that Venezuela has the second worst free-press rating in the Western hemisphere, detentions, threats, deportations and violence against journalists critical of the regime are all widespread.

The main english language newspaper in Venezuela, Venezuela Analysis, is state funded and highly censored.

The simple truth of the matter is that if you aren’t here, you don’t hear how bad it truly is.

None of this will be able to manifest when each human is included equally in a globally standard process of money creation.

I enjoyed your article! Thanks for posting it. And as for the silver, well. Being a truly independent journalist is the worst paying job I have ever had in my life. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t tell the truth, but feel free to make a donation. I share your sentiment that everyone should get paid.

If my goal were to make profits, I could just sell articles to people who already have their mind made up about the situation. It would be much easier.

At any rate, happy to continue a civil conversation. Like most critics of our work that I encounter, I assure you any ire is based on a misunderstanding of exactly what Muros Invisibles does. I have a feeling we hold views more similar than you realize, as well as a skepticism of US Latin American policy.

I’m headed back to Cucuta in a week. Six months on that border changed me for the worse. I saw more violence and suffering than I can relate to you in this brief note.

But if you’re curious about why I think borders should be abolished, you can read in more depth about that here.

Joshua Collins