Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro carried out one of the greatest currency devaluations in history over the weekend — a 95 per cent plunge that will test the capacity of an already beleaguered population to stomach even more pain.

The official rate for the currency will go from about 285,000 per dollar to 6 million, a shock that officials tried to partly offset by raising the minimum wage 3,500 per cent to the equivalent of just US$30 a month. While Maduro boasted in Friday night’s announcement that the International Monetary Fund wasn’t involved in the policies, aspects of the moves bore a resemblance to a classic orthodox economic adjustment, albeit with some confusing twists.

One likely outcome is that inflation, which already was forecast to reach 1 million per cent this year, will get fresh fuel from the measures. Prices are currently rising at an annualized rate of 108,000 per cent, according to Bloomberg’s Café con Leche index.
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Maduro’s new strategy for managing the economy is a desperate response after years of disastrous policies that undercut growth, sent prices soaring and turned what had once been one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries into a dysfunctional nation that’s spawned a refugee crisis. Pressure is mounting on him to right the ship as calls for his overthrow grow six years after he took over for the late Hugo Chavez. Earlier this month, Maduro started a fresh crackdown on his opponents after a failed attempt to assassinate him using an aerial drone.

The economic shock measures demonstrate the “government’s willingness to do what it takes to stay in power,” Raul Gallegos, an associate director at Control Risks, said from Bogota. “Maduro looks vulnerable, clearly something could happen.”

The devaluation comes at the same time the governments is redenominating the currency by lopping off five zeros and introducing new bills and a name change. So instead of the new minimum wage being 1.8 million strong bolivars, it will be 1,800 sovereign bolivars.

To make things more complicated, the new bolivar’s value will be linked to a crypto currency — believed to be the first time a government has ever employed the technique. The so-called Petro is backed by crude oil and is valued by the government at US$60, or 3,600 sovereign bolivars. The Petro will fluctuate and be used to set prices for goods.

The value added tax will rise 4 percentage points and officials will end some gasoline subsidies, saving the government US$10 billion a year, Maduro said, without providing more details. The central bank will increase the frequency of foreign exchange auctions to three and eventually five days a week.

In some ways, the devaluation is a mere formality. For years now, most people and companies have been unable to access dollars at government-set rates and have been purchasing them in the black market. As a result, the prices on many goods across the country are already based on that exchange rate.

“They had to do this because they ran out of money,” Moises Naim, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former minister in Venezuela, said from Washington. He pointed out that oil production — pretty much the country’s sole industry at this point — has plummeted in recent years amid a shortage of equipment and technical expertise, foreign reserves have plummeted and allies such as China and Russia are providing less support.

Amid the cash crunch, Maduro has halted most payments on Venezuela’s foreign debt and is now US$6.1 billion in the hole with bondholders, cutting off most sources of new financing. Creditors are also looking at the country’s assets abroad with an eye toward seizing them. A small Canadian mining company was awarded the right to collect on an arbitration ruling by taking shares held by the parent of U.S. refining unit Citgo, a verdict Venezuela is appealing.

The symbolism of announcing the drastic measures on a Friday night wasn’t lost on many Venezuelans. In 1983, President Luis Herrera Campins devalued the bolivar for the first time in 22 years after oil prices crashed. The day became to be known locally as “Black Friday.”

When in 1989 Venezuela raised gasoline costs, lifted foreign-exchange controls and let the currency plunge, prices soared 21 per cent in one month alone, leading to riots known as the “Caracazo” that killed hundreds and eventually paved the way for Chavez’s rise to power.

It’s not clear how the shock measures announced by Maduro will sit with one of his key allies: the military. Top ranking generals have been handed the keys to ministries, the state-run oil company and the lucrative business of food imports. Myriad exchange rates created juicy arbitrage opportunities that enriched many close associates of the state.

“Clearly this will hit Maduro’s popularity, but power is being sustained with bullets and not with votes,” Naim said. “As long as the military continues to have access to lucrative businesses it will continue to grant support to the government.”

The opposition, a fragmented group of parties whose leaders are either in hiding or in jail, called for protests against the measures Tuesday. Several labour unions also called for a 24-hour national strike.

In Caracas this weekend, many small shops were closed while people flocked to supermarkets and gasoline stations to stock up. Online banking services will be suspended for 24 hours starting at 6 p.m. local time in anticipation of the redenomination.

Many private companies, already dealing with hyperinflation, years of brain drain, price controls and threats of seizure, now must deal with even faster inflation and mandatory wage hikes. It’s also possible that the exodus of Venezuelans to other countries will increase, even as Ecuador and Peru announced entry restrictions and tensions flared along the border with Brazil.

“People are leaving because of a feeling of despair, and the desperation will now increase,” Naim said.</s>Nicolás Maduro has belittled the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing across the Andes as gullible “slaves and beggars” duped into scrubbing foreign toilets by enemies of the Bolivarian revolution.

The United Nations said 2.3 million people, more than 7% of Venezuela’spopulation, have left the country since 2015, with most heading to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Half a million have arrived this year in Ecuador alone.

But when Daniel Luquez, an unemployed carpenter, set off from his home in the city of Guanare in July he was not, as Venezuela’s president recently scoffed, chasing “the honeys” of a life abroad. He was fighting for his daughter’s life.

Two-year-old Jolismar was diagnosed with thoracic cancer last year after doctors found a small lump near her heart. On Tuesday, and after an arduous three-week journey across Colombia, her father arrived in the Ecuadorian border town of Tulcán determined to earn the money to support his ailing daughter as she undergoes chemotherapy back in their rapidly unravelling nation.

“Getting here was tough, but I have to battle for my family,” said Luquez, 27, who hitchhiked and hobbled almost 1,200 miles to Ecuador. Six years ago his left leg was amputated as a result of a car crash.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daniel Luquez,27, travelled 1,200 miles and is one of more than 500 000 people who have crossed into northern Ecuador this year. Photograph: Tom Phillips/The Guardian

Luquez is one of the more than 500,000 Venezuelans who have crossed into northern Ecuador via Colombia this year as his country’s migration crisis escalates. Regional governments struggle to cope with the humanitarian and political fallout from one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history.

The exodus appears to have accelerated in recent weeks with almost 43,000 Venezuelans streaming into Tulcán over Rumichaca Bridge in the first 14 days of August alone.

José de la Fuente, the regional head of the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said the number could hit 100,000 by the end of this month. “I don’t think anybody imagined a crisis of this size,” he said.

Andrea Obando, who is leading the humanitarian response for Tulcán’s town hall, said even 50 years of conflict involving Colombian paramilitaries and guerrillas had not pushed so many people across the border.

Maduro, who took power after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, has struck a defiant tone after the recent attempt to assassinate him, detaining political foes and vowing to revive Venezuela’s nosediving economy.

“I want the country to recover and I have the formula. Trust me,” he said in a televised address on Friday, announcing a major currency devaluation many economists say will make the situation even worse.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crowds of Venezuelan migrants wait to cross into Ecuador on the Rumichaca bridge. Photograph: Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent/The Guardian

But with no hint of the economic or migratory crises easing, Venezuela’s neighbours appear to be losing patience.

Brazil, which has taken in tens of thousands of Venezuelans, briefly sealed its northern border in early August, with regional authorities claiming they could no longer cope. “If we carry on like this, by the end of the year we will have lost control of the city,” warned the mayor of Boa Vista, which is near the border.

On Saturday, angry Brazilians set fire to migrant camps in the frontier town of Pacaraima and forced about 1,200 Venezuelan immigrants back over the border after a restaurant owner was robbed and stabbed – allegedly by Venezuelans. The Venezuelan foreign ministry expressed concern over the attacks and urged Brazil to protect the immigrants and their property. Brazil said it would send extra troops to the Roraima border to counter the unrest.

Earlier this year, Chile and Colombia introduced measures designed to deter Venezuelans from coming, and this week Ecuador and Peru followed suit, announcing they would only admit those with passports, something many lack because of the turmoil back home.

Ecuador’s decision was denounced by activists as unconstitutional and inhumane. But it will please some in Tulcán, a picturesque but economically depressed settlement of about 60,000 residents.

Hundreds of them marched through its streets on Thursday, demanding urgent action from President Lenín Moreno to rescue its economy and slow the influx of Venezuelans , some of whom can be seen sleeping rough and begging in parks and squares.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hundreds of locals take to the streets of Tulcán, Ecuador to protest against the arrival of thousands of Venezuelan migrants. Photograph: Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent/The Guardian

“You can help five, 10 or 20 Venezuelans but you can’t help … 10,000,” said Jairo Pozo, a business owner behind the protest, accusing “these Venezuelan gentlemen” of stealing Ecuadorian jobs and wallets.

Marco Sánchez, a 32-year-old demonstrator, said he was disturbed by the presence of “this type of person”, claiming: “Lots of people basically come here come to steal.”

Obando said she was concerned about rising xenophobia and blamed local media for sensationalising a handful of offences committed by Venezuelans. Starving incomers had committed some petty crimes, she said, but added that official figures gave lie to claims Tulcán was in the grip of a crime wave.

She said Ecuador’s “arbitrary” decision to bar passport-less Venezuelans would strand many in Tulcán or push them into the hands of people smugglers. Authorities already knew of 25 smuggling trails around the town, she said: “This is going to skyrocket.”

That Venezuela’s exodus will continue is obvious from the tales of despair that abound on Rumichaca Bridge, where thousands assemble each day en route to a new life and a Jehovah’s Witness volunteer has erected a sign posing the question on everyone’s mind: “When will the suffering end?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yemila Urribarri, a 42-year-old psychologist from Maracaibo who is fleeing to Peru with her 14-year-old son, Jhoel. Photograph: Tom Phillips, Latin America correspondent/The Guardian

Yemila Urribarri, a 42-year-old psychologist from Maracaibo who is fleeing to Peru with her 14-year-old son, said her country was disintegrating. “There are children dying of hunger,” she said, her eyes glazing over with tears.

Andrés Chacin, a 21-year-old politics graduate who was Argentina-bound, said his generation had also lost hope: “Eighty per cent of my friends have already emigrated.”

With Maduro clinging on and Venezuela’s opposition divided, Chacin said he sees international pressure as the only chance of change. “Vladimir Putin will decide [what happens]. Xi Jinping will decide. Latin American governments will decide. Nobody else,” he said.

Others on the bridge had more extreme suggestions. “There’s only one way to solve this: kill him – a bomb on Miraflores,” said Alex Ribero, a gold-miner from Ciudad Bolívar, referring to the presidential palace.

A group of backpackers from Germany and New Zealand looked on in disbelief having unwittingly stumbled into the humanitarian emergency. “I’ve never been part of something like this … I had no idea what we were going to be coming into,” said Ashleigh Mcquarters, a 32-year-old accountant who was among the crowd queuing to enter Ecuador.

Over coffee and cake, now unthinkable luxuries back home, Luquez recalled starting his expedition in July with less than a dollar in his pocket. He crossed into Colombia at the town of Arauquita and initially planned to stay in Bogotá. But he abandoned Colombia’s capital after being accosted by a local resident who told him “venecos”, a derogatory word for Venezuelans, were not welcome.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daniel Luquez in Tulcán. Photograph: Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent/The Guardian

On his crutches, Luquez hitched and hiked his way south through Cali, over Ecuador’s border and finally to Tulcán where he sells sweets on street corners from 7am to 7pm to help pay for his daughter’s treatment.

“It’s hard. You go three or four days without washing … and if you do take a bath it’s in a river … I never thought I’d go through something like this. I never thought I’d have to leave my country,” he said. “Never.”

That night Luquez retired to the shabby $50-a-month hostel where he has rented a room with help from an international charity. He logged on to its wi-fi network and typed a message into his phone.

“My family is the most important thing to me,” it read. “You don’t know how much I wish they were here with me.”</s>Two South American nations are stiffening entry requirements for the flood of Venezuelans fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis.

Authorities in Peru announced that they will follow Ecuador’s recent decision to require Venezuelans reaching the border to enter with a passport, a document that has grown increasingly difficult to obtain in Venezuela.

The decision drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia, which has become a gateway for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans leaving their homeland.

Many are crossing through the Andean nation on their way to other places in Latin America.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia migration director Christian Kruger warned that the new passport rule in neighbouring Ecuador could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries.

Officials estimate more than 4,000 Venezuelans crossed from Colombia into Ecuador each day over the bridge earlier this month.

“We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” he said.

Most Venezuelan migrants want to continue heading across Ecuador to Peru (Dolores Ochoa/AP)

According to the United Nations, 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2014 as their country reels from hyperinflation and severe shortages of everything from food and medicine to ink and paper for passports.

More than one million Venezuelans have arrived in Colombia in less than two years, with many using the mountainous nation as a bridge to Ecuador and Peru, where some believe they will have better luck finding jobs and applying for asylum.

More than a half million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador since January, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency.

In Peru, officials recorded more than 5,000 Venezuelan entries on a recent single day.

“The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America’s largest mass-population movements in history,” William Spindler, the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this month.

Colombia began requiring Venezuelans to present a passport or border card allowing for short trips into the nation earlier this year.

But thousands still sneak in through hundreds of illegal entry points along the 1,370-mile border with Venezuela.

Colombian officials recently agreed to provide legal status to 442,000 who participated in a registry for migrants without valid documents.

A border crossing from Venezuela into the Brazilian city of Pacaraima was closed earlier this month after a judge ruled it should be shuttered until a programme to relocate Venezuelan refugees could keep pace with the hundreds arriving each day. That decision was later reversed by an appellate court.

Peruvian interior minister Mauro Medina said the passport requirement is needed to ensure an orderly migration.

“If something happens to them, we have a way to identify them,” he said.

“Also, some bad apples — who don’t represent the majority, who are decent people — filter in and police should have the adequate tools to identify them.”

Peruvian migration officials estimate between 17,000 and 25,000 Venezuelans are now in southern Ecuador with the intention of heading on to Peru, Chile or Argentina. They will have until August 25 to enter without a passport.

Mr Kruger, the Colombian official, said the new passport rule is unlikely to stem the tide of migrants and called on Ecuador and other nations to work together on dealing with the crisis in crafting common-sense policies.

“Requiring a passport isn’t going to stop this migration,” Mr Kruger said. “This isn’t a migration of people leaving their country just because they want to. They’re leaving because they need to.”</s>LIMA, Peru — Two South American nations are stiffening entry requirements for the flood of Venezuelans fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis, a move that could make their plight even more arduous.

Authorities in Peru announced Friday that they will follow Ecuador’s recent decision to require Venezuelans reaching the border to enter with a passport, a document that has grown increasingly difficult to obtain in Venezuela.

The decision drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia, which has become a gateway for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans leaving their homeland. Many are crossing through the Andean nation on their way to other places in Latin America.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia Migration Director Christian Kruger warned that the new passport rule in neighboring Ecuador could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries. Officials estimate over 4,000 Venezuelans crossed from Colombia into Ecuador each day over the bridge earlier this month.

“We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” he said.

According to the United Nations, 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2014 as their country reels from hyperinflation and severe shortages of everything from food and medicine to ink and paper for passports.

Over 1 million Venezuelans have arrived in Colombia in less than two years, with many using the mountainous nation as a bridge to Ecuador and Peru, where some believe they will have better luck finding jobs and applying for asylum.

More than a half million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador since January, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. In Peru, officials recorded more than 5,000 Venezuelan entries on a recent single day.

“The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America’s largest mass-population movements in history,” William Spindler, the spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said earlier this month.

Colombia began requiring Venezuelans to present a passport or border card allowing for short trips into the nation earlier this year. But thousands still sneak in through hundreds of illegal entry points along the 1,370-mile border with Venezuela. Colombian officials recently agreed to provide legal status to 442,000 who participated in a registry for migrants without valid documents.

A border crossing from Venezuela into the Brazilian city of Pacaraima was closed earlier this month after a judge ruled it should be shuttered until a program to relocate Venezuelan refugees could keep pace with the hundreds arriving each day. That decision was later reversed by an appellate court.

Peruvian Interior Minister Mauro Medina said the passport requirement is needed to ensure an orderly migration. “If something happens to them, we have a way to identify them,” he said. “Also, some bad apples – who don’t represent the majority, who are decent people – filter in and police should have the adequate tools to identify them.”</s>Two South American nations are stiffening entry requirements for the flood of Venezuelans fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis.

Authorities in Peru announced that they will follow Ecuador’s recent decision to require Venezuelans reaching the border to enter with a passport, a document that has grown increasingly difficult to obtain in Venezuela.

The decision drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia, which has become a gateway for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans leaving their homeland.

Many are crossing through the Andean nation on their way to other places in Latin America.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia migration director Christian Kruger warned that the new passport rule in neighbouring Ecuador could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries.

Officials estimate more than 4,000 Venezuelans crossed from Colombia into Ecuador each day over the bridge earlier this month.

“We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” he said.</s>Brazil's president mobilizes military after residents in the border town of Pacaraima clashed violently with Venezuelan migrants, driving them out of makeshift camps

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Brazil's President Michel Temer called an emergency meeting of key ministers Sunday after ordering troops to the border with Venezuela as regional tensions build over the exodus from its crisis-hit neighbor.

The move comes after residents in the border town of Pacaraima clashed violently with Venezuelan migrants, driving them out of makeshift camps.

Temer was meeting at his presidential palace in Brasilia with key ministers, including those of defense, public security and foreign affairs, but no further details were being disclosed.

The situation in Pacaraima, on the opposite side of the border to the Venezuelan town of Santa Elena de Uairen, was calm early Sunday, August 19, partly because locals managed to force out Venezuelans living on the streets.

"More than 1,200 Venezuelan migrants returned to Venezuela," after Saturday's violence, a spokesman for a Brazilian migration task force told AFP.

"The city looks deserted today, it's very quiet because police reinforcements have arrived and the markets are reopening," said a local in the town of around 12,000, who did not wish to be identified.

The public security ministry announced it was sending a contingent of 60 troops to join teams in the area on Monday.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have crossed the border into Brazil over the past 3 years as they seek to escape the economic, political and social crisis gripping their country.

The latest tensions began early Saturday, August 18, hours after a local merchant was robbed and severely beaten in an incident blamed on Venezuelan suspects, in Pacaraima, where an estimated 1,000 immigrants had been living on the street.

Dozens of locals then attacked the immigrants' two makeshift camps and burned their belongings, forcing the Venezuelans back across the border. Shots were fired, stores were shuttered and debris littered the streets.

"It was terrible, they burned the tents and everything that was inside," said Carol Marcano, a Venezuelan who works in Boa Vista and was on the border returning from Venezuela. "There were shots, they burned rubber tires."

Roraima state Governor Suely Campos made a plea to temporarily close the border and asked Brasilia to send security reinforcements to "face the increase in crime" she links to Venezuelans in the region, particularly in the capital Boa Vista.

Meanwhile, Caracas called on Brazil Saturday to provide "corresponding guarantees to Venezuelan nationals and take measures to safeguard and secure their families and belongings."

Tensions are rising in Latin America over migration triggered by the crises in Venezuela and in Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega has led a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Peru and Ecuador are halting immigrants at the border by requiring them to present passports – which many lack – instead of identity cards.

Last week alone, 20,000 Venezuelans entered Peru, authorities say. On Sunday, 18 undocumented Venezuelans were detained in the capital Lima, according to police.

Peru's passport measures go into effect August 25 – and the government has also narrowed the window for Venezuelans to apply for a temporary work permit, which it has granted for the past two years.

Previously, applications were open to Venezuelans who entered Peru by December 31, and the deadline was June 30, 2019. But now, only Venezuelans who enter Peru by October 31 can apply – and they have until December 31 to do so.

Colombia has said it fears that Ecuador's border controls, which went into effect Saturday, will leave thousands of Venezuelans stranded in Colombia, from where an estimated 3,000 cross every day.

The United Nations estimates that 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the crisis looking for work and to escape poverty, and Colombia has given temporary residence to more than 800,000.

Brazilian federal police estimate about 500 Venezuelans enter Brazil every day. In the first semester of this year, around 56,740 requested refuge or temporary residence.

In San Jose, Costa Rica, hundreds of people took part in sometimes violent protests Saturday using Nazi symbols to repudiate Nicaraguan migrants. – Rappler.com</s>Denny Gudiña spent seven days riding 25 different freight trucks to cross Colombia. He walked through the rain, slept by the highway and rode in an uncovered cargo bed through the frigid Andean highlands at night.

He ate nothing but the crackers he carried and the food donations from generous Colombians who knew about the rampant hunger and misery he fled in his native Venezuela.

On Sunday he arrived on foot at the Ecuadoran border, only to find it closed to Venezuelans without passports and crowded with hundreds of other migrants who had found their trips suddenly blocked.

More than 2 million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2014, according to U.N. figures, as an economic crisis intensifies in the oil-rich nation. Many have streamed through neighboring Colombia to countries such as Ecuador and Peru. But some South American countries say they are increasingly unable to cope with the crush of migrants. Ecuador last weekend imposed new rules blocking entry to Venezuelan migrants who have no passports or only a few months left on their documents.

“How demoralizing,” Gudiña said. “So much time traveling here to arrive, and they tell us no.”

[Millions flee Venezuela, only to become a new underclass in Latin America]

Peru last week also announced it would soon require arriving Venezuelans to have passports, rather than just national ID cards. Meanwhile, Brazil deployed more military forces to its northern border after citizens there burned a Venezuelan migrant encampment on Saturday.

“The capacity of the region is overwhelmed,” said Yukiko Iriyama, a representative for the U.N. refu­gee agency in Colombia. “The magnitude of the situation really requires a regional comprehensive approach.”

At the Rumichaca international bridge, one of several connecting Colombia and Ecuador, more than 4,000 Venezuelans were crossing daily by late July, according to Colombia’s migration authority, a steep increase over previous months.

Last week, Ecuador declared a “state of emergency” due to the volume of migration and imposed the new passport rule. Venezuelans often lack such documents, because they can face months of delays and have to pay hundreds of dollars to get passports from their increasingly dysfunctional government.

“Everything has its limit,” Ecuadoran President Lenín Moreno told local media on Saturday.

Ecuador’s public defender challenged the decision, with a court ruling pending, and special exceptions were made for children. But crowds accumulated at the border crossing Sunday and Monday as Venezuelans continued to arrive by bus or on foot.

[A historic exodus is leaving Venezuela without teachers and doctors]

One family said they had sold their TVs, washing machines, a computer and a motorbike, then borrowed money from relatives outside Venezuela to buy bus passage from the Venezuelan border to Lima, Peru, for $215 per person.

“Imagine people like us who have sold everything, down to our beds, to come here, and they close the door on us,” said Jonnayker Lien, 18, standing beside his parents, brother and aunt. “We don’t know where to sleep, and we don’t have money to go back.”

The family, like hundreds of others, huddled in blankets overnight on the concrete sidewalk as the temperature in the mountain border town dipped below 50 degrees.

Even before the new passport rule was announced, the Ecuadoran government and international organizations had installed field medical facilities, portable bathrooms and tent shelters at the border crossing.

But the facilities were overwhelmed by the flood of people who were starting to back up at the blocked border. Some Venezuelans were suffering from hypothermia and many lacked adequate food, said Gustavo Salazar, a coordinator with the Red Cross of Ecuador.

With the passport rule tied up in court, he said, many Venezuelans would probably remain at the border for the foreseeable future.

Some migrants wouldn’t accept that fate. Two cousins, Jose and Kenny Ramo, 25 and 30, sat atop their tattered backpacks and wondered what to do. Like others, they had walked and hitched rides across Colombia, leaving behind children and wives. They could not go back, they said.

After hours of waiting, the cousins shouldered their packs and slipped off into the Ecuadoran forest, bound for Peru.

Police appeared to make no attempt to stop those who sought to enter Ecuador on foot without passports. But transportation companies ask foreigners for a passport with an official entry stamp before issuing a ticket, so those without proper documents could face a daunting hike of hundreds of miles through high mountains before reaching a city.

Late Sunday, about 100 of the Venezuelan migrants left the border post and started walking up a highway into Ecuador, suitcases in tow.

“We’ll continue on foot, go on to a better life,” said Gender Valindo, 25, a former heating systems tech, as he marched up the steep road.

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Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news</s>A flood of Venezuelans fleeing their nation's economic and humanitarian crisis has led two South American nations to stiffen their entry requirements.

Peru announced on Friday that they will follow Ecuador's recent decision to require all Venezuelans reaching the border to enter with a passport- a document that has grown increasingly difficult to obtain in Venezuela.

The decision drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia, which has become a gateway for Venezuelans leaving their homeland.

An astounding number are now leaving by land, first crossing the borders into Colombia and then travelling to neighbouring Peru and Ecuador.

In Ecuador, authorities estimated more than 4,000 Venezuelans entered each day in early August over the Rumichaca International Bridge.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia Migration Director Christian Kruger warned against the new passport rule.

He said that it could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries.

'We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,' he said.

According to the United Nations, 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2014 as their country reels from hyperinflation, severe shortages of food, medicine and even ink and paper for passports.

More than one million Venezuelans have arrived in Colombia in less than two years, with many using the mountainous nation as a bridge to Ecuador and Peru, where some believe they will have better luck finding jobs and applying for asylum.

Earlier this month William Spindler, the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said: 'The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America's largest mass-population movements in history.'

Colombia began requiring Venezuelans to present a passport or border card allowing for short trips into the nation earlier this year.

But thousands still sneak in through hundreds of illegal entry points along the 1,370-mile border with Venezuela

Peruvian Interior Minister Mauro Medina said the passport requirement is needed to ensure an orderly migration.

He said: 'If something happens to them, we have a way to identify them.

'Also, some bad apples - who don't represent the majority, who are decent people - filter in and police should have the adequate tools to identify them.'

Peruvian migration officials estimate between 17,000 and 25,000 Venezuelans are now in southern Ecuador with the intention of heading on to Peru, Chile or Argentina.

They will have until August 25 to enter without a passport.

Kruger, the Colombian official, said the new passport rule is unlikely to stem the tide of migrants and called on Ecuador and other nations to work together on dealing with the crisis in crafting common-sense policies.

'Requiring a passport isn't going to stop this migration,' Kruger said.

'This isn't a migration of people leaving their country just because they want to.

'They're leaving because they need to.'</s>IPIALES, Colombia (Reuters) - Dozens of furious Venezuelan migrants fleeing economic misery in Venezuela for a new life elsewhere on Sunday defied rules requiring they hold a valid passport to cross the border from Colombia into Ecuador, and authorities appeared to be allowing it.

Hundreds of desperate people who traveled days from Venezuela, mostly by bus but some on foot, were prevented from passing the checkpoint near the southwestern town of Ipiales by a regulation set by Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno that kicked in on Saturday.

But as tension mounted in the frigid Colombian mountain town, migrants decided to risk being detained and simply walked across the ungated and loosely guarded border, having spent days in freezing conditions at the Rumichaca crossing.

“We have no money, we need to move on now and get our lives back,” said Mayerly Isaguirre, out of breath from dragging her belongings up the steep hill at the Ecuadorian border.

The primary school teacher, 37, was traveling with her boyfriend and had planned to cross legally with her Venezuelan national ID card en route to find work in Peru, where other family members successfully arrived weeks ago. But they were stopped by the new regulation.

After more than 24 hours shivering from the cold at the border, she took the chance.

“They haven’t told us anything - we are just waiting around like idiots,” she said, wheeling her fuchsia colored suitcase across the open check point as guards looked on.

Peru’s government announced immigration measures similar to Ecuador’s on Friday, with passport requirements for Venezuelans beginning on Aug. 25. Ecuador on Sunday said children and adolescents traveling with their parents could cross without passports.

“They’re in limbo,” said Gustavo Salvador, a Red Cross Ecuador worker. “Many people who are crossing illegally are going to be hit by fines at Peru’s border, and these people don’t have money.”

Ecuador’s foreign and interior ministries declined to comment. A spokesman for Colombia’s migration office could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Sunday morning, arguments broke out between migrants - those rallying for people to move on into Ecuador in groups while others argued they should stay and do things “the right way.”

More than a million Venezuelan migrants have entered Colombia over the last 15 months, according to official estimates, but Ecuador, Peru and Brazil also have received many.

Over the last two years, especially, many Venezuelans have struggled to obtain passports amid the OPEC nation’s political and economic chaos.

This year alone, 423,000 Venezuelans have entered Ecuador through the Rumichaca border.

In Ipiales, Venezuelan migrants who said they had hitchhiked for days were huddled under blankets in tents. Exhausted and hungry, they scraped their last few pesos together to buy food.

Many like Jorge Luis Torrealba, who traveled with 12 friends and family members, including two small children, were unable to find space in the tents and were sleeping on the freezing concrete pavement.

“We are from the Caribbean, we can’t handle this cold,” he said, shivering despite wearing four t-shirts, two sweaters, two pairs of socks and two pairs of jeans.

He said is considering trekking across the border to Peru but is afraid of what would happen to his children if he is detained. “We just want to move on.”</s>Brazil’s President Michel Temer announced an emergency meeting of government Sunday after deploying troops to the border town of Pacaraima where Venezuelan migrants clashed with residents.

Temer met with key officials at his presidential palace, including those of defense, public security, and foreign affairs, but limited details were disclosed, said the AFP.

The situation in Pacaraima was critical on Saturday, migrant camps were overwhelmed by angry residents following reports that a local restaurant owner had been attacked by a gang of Venezuelans.

There has been growing hostility towards the numbers of Venezuelan migrants entering the Roraima state, Brazil’s northernmost region, in recent months.

Groups of men carrying blunt objects set fire to the camps and other items belonging to the Venezuelans, and more than one thousand migrants fled town back across the border.

“More than 1,200 Venezuelan migrants returned to Venezuela,” after Saturday’s violence, a spokesman for a Brazilian migration task force told AFP.

“The city looks deserted today, it’s very quiet because police reinforcements have arrived and the markets are reopening,” said a local in the town of around 12,000, who did not want to be identified.

Brazil’s public security ministry said it deployed 60 government soldiers to support the police in the area. They are due to arrive on Monday.

Shocking footage of the migrant crisis in Pacaraima was caught on video:

Video of the migrants being expelled from the town.

Another view of the chaos.

“It was terrible, they burned the tents and everything that was inside,” said Carol Marcano, a Venezuelan who works in Boa Vista and was on the border returning from Venezuela. “There were shots, they burned rubber tires.”

Roraima state Governor Suely Campos pleaded with Brasilia over the weekend to send security reinforcements to “face the increase in crime” she associates with Venezuelans in the region, particularly in the capital Boa Vista.

Meanwhile, Caracas, the Capital of Venezuela, called on Brazil Saturday to provide “corresponding guarantees to Venezuelan nationals and take measures to safeguard and secure their families and belongings.”

The uptick in violence came amid surging tensions in Latin America over migration triggered by the economic collapse in Venezuela.

According to the latest figures from the United Nations, more than 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled their country – mostly for Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru.

UN officials have also reported that 1.3 million of those migrants are now suffering from malnourishment, with food shortages running wild in parts of Latin America.

With another emerging markets-style crisis developing, the weakest currencies in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, etc..) have been some of the ones with the most external hard currency borrowing, political turmoil, and/or the highest current account deficits, second to Turkey.

The role of the US in this crisis should also not be underestimated, as the steady increase in dollar interest rates and quantitative tightening by the Federal Reserve have led to a “currency tantrum” in the emerging markets.
Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile tighten border controls for Venezuelan migrants. Over 7% of Venezuela’s total population has fled the nation in two years.