INFLUX BURDENS VENEZUELA

LA PISTA, Colombia - The gunmen came for Henry Fernandez on a still,
sweltering afternoon. Wearing the signature white shoulder patches of the
paramilitary forces that roam this region of northeastern Colombia, they
walked him out of his corner store and down the rutted road through town.

Fernandez, a 38-year-old husband and father, did not struggle when the 40
or so militiamen marched him before neighbors who had gathered to see the
commotion. When it became clear he was to die, several witnesses said,
Fernandez made a break for the lush jungle along the roadside. He was shot
in the head three times at 3 p.m. on Aug. 22, and his body was left in the
center of the street.

"Everyone saw it," said Antonio Quintana, 18, a yucca farmer who watched
Fernandez die and whose cousin was drowned by paramilitary troops. "I was
afraid that I was next. But then they left, disappeared."

So has most of this town, located hard against the Rio de Oro, which these
days serves as Colombia's swift, muddy border with Venezuela.

La Pista sits midway between Caracas and Bogota, roughly 350 miles from
each capital, in a steamy tropical region controlled by Colombia's leftist
guerrillas and menaced by the right-wing paramilitary groups that have
sworn to eliminate them. The Fernandez killing prompted the latest exodus
from this town, where only several dozen families remain. Their neighbors
fled by canoe across the river, joining tens of thousands of their
countrymen who have quietly colonized western Venezuela over the past
decade and turned many of its towns into Colombian sanctuaries.

The impending $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug package has changed the landscape
not only in Colombia, where paramilitary groups and guerrillas are moving
quickly and savagely to consolidate positions, but also in Venezuela and
other bordering countries, which have fortified frontiers and warned of a
coming storm. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sharply criticized the
military component of the aid package, saying it will increase bloodshed in
Colombia and force the conflict into neighboring countries.

So a Colombian diaspora that has been tacitly welcomed for years has become
the subject of great concern within Venezuela, once the most accommodating
of Colombia's neighbors. It has brought increased army patrols along the
river and calls from human rights groups for Chavez to soften what has been
largely a military response to a nascent refugee crisis.

Between 500 and 1,500 Colombians, most from La Pista, have arrived on the
Venezuelan side of the Rio de Oro since Fernandez was killed. Some of the
refugees have been intercepted by stepped-up army patrols and returned. But
most of them have blended into such nearby Venezuelan towns as El Cruce,
Casigua and Machiques, where Colombians compose the majority of the population.

The number of refugees is difficult to pinpoint, but Venezuelan special
forces officers who patrol the river say the most recent migration from
Colombia is not the largest of recent years. In May 1999, when paramilitary
groups slaughtered hundreds of residents of La Gabarra, a few hours by mule
from here, thousands of Colombians crossed the river. According to several
Venezuelan soldiers who witnessed the exodus, headless bodies from the
massacre also made the trip downstream.

The recent Colombian migration has unsettled residents of many Venezuelan
conservative frontier towns. A commander of a local Venezuelan special
forces patrol said Colombian kidnapping rings have formed in recent months,
seizing Venezuelan ranchers and selling them to guerrillas on the other
side of the river. A Venezuelan trucker was killed recently in Colombia by
the National Liberation Army, a small leftist guerrilla group, provoking a
war of words between Bogota and Caracas. "For sale" signs are common on
property within 12 miles of the river.

In the Venezuelan city of Machiques, where the Colombian consulate
estimates that 80 percent of the 100,000 residents are Colombian,
resentment is building as the migration picks up steam.

A group of ranchers chatting in Plaza Bolivar said Colombians bring
"kidnappings, disease and drugs" to the town and its outskirts, where most
of the migrants live. One called them "scum." Jose Marquez, 24, lifted his
shirt to display the pistol stuck in his pants by way of explaining his
personal security plan.

"It depends on the government to solve this problem," said Euclides Melia,
48, a livestock trader. "They need to organize something to handle this."