CÚCUTA, Colombia (AP) - Under a scorching sun a few steps from the border between Colombia and Venezuela, hundreds of hungry men, women and children line up to receive a plate of rice and chicken, the first complete food that some of them will have in days.
It is estimated that some 25,000 Venezuelans cross the Simón Bolívar International Bridge to Colombia every day. Many enter for a few hours to work or exchange products on the black market, looking for home-made items they can not find in Venezuela.
But more and more frequently, they reach the 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) long border to eat at one of a half dozen facilities that offer a plate of food to poor Venezuelans.
"I never thought I was going to say this," said Erick Oropeza, 29, a former employee of the Venezuelan Ministry of Education who recently started crossing the bridge every day. "But now I am more grateful for what Colombia offered in such a short time, than with what I could receive in Venezuela during most of my life there."
The cities on the border with Colombia, such as Cúcuta, have become witnesses of the growing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, derived from the political chaos that the nation is experiencing and its economy on the verge of collapse.
According to a recent survey, about 75% of Venezuelans lost an average of 8.7 kilos (19 pounds) last year. The Colombian government has made contingency plans in case of a sudden and massive exodus of Venezuelans, but already there are churches and non-profit organizations that are helping immigrants, motivated by images of mothers who carry hungry babies and skinny men trying to work in the streets of Cúcuta to bring bread to their homes.
Paulina Toledo, 47, a Colombian stylist who recently helped feed 900 Venezuelans, said it hurt "in her soul" to see how hungry they were.
"We here, as Colombians, as Cucuteños who are on the border, we are living that same situation and pain, to see them, how they are suffering," he said.
People from both sides of this porous border have always had a foot in the other country: There are Colombians who live in Cúcuta and cross the border to visit relatives in San Cristóbal; There are Venezuelans who make the journey upside down, to work or go to school.
During the boom in the oil industry in Venezuela, when Colombia was hit by an armed conflict that lasted half a century, an estimated four million Colombians migrated to the neighboring country. Many returned when the Venezuelan economy began to implode and after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro closed the border in 2015 and expelled 20,000 Colombians from one day to the next.
Oropeza said he earned about $ 70 a month working in the Ministry of Education and selling hamburgers on his own - double the Venezuelan minimum wage - but that still was not enough to feed his family of four.
Once a month your family receives a government food pantry, but it lasts only a week.
Desperate to get money to feed his family, Oropeza left his job and traveled to the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio. He gets up at 4 in the morning to be the first to cross the bridge to Cúcuta, where he earns some money selling drinks on the street.
Oropeza goes directly to "Casa de Paso," a shelter run by a church that has served 60,000 meals to Venezuelans since it opened two months ago. Some 2,000 Venezuelans line up daily to get a ticket to reserve a place and then wait up to four hours for food to be served at plastic tables set up outdoors.
Several employees prepare chicken and rice in gigantic pots. Volunteers distribute juice boxes among tired-looking children. The adults sit quietly and savor their plate of food while several chickens roam among the people.
When Oropeza does not help at the shelter or wait in line at the place, he sells drinks for the equivalent of 50 cents. He has managed to take money for his family and he has already been able to buy a cell phone, which he had not had for two years.
The priest José David Cañas said that his church will continue to serve meals "as long as God permits."