North Santander
Colombia-Venezuela border gateway hosting 336,000+ Venezuelan migrants, with trade up 144.5% after 2022 reopening but 50% higher homicide rates.
The bridges connecting Cúcuta to Venezuelan San Cristóbal carry Colombia's most fraught economic traffic. Over 336,000 Venezuelans have settled in North Santander, joining 12,000 returned Colombians in a department that hosts 12% of the 2.9 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Cúcuta's metropolitan area has ballooned past 1 million people, with a homicide rate 50% higher than Colombia's national average.
The border closure that began in 2015 devastated transnational trade. Reopening in 2022 brought immediate results: border trade grew 144.5% in the first two months of 2024, reaching $55.5 million. By August 2024, trade was up 56% year-over-year. Around 880 Colombian companies now export to Venezuela, up 150 from the previous year. Energy agreements allow Ecopetrol to exploit gas near the border, while governments plan complementary production in palm oil and livestock.
But the Catatumbo sub-region remains Colombia's largest recent humanitarian crisis, a border corridor where armed groups dispute territory and illegal economies flourish. By 2026, North Santander will test whether normalized trade can outpace the violence that makes the department a case study in the economics of conflict—or whether the border remains a zone where opportunity and danger remain inseparable.