The last time friends and family saw Hector Nieves and Luis Garcia, they were drinking and singing songs to mark the start of the annual festival of a local patron saint.
At dawn the next morning, as they pulled into the nearby town of Palmarito to continue the celebration, they were shot dead by gunmen in an attack that killed at least four.
Police have no leads because no witnesses came forward, but residents of the border area including in Guasdualito, a city of 60,000 residents 25 km (15.5 miles) from the Colombian border, have suspicions about who was behind the killings.
"We've become a victim of the violence of illegal Colombian groups," said 56-year-old Aldo Marquez, the historian of Guasdualito, in reference to the February attack.
Venezuela has resolved its dispute with Colombia that sparked the Andes' worst diplomatic crisis in a decade earlier this month, but violence from Colombia's 40-year-old conflict is still hitting Venezuelans living in border regions.
Authorities and rights groups speak of alarming incidence of kidnappings, extortion and executions due to the presence of leftist guerrillas who have moved across the border due to a lack of state presence in the isolated region.
The situation may create problems for leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has expressed sympathy for FARC guerrillas and is fending off charges he supports them.
Colombia accused Caracas and Quito of backing the FARC guerrillas based on documents in computers they found during a raid inside Ecuador that killed a top rebel commander and triggered the recent diplomatic crisis.
Though guerrillas have operated in Venezuela for decades, the problem has worsened in recent years, residents say, although there are few statistics.
Guasdualito Mayor Jorge Rodriguez, himself a Chavez supporter, in a recent newspaper interview said Colombian guerrillas are responsible for the growth in hit-man style killings often carried out in broad daylight.
"We have suffered a continuous onslaught of FARC and ELN on the border," Rodriguez said, referring to Colombia's principal guerrilla groups.
Residents speak of a shadowy Venezuelan armed group called the Bolivarian Liberation Forces that is accused of murder and kidnapping but does not have a visible leadership. Although it is Venezuelan, its methods are similar to the Colombians'.
Right-wing paramilitary groups commit similar crimes in the states of Zulia and Tachira to the northeast of Guasdualito, relief groups say.
"We live oppressed by these criminal groups," said a group of 180 Guasdualito residents in an unusually candid January statement denouncing the persistent violence.
