CARACAS, Venezuela – Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro revealed on Monday that he held a telephone conversation with Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in which both agreed to “resume the bilateral cooperation agenda” between both countries amidst the upcoming return to power of one of the Venezuelan regime’s most critical allies.
Lula won a narrow victory against incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday.
“I had a good telephone conversation with the President-elect of the Federative Republic of Brazil [Lula da Silva], with whom we agreed to resume the Binational Cooperation Agenda between our countries. We appreciate his willingness!” Maduro wrote in a message on Twitter, accompanying his words with a picture of both of them taken an undetermined time ago.
Sostuve una buena conversación telefónica con el Presidente electo de la República Federativa del Brasil @LulaOficial, con quien acordamos retomar la Agenda Binacional de Cooperación entre nuestros países. ¡Agradecemos su disposición! pic.twitter.com/ImeSEbIJu0
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) October 31, 2022
Lula first served as president for two terms from 2003 to 2011, during which he was a vocal ally of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez.
Venezuela’s socialist regime often remarks on the importance that the Lula-Chávez alliance had for its own plans, especially when it came to anti-U.S. policies. One such example was the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a proposed trade agreement between the United States and 34 countries in the Americas and the Caribbean that never materialized after it missed its 2005 deadline.
Maduro and Venezuela’s socialist regime credit Lula, Chávez, former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner, and former Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez as instrumental figures who united against the United States’ “neo-colonizing” proposed trade agreement.
Maduro kept the alliance between the two countries alive during the tenure of Lula’s protege, the far-left former President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and ousted from office in 2016. While relations between Brazil and Venezuela’s socialist regime had begun to deteriorate under the brief presidency of Michel Temer, it was not until Bolsonaro’s arrival in 2018 that Brazil turned on the dictatorship entirely. Brazil has been among the most severely impacted nations by Venezuela’s worsening migrant crisis and has condemned dictator Maduro’s actions to cling to power by holding sham elections in 2018.
Bolsonaro was among the over 50 presidents that in 2019 recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president following Maduro’s usurpation of power. Bolsonaro accepted María Teresa Belandria, Guaidó’s ambassador, to Brazil in 2019.
In February 2019, Bolsonaro allowed the Organization of American States (OAS) to set up camp in Brazilian territory to provide humanitarian assistance to Venezuelan citizens — to which Maduro responded by ordering the indefinite closure of Venezuela’s borders with Brazil and shutting down all air traffic between the countries. The Venezuela-Brazil border was then reopened in May 2019 but once again closed between March 2020 and February 2022 as part of Maduro’s Chinese coronavirus quarantine measures.
By 2020, Brazil had withdrawn all of its diplomatic personnel stationed in Venezuela and had refused to renew the diplomatic credentials of Maduro’s diplomats.
It is highly unlikely that Lula will continue recognizing Guaidó as the nation’s president despite his constitutional legitimacy. Last month, while running his presidential campaign, Lula dismissed Guaidó as “no longer anything in Venezuela.”
“It is incredible that the ambassador of Venezuela is the ambassador designated by Guaidó, who does not represent Venezuela, nor Guaidó, who is no longer anything in Venezuela,” Lula said during a press conference.
Immigration experts estimate that, out of the 7.1 million Venezuelan refugees that have fled Maduro’s socialist regime, over 365,000 reside in Brazil as of September 2022.
Maduro, who had been left isolated in the region following Venezuela’s worsening political crisis derived from his refusal to step down, has begun to see his isolation be significantly reversed with the arrival of neighboring leftists presidents friendly to his regime – including Argentina’s Alberto Fernandez, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, and now once again Lula da Silva in Brazil. Lula is set to be inaugurated in January.
Maduro is expected to receive an official visit by Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro on November 1.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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