Leftist Chilean President Condemns ‘Horror’ of Socialist Venezuela at Summit with Maduro

Gabriel Boric 
GLENN ARCOS/AFP via Getty Images
Frances Martel

Radical leftist President of Chile Gabriel Boric condemned the socialist “human rights crisis” in Venezuela and described the country’s situation as a “horror” during a summit on Tuesday attended by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Boric told both Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – a fellow radical leftist elected to a third term last year despite multiple criminal convictions for alleged corrupt acts during his past time in office – and Maduro while addressing a semi-formal meeting of the heads of state of South America. Lula has expressed his desire to revive the largely defunct Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR, and has sold his conference in Brasilia this week as a path to that restoration.

Maduro’s attendance at the summit, which does not appear to have a formal name, marked a return to civilized society for the Venezuelan tyrant, banned from Brazil during the tenure of former President Jair Bolsonaro and largely excluded from regional cooperation.

Gabriel Boric, Chile’s president, during the South America Summit at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, May 30, 2023. (Ton Molina/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Maduro has presided over a disastrous decade in Venezuelan history in which his henchmen have engaged in extreme human rights atrocities – including the killing of children, rape as a tool of repression, and widespread torture – and enriched themselves through drug trafficking while the economy collapsed.

Venezuelans continue to this day to struggle to meet their basic needs, including food, electricity, water, shelter, and medical care. Maduro’s time in power has resulted in the largest migrant crisis in the history of the Americas; 6 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014.

Lula waved away the extensive evidence of human rights atrocities under Maduro as a “narrative” constructed by enemies of socialism in remarks alongside the dictator on Tuesday.

“Venezuela has always been an exceptional partner for Brazil, but due to political contingencies and errors, President Maduro spent eight years without coming to Venezuela,” Lula said after welcoming Maduro the Brazil’s presidential palace, Planalto, on Monday. “Maduro knows the narrative they constructed against Venezuela for so much time.”

Boric challenged both Lula – who, at 77, typically commands respect from Latin America’s Marxists as an elder statesman of the movement – and Maduro in his address to the forum.

“It is the first time that many of us have the chance of engaging face-to-face with President Maduro of Venezuela. I salute and applaud that Venezuela returns to multilateral spaces,” Boric said. “But I have to say that the human rights crisis in Venezuela – and in this I differ with President Lula – is not a constructed narrative. It is real, in flesh and bone.”

“And I tell you this,” he continued, “because I see it in Chile with the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who have left their country.”

Boric went on to condemn sanctions on Maduro, echoing a key talking point of the regime he claimed to condemn.

Speaking to the press later that day, Boric told reporters at a press conference that he refused to “sweep under the rug” the crimes that the Maduro regime had committed against its people.

Gabriel Boric, Chile’s president, center, Alberto Fernandez, Argentina’s president, center left, and Mario Abdo Benitez, Paraguay’s president, center right, during the South America Summit at Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, on Tuesday, May 30, 2023. (Ton Molina/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“I said I had a discrepancy with what President Lula said yesterday, in the sense that the human rights situation in Venezuela was a narrative construction,” Boric repeated. “It is not a narrative construction, it is a reality, it is serious, and I have had the opportunity to see it with my own eyes and the pain of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are in our country.”

“It is serious and I had the opportunity to see, I saw the horror of Venezuelans. This issue requires a firm position,” Boric emphasized.

Boric appeared to avoid Maduro at the conference. Other leftist presidents in attendance – Gustavo Petro of Colombia, Luis Arce of Bolivia, and Alberto Fernández of Argentina – held cordial chats with the Venezuelan dictator, making Boric the outlier.

In the photo taken of attendees at the end of the summit, Boric (in the beige suit) appeared positioned far to the left of Maduro, the last leader on the right, from the perspective of the subjects of the photo.

Another president in attendance, Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay, also condemned Lula’s remarks that the Venezuelan human rights crisis was fabricated. Lacalle Pou is a center-right leader, however, while Boric has previously described himself as “to the left of the PC [the Communist Party of Chile],” making the latter’s dissent more significant for the regional leftist movement. Lula attempted to downplay both their comments, however, telling reporters, “nobody has to agree with anybody … this isn’t a meeting of Lula’s friends, it is a meeting of presidents.”

Boric has carved a unique space for himself on the Latin American left as a loud critic of the region’s dictatorships, all of which – Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – are leftist.

“I went to Venezuela in 2010, and I started asking myself questions when I started seeing the repression of the protests and the manipulation of some elections, and I said ‘This is not right. We have to be able to criticize it,’” he continued. “People on the left in Chile said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, you don’t talk about our friends.’ And I think that’s completely wrong.”

At that same event, at talk at Colombia University, Boric positively quoted Russian communist butcher Vladimir Lenin.

“Lenin once said something that I think is very lucid, very brilliant. He said, ‘Being ahead of your time, it’s an elegant way of being mistaken, so go slow,’” Boric said.

Maduro has previously referred to Boric, without calling him out by name, as a “coward” for refusing to cede legitimacy to his regime.

“There are those who accuse us of being dictators. I understand that Sebastián Piñera [former president of Chile] does it, I understand that Jair Bolsonaro accuses me, I understand that fascism accuses us,” Maduro said in November. “But, from the left, whoever tries to accuse us will have to sit face to face with us to debate the truth of Venezuela.”

Boric apparently accepted that challenge this week.

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