“Acting President” of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez met with socialist President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Wednesday on the sidelines of the ongoing U.N. COP31 climate alarmism summit in Antalya, Turkey.
Rodríguez, who has been in charge of the Venezuelan socialist regime following the United States’ arrest of Dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in January, traveled to Turkey to represent Venezuela at the ongoing U.N. climate event where she reportedly defended Venezuela’s right to continue extracting fossil fuels amid the repeated calls to end the use of fossil fuels — calls that are usually intensified during every new annual COP event.
Per the left-wing, Venezuelan-funded propaganda network Telesur, Rodríguez nevertheless called for other countries to comply with their “climate commitments.”
Although Lula and Rodríguez — who served as Maduro’s Vice President — have met in the past, Wednesday’s encounter marked the first in-person encounter since she assumed the interim presidency of Venezuela. According to Brazilian outlets, Lula had spoken with Rodríguez over the phone earlier this year.
Rodríguez published snippets of the meeting between the Venezuelan and Brazilian delegations on her social media accounts.
“We also agreed to the review of our trade agreements and explored new opportunities to boost economic exchange, promote investment, and strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation between Venezuela and Brazil, for the benefit of our peoples,” she wrote.
President Lula, for his part, explained via social media that he and Rodríguez mutually expressed their willingness to fully resume diplomatic relations “at their highest levels.” According to Lula, he noted the “economic importance” of the partnership between the two nations, and Brazil’s interest in continuing negotiations to review bilateral economic agreements and the tariffs applied by the neighboring nation on Brazilian automobiles.
Per Lula, Rodríguez advised him to send a delegation to Caracas to negotiate and address the issues he brought forward.
“We also discussed prospects for expanding Brazilian investments in the oil sector and agreed that Minister of Mines and Energy Alexandre Silveira will visit Venezuela later this year,” Lula said.
“I reaffirmed my determination to strengthen relations with all South American countries during my next term. We agreed to maintain dialogue to further explore potential areas of cooperation,” he continued.
No further details of the encounter between Rodríguez, Lula, and their respective delegations in Turkey have been disclosed by either country at press time.
President Lula, a longtime ally of the Venezuelan regime during the rule of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, had seen his relationship with the ruling socialists strained in the aftermath of Maduro’s sham 2024 presidential “election.”
The Brazilian president stopped supporting the now-deposed dictator Maduro after the dictator allegedly failed to uphold his word of presenting evidence that could demonstrate his claimed “victory” in the fraudulent election.
The incident appears to have greatly infuriated Lula in 2024, resulting in the socialist President snubbing Maduro out of a spot in the anti-U.S. BRICS group during the group’s 2024 Summit hosted by Russia. Lula’s top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, reportedly affirmed at the time that the decision to leave Venezuela out of BRICS was not because of “democracy” itself, but rather, the result of a “breach of trust” from Maduro’s failure to keep his word.
The Brazilian outlet Poder 360 detailed that representatives of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry have carried out work visits to Caracas to meet with Venezuelan authorities throughout 2026. According to the outlet, the meetings were mainly to address business opportunities in Venezuela with Brazilian businessmen.
Although Lula distanced himself from Maduro after 2024, the Brazilian socialist President was among the international leftist heads of state that condemned the January 3 U.S. law enforcement operation in Caracas that resulted in the arrest of the Venezuelan dictator, who remains imprisoned at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn.
The trial against Maduro on drug trafficking and torture charges is expected to begin in June 2027.
“The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line. These acts represent a grave affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community,” Lula wrote on January 3.
“Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos, and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,” he added.
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