At Lula’s South American unity summit, Venezuela turns divisive
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for South American unity Tuesday (30 May) as he hosted fellow leaders for a regional “retreat,” but drew barbs for his warm welcome of Venezuelan socialist Nicolás Maduro.
Veteran leftist Lula, who returned to office in January after leading Brazil from 2003 to 2010, is looking to strengthen diplomatic ties in a region where left-wing governments are newly back in style.
But he faced criticism for hosting Maduro, a pariah in some quarters for his government’s alleged human-rights violations and crackdown on political dissent — a depiction Lula questioned Monday as a hostile “narrative.”
The issue exposed fissures at what was meant to be a display of South American diplomatic goodwill and cooperation.
“I was surprised to hear what’s happening in Venezuela described as a ‘narrative,’” said Uruguay’s center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou, who has labeled Maduro a “dictator.”
“The worst thing we can do is try to sweep that under the rug,” he told the summit.
“Human rights must be respected everywhere, always, no matter the political colors of the leader in power,” said Chile’s left-wing President Gabriel Boric.
However, Boric backed the Venezuelan government’s call for Washington and the European Union to lift sanctions on Maduro and his inner circle.
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Maduro responded by saying Chile and Uruguay “have one vision” and Venezuela, “another.”
“The most important thing is that there has been a debate,” he said, announcing “a new stage” of South American integration.
Lula defended Maduro, whose country he said was experiencing a period of “tranquility.”
“The same demands that the democratic world makes for Venezuela it does not make for Saudi Arabia,” Lula said later at a press conference.
He had warmly welcomed Maduro to Brasilia Monday, reversing the policy of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), who had cut ties with Venezuela’s socialist government and joined a US-led group of more than 50 countries in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó instead.
Lula, who greeted Maduro with a hug, hailed it as a “new moment” in the countries’ relations.
‘New pink tide’
Eleven of South America’s 12 heads of state attended the Brasilia summit, the first of its kind in nearly a decade, which Lula said turned the page on an era of divisions.
The only absence was Peruvian President Dina Boluarte.
“We let ideology divide us and interrupt our efforts to integrate. We abandoned our channels of dialogue and our mechanisms of cooperation, and we all lost because of it,” Lula said in his opening remarks.
The 77-year-old took a jab at Bolsonaro, saying his predecessor — who closely allied himself with US ex-president Donald Trump — had “closed our doors to historic partners.”
This is the first summit of regional leaders since 2014 in Ecuador, at a gathering of UNASUR, a continental bloc launched in 2008 by Lula and Maduro’s mentor, late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
That was the moment of Latin America’s so-called “pink tide” of left-wing governments in the region.
Now, some political analysts are talking of a “new pink tide” with the elections of Lula, Boric and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro.
Lula wants to get the region cooperating again.
His government has touted projects such as a “Bi-Oceanic Corridor,” a transportation artery to enable countries to ship goods across the continent overland instead of by sea.
Regional reset?
“Groundbreaking visions” for South America’s future are unlikely to emerge from the summit, said international relations specialist Oliver Stuenkel.
But “even a basic dialogue between heads of state is genuine progress after Brazil largely retreated from its neighborhood during the Bolsonaro years,” he wrote in Americas Quarterly.
After Lula defeated Bolsonaro in a divisive election, he has been overhauling Brazil’s foreign policy, vowing to seek friendly relations across the board and cultivating closer ties with partners as disparate as Beijing and US President Joe Biden’s administration.
But he has drawn accusations from opponents of being overly cozy with Russia, China and Latin American leftists such as Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, also accused of human rights violations.
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Some questioned the likelihood of a new era of South American unity.
The continent “is united in rhetoric, but not on concrete projects,” said Colombia’s Petro.
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