The official for relations with Latin America and the Caribbean in the Brazilian government, Gisela Maria Figueiredo, pointed out that the main goal of the summit is to “renew dialogue” to find a “common vision” in many areas such as health, infrastructure, energy, the environment and the fight against organized crime.
Left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will receive his Latin American counterparts on Tuesday in Brasilia at a lightning summit to try to restore relations after they were strained by ideological differences and internal crises.
This meeting, the first of its kind since 2014, will bring together leaders of 11 countries in the Brazilian capital, and Peruvian President Dina Polwarte, who did not respond to the invitation, will be absent.
The summit is also an occasion for the return of Venezuelan socialist President Nicolás Maduro to Brazil after eight years of absence.
On Monday, Lula described the resumption of relations between Brazil and Venezuela as a “historic” moment after Maduro was persona non grata during the term of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).
“Venezuela has always been an exceptional partner for Brazil,” Lula said after a meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart. “But because of the political situation and mistakes made, it has been eight years that (its leadership) has not come to Brazil.”
Maduro, for his part, expressed his pleasure at the “warm reception” he received in Brasilia.
There were no relations between the two countries, which share more than two thousand kilometers of land borders during the Bolsonaro era, who described the Venezuelan socialist regime as “dictatorial”, and like fifty countries, including the United States, recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as acting president.
New pink tide
Lula plans to hold the summit on Tuesday in the form of a closed and relatively informal meeting, without guaranteeing a final statement.
During the meetings, the heads of state will be accompanied by their foreign ministers and some advisers in order to create a “more comfortable” atmosphere, a Brazilian diplomatic source confirmed to AFP.
The official for relations with Latin America and the Caribbean in the Brazilian government, Gisela Maria Figueiredo, pointed out that the main objective of the summit is to “renew dialogue” to find a “common vision” in many areas such as health, infrastructure, energy, the environment and the fight against organized crime.
In this context, last week, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira reintroduced the idea of establishing a corridor between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to transport goods by land.
The last meeting between Latin American heads of state took place in 2014 in Quito, Ecuador, on the occasion of a summit of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), an organization founded by Lula and his Venezuelan counterpart at the time, Hugo Chavez, in 2008, when the region witnessed the first wave of leftist governments.
The union had 12 states at its inception, most of them led by the left. But with the return of the right to power, a number of countries left the regional organization, including Brazil and Argentina, which only returned to its ranks this year.
However, the situation changed with the new rosy tide on the impact of the rise of the left again in Latin America and the election this year of Lula in Brazil, Gabriel Borich in Chile, and Gustavo Petro in Colombia, which opened the way for Venezuela’s return to the regional arena and gave new impetus to cooperation between the countries of the region.
