Lula’s South American Presidential Summit
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Issue May 24-30 2023: On May 30, 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gathered South American heads of state for a “retreat” to discuss their mutual interests and seek “integration.” It was attended by the presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernández; Bolivia, Luis Arce; Chile, Gabriel Boric; Colombia, Gustavo Petro; Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso; Guyana, Irfaan Ali; Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez; Surinam, Chan Santokhi; Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou; and Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Peru was represented by the president of the Council of Ministers, Alberto Otárola. Some observers declared the meeting a success since the assembled presidents signed the so-called “Consensus of Brasilia” that vowed to establish a “contact group” headed by foreign ministers to prepare a “roadmap” that will promote integration in the region. Yet the gathering was decidedly overshadowed by Lula’s decision to invite, embrace, and defend President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, deflecting wide international condemnation of the non-democratic nature of his regime by calling it a “narrative” created by Maduro’s opponents. Opinion writers and pundits did their jobs with plenty of vigor.
At the “Retreat”
Before the summit began, the Buenos Aires Times noted that the meeting’s goal was “to revive integration in a region rife with ideological rifts and internal crises.” It was planned as a gathering at the Itamaraty Palace and had no “pre-established agenda,” just “the leaders, their foreign ministers, and some advisors” would attend and allow them to “discuss common problems frankly.” The meeting had three objectives: to “resume dialogue” for finding a “common vision;” to agree on a cooperation agenda on issues such as health, infrastructure, energy, the environment, and the fight against organized crime; and to find “a way forward for a new South American integration mechanism.”
Clarín of Buenos Aires noted that Lula used a football allusion to highlight the possibilities of achieving a harmonic union on the subcontinent: “Even in football, a sport we learned to love as children, it is possible to see the lessoning of rivalries. Last year we witnessed something that had seemed unthinkable: Brazilians rooting for Argentina in the final of the World Cup in Qatar,” he said about the world championship “won by the eternal rival of Brazil.” Lula also wanted to urge the region’s leaders to dump the dollar as the main currency of exchange and look to “regional savings at the service of economic and social development” through regional financial organizations, analyzing “the possibility of using local currencies in South American trade.”
El Espectador of Bogotá wrote that the “Consensus of Brasilia, signed at the end of the meeting, does not establish deadlines for the work of the foreign ministers, as Lula had wanted. He had proposed a period of 120 days to elaborate the action plan. Their statement consists of nine points that emphasize the importance of regional integration, which “must be part of the solutions to face the shared challenges,” and in which the need to “promote, now, initiatives of South American cooperation, under a social and gender approach.” The document includes, in its second point, a commitment “to democracy and human rights, sustainable development and social justice, the rule of law and institutional stability, the defense of sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs.”
El Universal of Mexico City, however, noted that the presence of Venezuela “divided opinions at the Summit of Brasilia,” especially the commitment to democracy and human rights.” Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou pointed out the problems this commitment raises for the Venezuelan situation. “Obviously, we do not have the same definition” of democracy, though he would defer to the one in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, which calls for “respect for institutions and human rights,” he said in a video on Instagram. Lacalle Pou was referring to Lula, who on the eve of the summit had a meeting with Maduro and described as mere “narratives” the criticisms about the lack of democracy or violations of human rights in Venezuela.
El Observador of Montevideo noted the “strong impact” of Lacalle Pou’s criticism, when he argued that, given how many organizations and states recognize the brutal nature of Maduro’s repressive regime, “the worst” thing that the assembled presidents could do would be to look past the events there as if “covering the sun with a finger.” He invited the other presidents to call things by name.
Infobae of Argentina noted that President Gabriel Boric of Chile also refuted Lula da Silva’s cavalier attitude to human rights violations in Venezuela expressed as he and Maduro embraced prior to the summit. Boric spoke of the serious situation lived today in Venezuela. He offered “respectfully” that he has “a discrepancy” with how President Lula interprets the situation of human rights in Venezuela. “It is not a narrative construction, it is a reality, it is serious, and I had the opportunity to see, I saw the horror of Venezuelans” as they sought refuge in his country.
El Mostrador of Santiago wrote that President Boric, who said, “We are glad that Venezuela returns to multilateral efforts,” nonetheless added that we “cannot sweep some things under the carpet or turn a blind eye to issues that are of important principles for us.”
Opinion in Abundance
Several observers offered praise for Lula’s effort.
In El Mostrador of Santiago, Mladen Yopo commended Lula’s attempt to restart the quest for regional integration. He noted that such attempts go back to the Congress of Panama in 1826, and that “there have been innumerable efforts of cooperation and integration of greater or lesser visibility, extension, and duration, with greater or lesser success in the achievement of specific objectives, especially since the second half of the Twentieth Century.” Surely the most significant was the Union of South American Nations or UNASUR, founded in 2008, though “despite its enormous achievements,” for several years now it has been known as a “zombie” organization. Yopo happily greeted the “return of presidential diplomacy,” which has “sowed and harvested so many successes,” and “is a very successful mechanism inaugurated in the 1980s and invigorated in the 1990s.” It is a useful way “to direct negotiations between national presidents based on shared interests.”
In its editorial, La República of Lima noted that “integration” as a “mechanism that allows the free movement of goods, services, people, and capital,” in such as “the successful model of the European Union,” has been “an aspiration” to the peoples of South America “whose common origin and a collective desire for development drives them to open common markets, test commercial exchanges, and advance in binational or multinational projects that generate symmetries between the countries.” They celebrated the fact that “the presidents [who] gathered in Brasilia have shown the will to move forward in the process. Periodic meetings will be held, and advances will be reviewed. It is a historical opportunity to resume the integrating model that gave rise to the republics. It has already been 500 years in which it has been shown that individual efforts are not enough to build modern, inclusive societies that move towards better destinations.”
In CartaCapital Magazine of Brazil, Milton Rondó wrote that the meeting of heads of state of South American nations in Brasilia “is breath of fresh air.” He argued that “the colonialism of the past has made us so ignorant of each other that the simple fact of gathering brings encouragement, knowledge, and hope.” He for one is happy to leave criticism behind and revel in the “very pleasant” sensation of “happiness” generated by the sight of leaders “traveling down the right path toward peace.”
Yet others, at different ends of the ideological spectrum, pointed to the shadow that Venezuela cast over the meeting.
El Espectador of Bogotá’s editorial took Lula to task for his own destructive narrative. They noted that what is happening in Venezuela is not a problem of “narratives.” They pointed out that “most countries represented in Brasilia, from the left, have been hard critics of those countries that have had or have dictatorial or authoritarian governments of the right.” So, it is “paradoxical” that most of their rulers “endorse or turn a blind eye to the serious democratic problems suffered by Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.” They insisted that “respect for democratic institutions, legitimate elections, separation of powers, human rights, and freedom of expression, among others, are non-negotiable principles.” “What would be the attitude of the heads of state present if instead of Nicolás Maduro the guest would have been Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet? Respect for democracy and human rights cannot have political bias.”
La Nación of Buenos Aires editorialized about the “shameful support for the Maduro regime” offered up by the presidents of Brazil and Argentina. They noted that “the International Criminal Court has received very serious complaints against the dictatorial regime that prevails in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for crimes against humanity, which include executions, disappearances, torture, sexual violations, persecutions, and forced arrests for political reasons.” Also in La Nación of Buenos Aires, Daniel Santa Cruz called out Lula and Fernández’s sad embrace of the “cruel Venezuelan dictatorship.”
In Correio Braziliense of Brasilia, Rodrigo Craveiro, who was in Caracas a decade ago just after former President Hugo Chávez had died, has watched the rise of his Bolivarian successor Nicolás Maduro. The new leader clearly decided to forego the path of democracy and to dive into authoritarianism. Over the last 10 years, Craveiro has interviewed opponents who have been confined and tortured in the fearsome dungeon installed in the center of Caracas. Some could not stand the pressure and fled to exile, such as Antonio Lezéma, former mayor of the Venezuelan capital. While tearing the Venezuelan democratic fabric, Maduro destroyed the country’s fragile economy, which cannot even remember the opulence of oil during the 1990s. Disastrous management forced the humblest citizens to escape to neighboring nations in search of better living conditions. In the last four years, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had broken relations and treated Venezuela as outcast. Lula da Silva was right to restore the diplomatic channel with Caracas and to receive Maduro in Brasilia, “but he made a mistake” in allowing “ideological sympathy” to cause him to defend the regime. Lula should have focused on cooperation between Brazil and Venezuela, and the resumption of Mercosur.
In Folha de S. Paulo, Mariliz Pereira Jorge lamented that Lula’s supporters and political allies “treat the president like a spoiled child who should not be contradicted.” They “serve as a trampoline from which he throws himself into the fire.”
Also in Folha de S. Paulo, Sérgio Rodrigues noted that “everything is narrative, says the narrative.” He argued that “Lula defends Maduro with cliché that has been a mark of the new right.” It has become “a pillar of the age of post-truth.”
Folha de S. Paulo editorialized that Lula’s action points to “traces of authoritarian conduct” in the Latin American left’s long political trajectory, and it “stains his democratic reputation.”
And in O Globo of Rio de Janeiro, Vera Magalhães argued that “in few areas does Lula’s government show as many signs of aging ideas as in foreign policy. Awaited by governments around the world and by politicians of different ideological bent with the expectation of a new phase of global insertion by Brazil thanks to new guidelines, especially concerning environmental policy, the president decided to revisit a past that seems to him glorious. The result has been frustration and a great degree of embarrassment.”