Caracas, May 30 (Prensa Latina) The meeting between the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, rekindled hopes for integration between the two countries and the Latin American region.
After eight years without visiting the South American giant, the Bolivarian leader arrived on Sunday in Brasilia on an official visit in the context of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, interrupted for four years, and the celebration today of the meeting with 11 South American leaders.
Maduro’s expression that “hopefully no one will ever close the doors between Brazil and Venezuela, and together we can face the tasks, challenges and paths of shared development, and be united from now on and forever”, summarized the feeling and the will to recover what has been lost in all areas.
Beyond the common will to advance in bilateral ties, in the new era of relations that is opening, the presidents projected themselves to rebuild unity and integration in the region.
As Maduro said, in the case of Venezuela this was marked by what he called “the extreme ideologization of international relations”, a phenomenon of applying extremist formulas to the right to qualify relations, subdivide them and run over them, he explained.
He affirmed that all doors of financial, economic, commercial, cultural, political and diplomatic relations were closed to his country, and an attempt was made by other governments to impose on Venezuelans a “non-existent government”, in reference to the oppositionist Juan Guaidó.
The Venezuelan President reflected on the current global context and the impact of the Brics group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and stressed that this world that is being drawn deserves a South America united in its ideological and political diversity.
He added that intolerant, excluding and extremist ideologies cannot be imposed, or “you think like me or you are not with us, or you are out of here”, he said.
The Venezuelan president critized the excluding ideology
That is an “intolerant, extremist and excluding ideology” and on that basis it will never be possible to build unity in the necessary diversity of our America, he emphasized.
In his opinion, today we must “all be united”, respect each other and impose the culture of dialogue and learn to listen, in order to “advance in the great issues” of common development and environmental protection.
He asked how many important issues of common interest we have, such as social development, a public health system that works throughout the continent, food and energy security, and the development of an independent and monetary system that the region needs.
The Bolivarian head of state called for the construction of a new geopolitics that has as fundamental components the “unity of South America and our America” in diversity.
Lula anticipated some of the axes that this Tuesday his South American counterparts will deal with in the meeting called by him and pointed out that the programmatic task is to build new destinies among the countries of the region in areas such as integration, economic and social development.
We have to meet to discuss if we want to continue being what we are, of the size we are or if we want to be stronger, “to form a block to negotiate with more strength and with much more possibilities of succeeding”, he said in reference to this meeting.
The Brazilian president urged the need for unity and cooperation to face the challenges imposed by a new order in the political, social, economic and cultural relations of South America.
He remarked that South America has to be convinced that it needs to work as if it were a bloc; we cannot believe that each country alone can solve its own problems which are already 500 years old, he said.
(Taken from PL)
