The Story of the Story | Political | | principle

A regional summit organized by President Lula da Silva in Brasilia started and ended on the wrong foot of the left. A crude attempt to wash the face of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who has been drawing complaints in international forums for human rights violations, corruption and money laundering, has landed as a stink bomb among invited leaders.

For example, the presidents of Chile and Uruguay, Gabriel Boric and Luis Lacal, expressed their disagreement with the Brazilian leader’s words and immediately distanced themselves.

As is well known, when the successor to Chavismo, the first president to attend the meeting, was honored, Lula gave an extravagant speech in which he seemed to refer to an alternate reality: “I went to unknown countries. Where is Venezuela, but they say there is a dictatorship in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro, you That narrative has to be deconstructed. Narratives are constructed against the people. You know the narrative they have constructed about authoritarianism and anti-democratic. You have the means (to do that)…”.

A speech with an educational twist that avoids the brutal reality experienced by millions of Venezuelans in their territory and the hardships of more than 7 million people who have been expelled from their homes to neighboring countries, so as not to live poorly in suffering or persecution.

Predictably, although the presidents of Argentina and Colombia followed in Brazil’s footsteps and paid court to Maduro, Gabriel Boric announced that he expressed his displeasure to the summit’s host, telling him what was happening in Venezuela. Narrative structure, but an extreme reality “I had the opportunity to see (that reality) in the eyes and pain of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are in our homeland today,” he said.

President Luis Lagale, for his part, expressed surprise at Lula’s claim that it was just a “story”: “If many groups in the world try to mediate so that Venezuela is full of democracy, human rights are respected, there are no political prisoners, the worst thing we can do is cover the sun with a finger.

A summit, in the face of much discontent created by the Venezuelan dictator, managed to go downhill.

Luis Nunes at Lula’s meeting