Without mentioning President Donald Trump, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came out in defense of Venezuela, and also of Cuba, amid increased pressure from the United States (USA) against the government of Nicolas Maduro.
“Everyone says that we will transform Brazil into Venezuela. Brazil will never be Venezuela, and Venezuela will never be Brazil, each one will be him [próprio]. What we defend is that the Venezuelan people are masters of their destiny, and it is not any president of another country who has to make a guess as to what Venezuela or Cuba will be like,” said Lula at a PCdoB event in Brasília.
Brazil, together with most Latin American countries, had already expressed concern about the Washington’s military movement in Caribbean waters.
The Brazilian president spoke one day after Trump confirmed that authorized the CIA to conduct operations secret secrets in Venezuela to overthrow the government in Caracas, which is a violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations (UN).
Lula also condemned Cuba’s maintenance on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
“What we say publicly is that Cuba is not a country that exports terrorists. Cuba is an example of people and dignity,” he said.
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Since the 1960s, the US has tried to change Cuba’s political system by applying an economic and financial embargo that punishes companies and vessels that trade with the Caribbean island.
With the start of the new Trump administration, measures against Cuba were reinforced, including threats against nations that contract island medical servicesone of the few sources of income in the country. Cuba is experiencing an economic crisis with recurring power outages.
Venezuela
Since August, the US has sent thousands of troops, warships and planes to the Caribbean with the justification of combating drug trafficking in Venezuela. According to the North American press, the country’s Army has already launched six attacks against vessels, murdering more than 30 people.
The Maduro government denounces that the US seeks to carry out a “regime change” and promises to denounce the actions at the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
For experts consulted by Agência Brasil, the United States’ interest in Venezuela is geopolitical, considering that the country has the largest oil reserves of the planet and does not have any drug-producing cartel.
For international policy analysts, Trump’s action in Venezuela is a dangerous precedent that opens up space for Washington’s interventions in other countries on the continent whenever the White House’s interests are contradicted, as happened throughout the Cold War with support for military dictatorships in the region.
