( Spanish) – The expectations of the Government of Nicolás Maduro to join the BRICS were met with the unexpected veto of Brazil, which asked to leave Venezuela out of the list of countries that aspired to be partners of the bloc, a decision that accentuates the tensions between both countries and which leaves a former ally as an obstacle to the interests of Chavismo.
The Government of Lula da Silva, which in recent months sought to assume a mediating role in the post-electoral crisis in Venezuela, put a stop to Caracas’ aspirations to integrate the economic, political and social alliance, led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which, according to their websiteseeks greater multilateral cooperation to confront the world order dominated by the United States and its allies.
The bilateral relationship deteriorated rapidly after the July 28 vote, in which Maduro was proclaimed president without the presentation of minutes broken down by polling stations and centers. Since then, Brasilia has unsuccessfully demanded the publication of those documents, and in September Venezuelan security forces surrounded the Argentine embassy in Caracas, which is being represented by Brazil since the Argentine diplomatic corps left the country after being expelled by the Maduro’s government, and where six opponents are in asylum. This Wednesday, Venezuela called Brazil’s chargé d’affaires and its ambassador in Brasilia for consultations to express its rejection of the statements made by the Brazilian special advisor on foreign affairs, Celso Amorim, regarding the July elections.
“What Venezuela is looking for (when trying to join the BRICS) is financial credit, also support for the idea that the July elections were legitimate,” political scientist Luis Schenoni, director of the Security Studies Program at University College, told . London.
“Maduro’s idea, since he has closed doors on even the possibility of escalating sanctions in the West, is to try to be part of this alternative order, which in some way Russia and China are trying to create, also with many countries in the so-called south. global, who benefit from playing the BRICS game,” added the analyst.
Maduro, who does not usually make many trips abroad, arrived at the summit in Kazan, Russia, with a large entourage that included the executive vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, and the foreign minister, Yván Gil.
Leonardo Vera, a senior economics professor at the Central University of Venezuela, told that the Maduro regime also had economic reasons for entering the bloc. “Venezuela’s greatest interest in joining the group is to be able to obtain financing from the New Development Bank, the BRICS bank that was created in 2015 and is currently headed by (former Brazilian president) Dilma Rousseff. “All this expectation has collapsed,” he said.
Vera also highlighted that Maduro had visited the New Development Bank in 2023 and that he sought China’s support to enter the group, but that “he was surprised that Brazil established a veto.”
As he reviewed, “during the years that the Bolivarian revolution has governed Venezuela, relations with Brazil have been very good” and he described Lula’s relationship with the late President Hugo Chávez as “excellent.” “With some ups and downs during the Government of Nicolás Maduro, we had not seen what appears to be an unofficial break,” he added.
However, political scientist Schenoni pointed out that this is a “resurgence” of a “rivalry that is not so new” between Venezuela and Brazil.
“Venezuela already proposed a kind of alternative leadership for South America or Latin America at the time of Lula’s first government,” he indicated. As he explained, Chávez, especially after 2002, “began to form another order around this Bolivarian idea, of Latin American unity, financed fundamentally with oil, with a strong base in the Caribbean countries and with the axis between Caracas and Havana”, to which other leftist governments joined.
“They were a kind of alternative to the idea that Brazil was leading at the time with Unasur, which was a different cooperation scheme, with a more strictly Brazilian leadership, perhaps incorporating countries from the southern cone, but not necessarily as left-wing anti-American as “It was Chávez’s model,” he explained.
On Monday, Maduro spoke of conspiracy among Brazilian diplomats, but said he preferred “rather to be cautious” and wait for Lula “to say what he has to say” about the BRICS veto. The president of Brazil has not yet commented on the matter. However, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry went further and spoke of a “hostile gesture” and compared the veto with the sanctions imposed on Venezuela. “The Venezuelan people feel indignation and shame at this inexplicable and immoral aggression by the Brazilian Foreign Ministry,” he said in a statement.
The attorney general of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, even went so far as to question the domestic accident that Lula suffered and that prevented him from traveling to the summit in Kazan, Russia. According to Saab, without presenting evidence and referring to direct sources, the president “manipulated an alleged accident to use it as an alibi in order not to attend” the meeting. “Such a version was nothing more than a deception to perpetrate the veto against Venezuela,” he insisted. Lula’s Government, who was seen with a scar on his head, did not refer to the Venezuelan prosecutor’s statement.
Celso Amorim, a career diplomat who is one of Lula’s most influential advisers on Brazil’s foreign policy, said Tuesday in a session with lawmakers from his country that Brazil opposed Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS because it exists ” unrest” over how the Venezuelan electoral process was carried out, as reported by Brasil, a affiliate.
Amorim, who was sent from Brasilia to try to mediate in the Venezuelan political crisis, also stressed that he does not support Caracas’ entry into the BRICS and stressed that “the principle of transparency was not respected” in the July elections in Venezuela. in reference to the minutes that were not published, so there is “unrest” and he cannot recognize Maduro’s proclaimed victory, although he clarified that he does not attribute the victory to the opponent Edmundo González either.
This Thursday, the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, said that he will request that Amorim be declared “persona non grata” for his statements.
For Schenoni, from University College London, “there are very new elements that justify even in the short term” Brazil’s position.
According to him, “Brazil has a kind of role, along with other left-wing countries, of trying to channel Venezuelan democracy.”
But there is also another issue, Schenoni points out, that worried Brazil: Venezuela’s historic territorial dispute with Guyana over the Essequibo, a territory rich in oil, and through which Venezuela expanded its military presence on the border, although representatives of both nations agreed not to use force.
“Brazil really considered that a threat to the security of the region and deployed troops to the (Brazilian) state of Roraima and prepared for a potential war with Venezuela. “He deployed weapons to, in some way, discourage Venezuela’s advance on Guyana,” said the political scientist.
“There is a tougher security concern there that justifies why Brazil sees Venezuela as a potential enemy, even in the region. I could not let him participate in this group (BRICS) due to concerns in terms of security, which has to do with the cooperation that there may be between Russia and China with Venezuela, which face opposition from the military in Brazil,” according to his point of view. .
Schenoni also considered that Brazil is losing regional influence as a result of the crisis in Venezuela, not due to the direct work of the Maduro Government, but due to the growing presence of exiled opposition leaders and “the connections that this Venezuelan right has, which is also anti-Lulist, much more aligned with governments like those of (Salvadoran President Nayib) Bukele and throughout the region.”
“Brazil is like this actor that wants to be the leader of the region, but Maduro offers a kind of alternative and conflictive leadership, like the one that Chávez had offered at some point, and now the disruptions of the Maduro regime are generating a kind of leadership of the Venezuelan right in exile, which also undermines Brazilian interests,” he condensed.
With Amorim’s criticism of the Venezuelan process and the non-recognition of Maduro’s proclaimed victory, there remains the possibility that Brazil will not recognize Maduro as president starting in January, when he is scheduled to begin his third government. Schenoni indicated: “As time passes and the electoral records are not shown, Brazil is in a situation in which it cannot offer recognition because it has already imposed those types of objections. As time goes by, the pressure to define oneself in that sense will increase.”
With information from Iván Pérez Sarmenti
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