Unseemly fawning over a Venezuelan dictator

It feels like we’re back to the days Fidel Castro was hailed as a hero across Latin America, with leftist leaders worshipping at his altar, the atrocities he committed against his own people a mere footnote.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva, elected to a third term last year on a promise to restore democracy in Latin America’s largest country, should have known better. His fawning over Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro last week sent a bad message to the world.

Maduro is accused of the systematic torture and killing of his own people and of rigging his election. He presides over a ruined economy that has forced a mass exodus of people fleeing to the United States, as well Brazil and other neighbouring countries.

Yet Lula treated Maduro as a “companheiro” during the Venezuelan leader’s visit to a regional summit in Brasília. To Lula, Maduro is a victim of a U.S.-created narrative and unfair sanctions.

“There’s a narrative in the world that Venezuela doesn’t have democracy,” Lula said. “That (Maduro) has made mistakes. So I told him it was his responsibility to construct his own narrative, with the true facts.”

It isn’t surprising that Brazil’s leftist president would reestablish relations with Venezuela. The countries share a 2,250kilometre border, the Amazon forest and a long history of trade. Lula was once close with Hugo Chávez.

Lula has made it a priority to revive the Union of South American Nations and his country’s standing on the international stage after former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro retreat from it. Brazil wouldn’t be the first country to be friendly with oppressive regimes. The U.S. has had its own roster of autocrats and dictators as allies over the decades.

Lula has made a rocky attempt to return Brazil to its days of international glory that the country enjoyed during his first two terms in the early 2000s. He has accused both Ukraine and Russia of wanting to go to war and proposed Ukraine cede Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, to end the current conflict. He blamed the United States for “stimulating” the war and hosted Russia’s foreign minister in Brasilia.

Lula, a former union leader and Brazil’s most recognizable leader, is now 77, a member of Brazil’s old left that has struggled to reinvent itself in the 21st century, that still sees the world through a Cold War lens and treats Che Guevara and Castro as freedom fighters. Lula’s praise of Maduro sounds straight out of the playbook used to defend the Cuban regime: Blame all of your troubles on the U.S. embargo and ignore how, even today, Cubans sit in prison for simply protesting their government.

It took Chile’s 37-year-old President Gabriel Boric to call out the hypocrisy among his fellow leftist presidents. After Lula’s remarks, he told reporters that Maduro’s human-rights violations are not a “narrative.”

“As a president of the left,” Boric added, “I think it’s necessary to confront it, not sweep it under the rug.”

Lula’s coziness with Maduro is a shame given his election was a necessary break from the antidemocratic forces that Bolsonaro unleashed in Brazil. In January, hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters staged their own version of Jan. 6, storming and defacing the country’s presidential palace because they believed lies that last year’s elections were stolen.

If democracy is good enough to defend on our own turf, it should be good for the people of Venezuela. These are the people whom Lula should support, not the dictator who is making them suffer.