Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was yesterday scheduled to host fellow South American leaders for a “retreat” aimed at strengthening ties in a region where left-wing governments are newly back in style.
Eleven of the continent’s 12 heads of state are due to attend the summit in Brasilia — the first of its kind in nearly a decade — with only Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expected to miss it.
Veteran leftist Da Silva started things on Monday by meeting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and hailing the “historic” restoration of a relationship that was severed under his predecessor, far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Brazil had cut diplomatic ties with Maduro’s government under Bolsonaro, who labeled the socialist leader a “dictator.”
“This is the start of Maduro’s return, and [yesterday’s] meeting will be the return of South American integration,” Da Silva told a news conference, after greeting his Venezuelan counterpart at the presidential palace with a hug and a back-slap.
Da Silva, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, is a self-declared fan of international cooperation and “regional integration,” which featured prominently in his first presidency, and is keen to reboot stalled South American ties.
This is the first summit of regional leaders since 2014 in Quito, Ecuador, at a gathering of the Union of South American Nations, a continental bloc launched in 2008 by Da Silva and late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
That was the moment of Latin America’s so-called “pink tide,” when a wave of left-wing governments led the region.
Now, some political analysts are talking of a “new pink tide” in South America, with the recent election of Da Silva, Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
Da Silva wants to get the region cooperating again.
His government has touted projects such as a “Bi-Oceanic Corridor,” a transportation artery to enable countries to ship goods from one side of the continent to the other overland instead of by sea.
The summit would be a small, “more relaxed” gathering, with only the leaders, their foreign ministers and select advisers in the room, a Brazilian diplomatic source said.
“Groundbreaking visions” for South America’s future are unlikely to emerge from the summit, political scientist Oliver Stuenkel said.
However, “the meeting itself is good news,” he wrote in Americas Quarterly.
“Even a basic dialogue between heads of state is genuine progress after Brazil largely retreated from its neighborhood during the Bolsonaro years,” he said.
Since Da Silva defeated Bolsonaro in a divisive election to return to office in January, he has been overhauling Brazil’s foreign policy, vowing to seek friendly relations across the board and cultivating closer ties with partners as disparate as China and the US.
However, he has drawn attacks from opponents for being overly cozy with Russia, China and Latin American leftists such as Maduro and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who are accused of human rights violations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to