MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Maduro lashes out at Itamaraty and Boric

Boric “believed that supporting the fascists of Venezuela against the Bolivarian Revolution was going to give him votes, on the contrary people do not support cowards,” Maduro argued

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Monday accused Brazil's Foreign Ministry of being an agent at the service of the United States, which would explain his country not being admitted as an associate member of BRICS, unlike Cuba and Bolivia.

”Itamaraty has been a power within the power in Brazil for years (...) Itamaraty is a Foreign Ministry that we know well, that has always conspired against Venezuela, that we have been able to carry out according to the rules of diplomacy, it is a Foreign Ministry closely linked to the US State Department since the 60s (...) there are practically no officials there that do not have some link with the State Department, it has always been like that and continues to be like that today,“ the Bolivarian leader said in his ”Con Maduro+“ TV Show.

”When we fought such a long battle to join Mercosur, Itamaraty always put obstacles, it was the great promoter of the illegal exclusion of Venezuela from Mercosur, a stain on Brazilian diplomacy with an anti-Venezuelan ideology,“ he added.

He also claimed that Brazilian official Eduardo Páez Saboya was behind Venezuela's exclusion. ”That official was the one who spoke on behalf of Brazil to establish before the negotiating table that his government vetoed the entry of Venezuela as a country on the list of invitees to become a member of the BRICS,“ he argued. In his view Paez Saboya was an ”intransigent, Bolsonarist and fascist“ official.

Maduro assured there was a consensus to let Venezuela into BRICS at the summit in the Russian city of Kazan. Caracas said back then that it was a ”hostile gesture“ from Brazil to veto its accession. He also recalled that the late Comandante Fidel Castro used to say that ”Brazil is the only country governed by a building” in reference to the Itamaraty Palace (Foreign Ministry).

On the sidelines of the summit, Maduro held meetings with his peers from Russia, Belarus, Palestine, Ethiopia, China, South Africa, Iran, Bolivia, and Türkiye. With Russian President Vladimir Putin, he discussed energy and military cooperation. “The criminal sanctions that were imposed by the United States on Venezuela and Russia, are the heritage of the past world,” the Venezuelan leader told his host.

“We discussed with President Putin efforts toward the comprehensive development of our cooperation, including in the energy and defense sectors,” Maduro also explained in an interview with local media.

At the gathering in Kazan, Maduro raised the need for the creation of a new world monetary system and also insisted on the progress of the New Development Bank of that bloc to access financing. He also urged the reform of the United Nations System given the aggressions against Palestine and Lebanon.

Also in his show Monday, Maduro said Chilean President “Gabriel Boric turned his back on Chilean popular power.” He added that “the leftist and popular forces in Chile have had a crushing defeat and their only responsible is Gabriel Boric” who “abandoned the program of substantial change because he betrayed the ideals of Salvador Allende and because he turned his back on the entire popular movement.”

Boric “mocked the hopes for a change of the Chilean people, he believed that by becoming President he had to make a pact with the economic, political, and media elites,” Maduro went on. “He believed that supporting the fascists of Venezuela against the Bolivarian Revolution was going to give him votes, on the contrary people do not support cowards.”