MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula visits CFK at her Buenos Aires apartment

Lula stayed less than an hour at the residence in Buenos Aires' Constitución neighborhood

Following his participation at the South American Common Market (Mercosur) Summit at the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva paid a visit to former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) at the apartment in the Coonstitución neighborhood where she is serving a six-year prison sentence for overpriced public works contracts and bid rigging, under the house arrest modality.

The meeting was also attended by Eduardo Valdés, a national deputy, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, as supporters of both leaders gathered outside, carrying signs and chanting slogans of support. Joining Lula were Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira and other members of his entourage.

After the brief encounter of less than one hour, Lula noted that “important declarations were adopted” at the Mercosur Summit, including a commitment to create an agency to combat transnational organized crime and a condemnation of the unilateral exploitation of natural resources in the Falklands/Malvinas Islands.

“We will follow up on the Declaration on Integration and Energy Security. The unilateral exploitation of natural resources in the Malvinas, which we condemn today, shows that South America will not remain on the sidelines of the global race for energy sources. We need to face it together,” Lula also explained.

CFK later described Lula's visit as “a political act of solidarity,” drawing parallels between their experiences with what she called “lawfare” and judicial persecution.

She also criticized the current Argentine government under President Javier Milei, characterizing it as experiencing an “authoritarian drift” and “low-intensity state terrorism.”

She likened Argentina to a “continental experiment,” akin to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's Chile, and warned of upcoming reforms to pensions, labor, and taxes, while hoping the Argentine people would resist these measures.

“TODAY WE WELCOME OUR COMRADE @LulaOficial to my home, where I am under house arrest by decision of a judiciary that long ago ceased to hide its political subordination and became a political party,” CFK posted on social media.

“Lula was also persecuted. They also used lawfare to put him in prison. They also tried to silence him. They couldn't. He returned with the vote of the Brazilian people and his head held high,” she also recalled.

“It cost us too much to build Argentine democracy to allow it to be dismantled step by step now... That same democracy is now being hollowed out from within by a government that calls itself 'libertarian' but only gives freedom to the richest,” she further claimed.

“What completes this grim picture is what we are experiencing: a press that is silent out of fear of the president, of orders from the boss, or of losing advertising revenue; repressive laws; opposition leaders who are prevented from stepping out onto their own balconies,” CFK elaborated while warning that the woorst part would be coming after the October mid-term elections, when Economy Minister Luis Toto Caputo plans to launch his true chainsaw reforms regarding pensions, labor, and tax issues.