Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met on Monday with Brazilian leader Luis Inacio Lula de Silva during his first visit to Brazil since 2015, taking advantage of warmer relations ahead of a regional summit. After their meeting, they held a press conference together. 

“You have to deconstruct the narrative that’s been built around Venezuela,” Da Silva said. 

The politicians announced they’re seeking to relaunch bilateral commercial relations, especially those related to electrical power between Venezuela and northern Brazil. 

During the conference, Da Silva said he supports Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS group. The Brazilian president also said that South America must be convinced of the need to work as a bloc in the international arena.

Maduro announced he will propose that South American leaders take positions as a region and call on the United States to lift sanctions against his country. Da Silva called the US sanctions “extremely exaggerated.”

“It’s irrational that a country is subject to 900 sanctions just because another country doesn’t like them,” he said.

Brazil’s former hard-right President Jair Bolsonaro had banned Maduro from entering Brazil when he took office in 2019, a measure that Lula lifted when he returned to power this year.

Among the issues on their agenda was a large debt Venezuela has run up with Brazil’s National Development Bank, Brazilian officials said. Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad was due to meet with Maduro and Lula, they added, and the president of state-run oil company Petrobras, Jean Paul Prates.

Maduro is one of 10 South American presidents invited by Lula to a summit discussing the launch of a regional cooperation bloc in place of the defunct UNASUR, which was created in 2008 during the previous presidency of Lula with the leftist leaders at the time of Venezuela and Argentina, Hugo Chavez and Cristina Kirchner, respectively.

The organization floundered when several South American countries elected right-wing governments, creating diplomatic fissures on the continent.

—Reuters