Tension between Venezuela and Brazil rises after veto at BRICS

Brasil de Fato

The BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, was marked by diplomatic tension between Brazil and Venezuela after the Brazilian government vetoed Venezuela’s entry into the bloc as a partner state. The decision adds to the difficulties of a relationship shaken since the elections that confirmed Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president.

Lula’s administration didn’t publicly justify the veto. The Brazilian president didn’t attend the event due to a domestic accident and sent the country’s minister of foreign affairs, Mauro Vieira, to lead Brazil’s delegation. However, none of them explained why they barred Venezuelans from entering the bloc. Caracas says it was “a stab in the back” and that Brazil’s “interference” is a way to intervene in local politics.

Brasil de Fato heard from diplomats involved in the negotiations who said that how the presidential election in Venezuela was carried out and the recent exchanges between members of the leadership close to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Brazil’s Workers’ Party government had weighed heavily on the Brazilian administration’s assessment. Nicolás Maduro won the elections in Venezuela and was re-elected for a third presidential term. The results, however, were contested by the opposition.

Brazil did not make a public acknowledgement. The country’s Foreign Ministry, also known as Itamaraty, said it trusted the electoral system and began negotiations with the Colombian government to open a channel for dialogue with the Venezuelan government and demand the release of the disaggregated results of the country’s elections. In response, Venezuela called for respect for “sovereignty and self-determination”, so that electoral issues could be resolved internally. The data on the election results have still not been published by the National Electoral Council (CNE, in Spanish) three months after the elections.

According to Brazilian diplomacy, even without a formal explanation of the decision, the origin of the veto on Venezuela has this context. Caracas criticized Brazil’s position, called the decision “hostile” and said the action added to the “criminal policy of sanctions”. In a statement, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said that the representation of Itamaraty in the bloc, through diplomat Eduardo Paes Saboia, maintained the veto that former president Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) applied for years to the country and reproduced “hatred, exclusion and intolerance” against Venezuelans.

Maduro completed Venezuela’s note on Monday (28). During his television program Con Maduro +, he said that Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira had promised, during the negotiations in Russia, that he would not prevent the country from being part of Brics. According to the president, the two met at the end of the event and Maduro questioned the Brazilian veto. Maduro also said that the Brazilian foreign minister affirmed, before leaving the summit, that he had not vetoed Venezuela.

In both the official statement and Maduro’s statement, the strategy Caracas adopted was to blame Eduardo Paes Saboia for what they called “betrayal”. He is a career diplomat and was Brazil’s ambassador to Japan during Jair Bolsonaro’s government.

With the public statements, the Venezuelan government says it will wait to see if Lula will take a stand and decide if the attitude was taken by a “Bolsonaro supporter” diplomat.

“Eduardo Paes Saboia has a dark and sad past supporting Bolsonaro. This violates the principles of Celac, Unasur and the principles President Lula has openly defended for years. This has created a huge noise, because, imagine if all the Bric countries support you and suddenly an official stabs you in the back, known as an intransigent Bolsonaro supporter,” said Maduro. 

For former Venezuelan diplomat and international analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, blaming Saboia is a way of marking the government’s discontent, but leaving room for dialogue, since it was not directed at President Lula.

“To assume that this decision was taken by Ambassador Saboia isn’t solid, but I think that, with this, Venezuela is giving a state response, a response that shows its disappointment without being confrontational because it leaves room for reconsideration,” he said.

According to Brasil de Fato’s investigation, part of the Venezuelan thinks that Brazil’s decision represents a change in Lula’s stance compared to his first two governments (2003-2006 and 2007-2010).

Political analyst and PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) activist David Gomes Rodriguez agrees. For him, the Brazilian president himself spearheaded the creation of regional groups and articulations that promote relations among Latin American countries. He adds that if Brazil wants to continue to be recognized as progressive and a promoter of Latin American integration, this decision will have to be reversed.

“The fact that Lula has vetoed Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS is a difference compared to Lula’s previous governments. It constitutes a betrayal of progressivism, of the principles of Latin American integration and of the anti-imperialist vision and the construction of a new world order on the international stage, which was articulated by Lula back then,” he told Brasil de Fato.

Maduro also criticized the training of Brazilian diplomats. According to him, the foreign relations schools in Brazil are influenced by the US State Department. Rodriguez says that all these statements are attacks on Brazil and do not help to improve relations between the two countries.

“Venezuela is ridiculing Brazil and that’s why I think Brazil’s position is coherent. Brazil resumed relations [with Venezuela] after the Bolsonaro term. It did the work of recovering trust and reintegrating Venezuela. The point is that Brazil has its own foreign policy. It can’t necessarily play into the hands of other countries,” he said.

Brics members welcomed 13 countries to join the association in the category of “partner states”: Turkey, Indonesia, Algeria, Belarus, Cuba, Bolivia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria and Uganda.

Waiting for the dust to settle

With the veto and the exchange of statements, relations between the countries got even more difficult. Lula’s special advisor for International Relations, Celso Amorim, said in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that trust “was broken” with Venezuela.

The aim of Brazilian diplomacy now is to wait for the dust to settle, await the Venezuelans’ next steps and understand how to proceed. Despite fears of strong measures to be taken by the Venezuelan government, such as the expulsion of the diplomatic team from Caracas, the idea on both sides is to keep the relationship as it is and continue to settle their differences to negotiate Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS as a “partner state”.

A crucial point for this negotiation is the presidency of the BRICS, which will be held by Brazil in 2025. The Brazilian government will play an even greater role at the next summit and will choose the guests. If the situation doesn’t change by then, the feeling in the chancelleries is that Venezuela may not even be invited, which would further increase the unease between the two Latin American governments.

There is also a mismatch in the analysis of the last few months of this relationship. The Brazilian government claims to have made an effort to reinsert Venezuela into the international stage and worked to ensure that the elections in the neighboring country were held peacefully. For diplomacy, this was not recognized after the elections, and the government of President Nicolás Maduro launched a series of attacks against the Brazilian government.

Since the beginning of his third presidential term, in January 2023, Lula has reiterated that Brazil can be an important player in mediating conflicts around the world. The president has tried to portray himself as an interlocutor in the war in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.

For Roberto Goulart Menezes, professor of International Relations at the University of Brasilia (UnB, in Portuguese), the Brazilian government’s assessment is in line with Itamaraty’s decisions over the last two years and the president exposed himself in 2023 by welcoming Maduro to the Planalto Palace. 

“President Lula’s stance was widely criticized in the first half of 2023 because he was trying to reinsert Venezuela and welcomed Maduro in the midst of the Venezuelan government’s isolation. If there is a country that seeks regional integration, it is Brazil, which seeks to articulate the region, create regional governance and has even defended that Venezuela’s problems have to be solved internally,” he told Brasil de Fato.

As for the Venezuelans, they also believe that they have made an effort at the international level to help the Brazilian government, both under the Workers’ Party administration and under the Bolsonaro government. Members of the government say, for example, that Venezuela was one of the first countries to denounce the “coup” suffered by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, as well as sending eight trucks with 130,000 liters of oxygen to supply hospitals in Manaus, Amazonas’ capital city, during the pandemic and 107 Brazilian and Venezuelan doctors.

Former Venezuelan diplomat and international analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein says that it is the diplomats’ job to ease the situation in the coming weeks. According to him, there are other ways to resolve the issue without taking extreme measures.

“I always think that cutting ties is not good in any case. You can’t abandon the space you are part of unless they kick you out. But you shouldn’t self-exile through your own decision. There are a number of diplomatic measures you can take – calling in ambassadors for consultations, for example – to resolve differences. If you break off relations, you lose the capacity of the state, which has an agency to resolve precisely these problems – Itamaraty. I wouldn’t cut ties with any country,” he told Brasil de Fato.

BRICS interest

Venezuela considered that its estimated oil reserves of 303 billion barrels would be an asset for joining the bloc. Today, the BRICS provide energy for around 40% of the world’s population. With the Venezuelans joining the bloc, the group would have even greater influence in the energy sector and would have even greater representation in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself said he disagreed with Brazil’s position of vetoing Venezuela, but the BRICS would only take measures by consensus. For David Gomes Rodriguez, the veto on Venezuela affects the interests of Caracas and the group itself, due to its importance in the energy sector.

“This isn’t just about a political dispute or political recognition of a legitimately elected government like Nicolás Maduro. It’s about the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet joining a group that already supplies energy to 40% of the world’s population, one that determines new mechanisms for developing international trade, including generating new possibilities regarding the international energy exchange currency, which allows each of our countries to be sovereign” he said.

According to Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, the veto also has the symbolism of reproducing a way of doing politics that is typical of the UN Security Council.

“In this sense, BRICS sent out a very bad signal because it showed that there is a right to veto. BRICS wants to differentiate itself from the UN Security Council, establishing a more horizontal relationship, and seeking consensus, but by accepting the right to veto, it becomes very difficult to distance itself from something it wants to overcome. The right to veto is the expression of dictatorship in international relations. It’s the imposition of five countries on the other 189 in the UN,” he said.