Lula and Chávez Went Seven Months Without Talking, Reveals Telegram

06/18/2015 - 09h47

A telegram published by the Brazilian embassy in Venezuela has revealed that the former presidents of the two countries, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Hugo Chávez, went seven months without speaking, after Chávez called the Brazilian Congress the "parrot" of the United States.

The cooling of relations occurred in 2007, according to a telegram dating from March 2009 by Antônio José Ferreira Simões, the Brazilian ambassador in Caracas.

The document was classified at the time as "confidential", but it was published on Tuesday(16) by the Foreign Ministry in response to a request by the magazine "Época" under freedom of information legislation.

"In the context of comments made by President Chávez about the Brazilian National Congress, the two presidents went seven months without meeting or talking by telephone," wrote the ambassador.

Today, Simões is the Foreign Ministry's undersecretary-general of South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Normal relations between Lula and Chávez were resumed around September 2007.

However, the telegram also says that despite some problems, the relationship between Brazil and Venezuela was closer than ever during the Lula and Chávez administrations.

Bilateral trade, for example, increased by on average 10% a year, going from US$880 million in 2003, when Lula assumed the presidency, to US$6 billion in 2009.

According to Simões, Venezuela came "to represent a central platform for the process of internationalization of Brazilian companies", which "won increased influence in public works, supply of industrial and agricultural equipment, petrochemicals and consumer goods (Odebrecht, Cotia Trading, Volvo do Brasil, Avibrás, Braskem, Brahma, Sadia and Natura, among others)."

Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE

Read the article in the original language