Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro arrived in Brazil on Sunday evening to meet with his radical leftist counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as part of the Maduro regime’s efforts to “re-establish strategic bilateral alliances” between Venezuela and Brazil.

The trip is Maduro’s first visit to Brazil in eight years; he last visited to attend the inauguration of Lula’s protegé Dilma Rousseff in 2015.

The government of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who lost to Lula in October, banned Maduro and his top officials from entering the country in 2019. The ban was lifted in December, hours before the end of Bolsonaro’s presidential term.

“We will be developing in the coming hours a diplomatic agenda that will reinforce the necessary union of the peoples of our continent,” Maduro announced on Twitter upon his arrival to Brazil. “Stay tuned!”


Lula received Maduro at the presidential Planalto Palace in Brasilia on Monday morning. Other members of Maduro’s delegation are slated to conduct meetings with their Brazilian counterparts throughout the day.




The Maduro regime announced that the meeting “seeks to consolidate the ties of cooperation and brotherhood between both nations within the framework of the Bolivarian Diplomacy of Peace,” the socialist regime’s formal term for its foreign policy.

Maduro is also scheduled to participate in an upcoming meeting of South American presidents Lula will host on Tuesday. The meeting is an initiative spearheaded by the Brazilian radical leftist president meant to reactivate a South American “cooperation” agenda through a “frank dialogue” among presidents.

Expected to attend the meeting are the heads of state of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay, Suriname, and Venezuela. Peruvian President Dina Boluarte will not participate in the meeting, with Prime Minister Alberto Otárola representing Peru instead.

In 2019, under the Bolsonaro administration, Brazil cut all relations with Venezuela in response to Maduro no longer being the legitimate president of the country. Maduro claims the presidency through the results of a sham election organized in 2018 that most of the free world derided as illegitimate. Maduro’s actions prompted the then-opposition-led Venezuelan National Assembly to act upon what the nation’s constitution calls a “rupture in the democratic order,” establishing a legitimate interim government in early 2019 led by Venezuelan lawmaker Juan Guaidó.


Bolsonaro recognized Guaidó as the lawful president, kicking out Maduro’s diplomatic representatives by 2020.

Guaidó’s government, which failed to oust Maduro or exert any power in Venezuela, was ultimately dissolved by the opposition-led National Assembly in December, which has now left Maduro’s rule in Venezuela uncontested.

Upon being elected president of Brazil for a third term, Lula, a fierce ally of Venezuela’s socialist regime under Hugo Chávez’s rule, made the restoration of Brazil’s diplomatic ties with the Maduro regime one of his top priorities. Lula ordered his foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, to immediately restore ties with the Venezuelan socialist regime on January 1, the first day of Lula’s third term.


Lula also sent his top foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim to conduct meetings with both Maduro and members of Venezuela’s establishment “opposition” in Caracas. Amorim’s visit to Caracas was another step in restoring bilateral ties and promoted the idea of holding a supposedly “free and fair” presidential election organized by Maduro in 2024.

Last week, Lula officially received the letters of credence for Manuel Vicente Vadell Aquino, Maduro’s new ambassador to Brazil.

Maduro’s presence in Brazilian territory immediately drew criticism from the nation’s lawmakers. Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, noted that the United States has an active $15 million bounty offer for information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest and/or conviction — U.S. federal prosecutors accused Maduro of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism in 2020.


Local media reported that Brazilian lawmaker Zé Trovão sent a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Brazil on Monday formally requesting information on “what measures may be adopted by the U.S. government to capture this criminal.”



Brazilian lawmaker Mario Frias recalled that the nation’s top electoral court censored Bolsonaro campaign material that mentioned Lula’s political and friendly ties with both Maduro and Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega.

“Today we see reality. A bloodthirsty dictator is now in Brazil to meet his good old friend,” Frias said. “We will go back to financing hunger, misery and deaths.”