Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pointedly asked his counterpart Donald Trump to lift Washington’s blockade on Cuba, according to an interview published on Sunday in The Washington Post.
Cuba “needs an opportunity,” Lula said in his appeal to Trump to eliminate the unilateral blockade against the island. “What I know is that if the United States opens a negotiating table, not one based on impositions, Cuba will participate,” he emphasized.
Lula reiterated to The Washington Post that, in his May 7th meeting with Trump at the White House, Trump assured him that he would not invade Cuba; However, the most recent coercive measures and the increasingly aggressive rhetoric of the Republican toward the Caribbean nation point in the opposite direction.
During the interview with the newspaper, the Brazilian president warned that those who bow their heads cannot raise them again. “Brazil is very proud of what it is. We don’t have to bow down to anyone,” he added.
He commented that Trump knows of his opposition to the war with Iran, “that I disagree with his intervention in Venezuela, and that I condemn the genocide taking place in Palestine,” but that his political differences do not interfere with his relationship with him as head of state.
Lula explained that his wish is for Trump to “treat Brazil with respect, understanding that I am the democratically elected president.” In the interview, his first with a media outlet since the meeting with Trump, the Brazilian president also addressed the political context in Brazil and maintained that the United States should treat Latin America as a partner, not as a target.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva served two consecutive terms as president of the South American giant between 2003 and 2010. He then won the 2022 elections, assuming his third term in January 2023 (until 2027).
Now he is seeking another four-year term in the Planalto Palace in a tight race against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), currently imprisoned after being sentenced to 27 years by the Brazilian courts for attempting to undermine the nation’s democratic rule of law.
The two leaders met briefly at the UN General Assembly in September, days after Bolsonaro’s sentencing. Since then, they have met twice more and spoken by phone four times, the Post noted, describing the former union leader as the veteran lion of the Latin American left.
Lula defends the alliance with the United States, but affirms that it must be done “without relinquishing sovereignty.”
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
