Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in Bogotá to inaugurate the FILBo book fair. Lula proposed to his "dear comrade" Petro a "strategic alliance" to promote South American integration.
Colombia will be the guest of honor at the So Paulo International Book Biennial, which will take place between September 6 and 15. "Brazil and Colombia have a very big responsibility: we have to save the Amazon rainforest," said Petro, who insisted on the need to decarbonize their economies, one of his mantras. They are the two most biodiverse countries in the world, and their presidents have shown harmony on that front – with some nuances around oil exploration, which Petro wants to leave behind. "We need more books and fewer weapons, more knowledge, science, and education," said Lula, who lamented that the false Western dichotomy between a world of men and the world of nature "is leading us to a climate catastrophe." Petro transmitted to Lula the proposal of a kind of plebiscite in those elections. Lula, in turn, proposed to Petro to build a “strategic alliance” to grow their economies. The Brazilian did not refer to that proposal or the situation in Venezuela, although he confirmed that they were some of the issues on the table. Both Petro and Lula have recently criticized the Government of Nicolás Maduro, after months of diplomatic discretion. The Venezuelan authorities had vetoed Corina Yoris, the candidate designated by the disqualified opposition leader Mara Corina Machado, Lula said last month during French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Brasilia. Petro, for his part, came to describe this veto as an "anti-democratic coup," but last week he visited Maduro in Caracas, where he also met with the opponent Manuel Rosales – whom Chavismo did allow to register as a candidate. There he qualified his criticism by declaring that Colombia would work for the "political peace" of Venezuela.