Brasilia: Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended the creation of a negotiating table between Cuba and the United States to lift the blockade and prevent attempts of interference from one country with another, Prensa Latina publishes.
During the first part of an interview with Channel Once in Mexico and broadcast here on TVT 247, the founder of the Workers’ Party stated that ?we have to understand 60 years of blockade. There is a lot of hatred accumulated by the Cubans in Miami against the Cubans in Cuba?.
He pointed out that, if there were not a tight siege by Washington, ?Cuba could be like Norway, the Netherlands or Switzerland, because it has highly qualified people?.
He considered that instead of exacerbating protests and announcing new restrictions, US President Joe Biden should have suspended the 243 coercive measures taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump, against the island.
Lula declared himself an admirer of the Cuban Revolution and recommended that Biden “throw away the hatred accumulated over 60 years and call the Cuban government to talk.”
?We are going to try a negotiated solution. And see what can be done to remove the blockade?, he remarked.
The negotiations would aim to end the economic, commercial and financial siege of the United States against the island that lasts more than six decades.
The former labor leader also advocated greater integration between Mexico and the other Latin American countries, including Brazil.
He asserted that cooperation between the countries of the region is important to counteract the dominance of the United States in the continent and also improve the negotiation conditions with other blocs, such as the European Union, and powers, like China.
“If we act as a bloc, establishing an association, without the hegemony of one country over another, we can create an extraordinary, economically strong bloc of more than 400 million human beings”, he explained.
In this sense, Lula defended the deepening of the economic, technological and educational exchange between Brazilians and Mexicans, but, he admitted, that at this moment it is difficult due to the actions of President Jair Bolsonaro.
He clarified that ?while we have a good president in Mexico, (Andrés Manuel) López Obrador, we do not have a good president in Brazil. In fact, we are governed by genocide?, alluding to Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of Covid-19, which has claimed nearly 555,000 deaths to date.
The second part of Lula’s interview on Channel Once in Mexico will air next week.
