Pedro Sánchez greets the summit of the Puebla Group, determined to whitewash the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships
The Puebla Group, which brings together 62 populist, leftist, revolutionary and progressive leaders from Latin America and Spain, has returned four years later to its origins in the Mexican city to celebrate its ninth summit. A conclave in which they no longer hide their dictators: Delcy Rodríguez, Bolivarian vice president and right hand of Nicolás Maduro, arrived in Puebla on Friday to participate in meetings and debates. The Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, also joined as a special guest.
Like several of the leftist presidents of the region, the head of the acting Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, sent a greeting video to the participants, in which he highlighted “your contributions to achieving equality, prosperity and social justice , fundamental”.
Acting Minister Irene Montero, one of the founders of the Puebla Group, made an appearance in the Mexican city. The PSC-PSOE MEP, Javi López, also participated.. Among the Spanish attendees were the former Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, and the former judge Baltasar Garzón.
Irene Montero and Javi López.
What was born as a WhatsApp group, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the former Chilean candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami, with the approval of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, today brings together old dinosaurs of Latin American politics, who seek to consolidate policies common in the majority governments in the Americas while whitewashing the three friendly dictatorships: Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
“In unity we advance”, is the slogan chosen at this new summit. The presence of Delcy Rodríguez represents a new nod to the Chavista revolution, precisely when the first point of the common agenda is to present a “progressive foreign policy”, including the creation of a common currency. Also led by Zapatero, Latin American leaders have insisted in recent months on excusing Maduro for the economic and social debacle that Venezuela is suffering in order to focus their criticism on international sanctions.. The Colombian Gustavo Petro, the Brazilian Lula da Silva and the Argentine Alberto Fernández have repeated part of the script prepared in the last meetings of the Puebla Group, held in the Caribbean Santa Marta and in Mexico City.
Evo Morales (i); the governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón Céspedes (c), and the former president of Colombia Ernesto Samper. EFE
“Latin America deserves a radical change in the management and administration of its public policies,” said another of the Group's leaders, former Colombian president Ernesto Samper.. The former president took advantage of his intervention to politically proselytize Mexico's official candidate, former mayor Claudia Sheinbaum: “Her arrival is going to be a revolution for Latin America.”. “It does not come only with the eyes of a woman, it comes to introduce gender mainstreaming in all public policies.”
Sheinbaum, who starts as a favorite in the presidential duel against the opponent Xóchitl Gálvez, will also lead an electoral event today, Saturday in Puebla.
Together with Samper, former President Evo Morales participated in the first meetings, who shares the Bolivian representation in the Puebla Group with his two great enemies today (President Luis Arce and Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca) in the fratricidal war that divides the Movement. To Socialism (MAS), and the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa, who is risking his near future in the presidential elections of October 15. The Citizen Revolution's bet is that the triumph of its candidate, Luisa González, precipitates a Constituent Assembly that allows the return of Correa, a fugitive from Ecuadorian justice after being sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption. Both Correa and Evo dream of returning to occupy the presidency of their countries.
Among the first participants, in the initial absence of Rodríguez Zapatero, the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón also stood out, who went to Puebla accompanied by the former Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado..
Garzón's office has defended Colombian tycoon Alex Saab, Maduro's figurehead now imprisoned in the United States, and has also participated in Spanish courts in the lawsuit filed by Nicolasito Maduro, son of the Chavista dictator, against human rights defender Tamara Suju.
The Garzón-Delgado couple has also visited Caracas during the summer, they even visited the Humboldt Hotel at the top of Ávila, today converted into the most emblematic place of the millionaire bubble for enchufados created by the Bolivarian revolution.