Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba’s president, left, shakes hands with Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, during the closing ceremony of the Sao Paulo Forum at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday, July 28, 2019 ( Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

DIPLOMATIC TIMES  STAFF

If anyone thought Cuba’s new President Miguel Diaz-Canel was going to be mild mannered alternative to the fiery Fidel Castro, think again.  Cuba President Diaz-Canel was in Venezuela last week attending Latin America’s largest meeting of leftist organizations at the Sao Paulo Forum at Miraflores Palace in Caracas. Embracing “Peace, Sovereignty and Prosperity of the Peoples” as a common goal, more than  120 Latin American social and political organizations began Thursday the 25th Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum (SPF) in Caracas. In his address to the forum, Cuba’s President Díaz-Canel declared:

“Venezuela is today the first anti-imperialist trench of the world. The U.S. imperialism counteroffensive and the oligarchy, alongside the hawks that have literally hijacked U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean, are dangerously threatening the geographical space that CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] declared a Peace Zone.”

-Cuba  President Díaz-Canel 

The Cuban president also strongly embraced embattled Venezuelan President Maduro. 

” Let us reaffirm before the world our support and solidarity with legitimate President Nicolás Maduro Moros and the military civic union that has defeated the worst plans of the enemy so many times.   We must remember that ensuring peace in Venezuela is equivalent to defending peace for the entire region.To support and defend Venezuela is to decisively confront the return of the Monroe Doctrine and the imperialist escalation against our peoples. Today it is wielded against Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua; tomorrow will be against others, and in the end they will go for everyone.”   

The words of Diaz-Canel  were vintage Castro.

The annual forum was founded by the former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 1990, bringing delegations of leftist governments, politicians, and activists from across Latin America and the Carribean. During the 2000s, the forum was considered an important regional event with the rise of numerous socialist governments across the region.

Venezuelan deputy Leonardo Regnault denounced that hosting the Sao Paulo Forum will cost Venezuela USD $200 million:

“This forum is a temple set up for friends to come to do an ideological pilgrimage, while the Venezuelan people suffer from hunger and misery, unable to meet basic needs, while they die to the conditions in hospitals, and have no access to medicine and food,” he said, as reported in Pan Am Post.