Brazil and Venezuela’s unpopular leaders remain friends – for now

When a delegation of Brazilian senators arrived in Venezuela recently to visit Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma, two Venezuelan leaders who are being held as political prisoners, they soon ran into trouble. When the senators tried to leave the airport, they themselves were held captive; their minibus was stopped and violently attacked by a mob, shouting “Chávez is not dead, he has multiplied!” Security forces at the airport allowed the attack to continue, even though the senators were high-level foreign visitors. This was no spontaneous mob, as revealed by a Venezuelan national guard officer interviewed by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. Instead, the officer said the Venezuelan government recruited supporters to attack the Brazilian senators and prevent them from visiting the prisoners. Forced back into the airport, the senators had to fly back to Brazil the same day without being able to visit the political prisoners. More…