Venezuela and Brazil tighten ties [View all]

[Peace Patriot]

Brazil and Venezuela: South American Giants Tighten Ties

By CORREO DEL ORINOCO INTERNATIONAL

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received his Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff in the capital of Caracas last Thursday 1 December for an encounter that saw the signing of 11 new bilateral accords in areas ranging from science and technology to housing and energy.

The meeting was Rousseff's first official visit to Venezuela since being sworn in as Brazilian President on January 1 and took place before the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit began in Caracas on Friday afternoon.

(NOTE: Nice photo of them at the link.)
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Key among the pacts signed last week was the commitment on behalf of Venezuela's state owned airline, Conviasa, to acquire 20 new planes from the Brazilian company Embraer as well as the collaboration of Brazil's Central Bank, the Caixa, in Venezuela's massive new public housing initiative.

With respect to energy, both governments agreed to form a mixed company between a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company Pdvsa and the Brazilian company Odebrecht as well as work to boost the capacity of Venezuela's current electricity output.

During their meeting, the two heads of state also revised the progress of an earlier agricultural accord that has led to the cultivation more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of land in the central Venezuelan state of Anzoategui.

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...the gains made in Anzoategui as well as others made by collaborative projects with Brazil are the direct result of the integrationist policies that have existed between the two countries since the 8-year presidency of Rousseff's predecessor, Lula da Silva.

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Officials report that commercial activity between Brazil and Venezuela in the first 10 months of 2011 has grown by more than 20 percent in relation to the same period last year.

(MORE)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6682
(Creative Commons License)
(my emphases)

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There is nothing more important to U.S. transglobal corporations and war profiteers (and thus to the U.S. government) than breaking up this critically important alliance between the leftist governments of Venezuela and Brazil. Rightwing posters at DU have been trying to chat up phantom divisions between these leaders for some time as well as downplaying the momentous formalization of UNASUR (all South American countries) in 2008 and, this week, CELAC (all Latin American countries), with the U.S. and Canada not invited to join.

The alliance between Lula da Silva and Hugo Chavez was essential to the formation of both of these new institutions, which reflect the overwhelming trend in Latin America toward economic/political integration, independence, communal strength and social justice. Lula's protege, Dilma Rousseff, is now furthering this alliance. She has much reason to support it, from a social justice and "raise all boats"-prosperity point of view, and also a personal reason. Her first contact with the U.S., as a young woman, was at the hands of torturers in the U.S.-supported fascist regime in Brazil. It is experiences like hers--including half a century of bullying, bloodshed and exploitation by the U.S. and its fascist allies in Latin America--that have driven Latin America's majority to seek independence from the U.S.