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 presence of the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, has also been confirmed by the organization.
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.
“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 the official candidate of Mexico, the former mayor Claudia Sheinbaum: “Her arrival is going to be a revolution for Latin America. She does not arrive only with the eyes of a woman, she arrives to introduce a transversalization of the gender 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 staking his near future in the presidential elections on 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, former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón also stood out, who went to Puebla accompanied by 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.
Also on the list of participants, according to the organization itself, is Irene Montero, acting minister of the Government of Pedro Sánchez.