Brazil stands up to Cuba, Venezuela

(Photo: EVARISTO SA – AFP/Getty Images)

When I first read that Cuba and Venezuela are leading a diplomatic offensive against Brazil following the constitutional ouster of suspended leftist president Dilma Rousseff and the transfer of power to interim president Michel Temer, my first reaction was that it was a joke.

It’s certainly ironic that Cuba — a dictatorship that hasn’t allowed a free election, political parties or even one independent newspaper in more than five decades — even dares to criticize Brazil’s democracy over Rousseff’s suspension through a series of congressional steps in strict adherence to the Brazilian constitution.

And it’s just as ironic that Venezuela, which has become a de facto regime by refusing to accept the opposition-controlled National Assembly’s laws and by imprisoning opposition leaders, claims against all evidence that Rousseff’s suspension was a “right-wing coup.”

But, indeed, a May 15 story in Brazil’s daily O Estado de Sao Paulo reported that “Cuba is leading a campaign against Brazil, ” citing an email sent by Cuba’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva to more than a dozen international institutions to protest against an alleged “legislative and judicial coup d’etat in Brazil.”

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