Latin America is currently living in a critical moment regarding its integrated institutions. For the first time in decades there is an attempt to prevent the transfer of one of its regional organizations to the country that has the legitimacy to lead it. The reason? A campaign of vilification and harassment towards the Bolivarian Venezuela, led by Jose Serra, a Brazilian de facto Foreign Minister and Eladio Loizaga, the Paraguayan Foreign Minister who was involved in Plan Condor. They are being accompanied by Susana Malcorra, Foreign Minister of Macri’s government in Argentina.

They seek to prevent Venezuela from assuming the Presidency pro tempore (PPT) of Mercosur in an attempt to paralyze all the initiatives proposed over the last decade and a half that express an autonomous policy with respect to the United States. How can it be that the government of Michel Temer in Brazil, who heads a “parliamentary coup”, has any legitimate opinion about the democratic credentials of Venezuela, whose legal and democratically elected government not only has the right but the responsibility of leading this regional organization according to the Treaty of Asunción and the Protocol of Ouro Preto?

What right does Paraguay, who just unjustly condemned the peasants of Curuguaty, have to even comment on Human Rights in other countries, considering that this view questions a Presidency that is absolutely transparent?

Can the Argentina of Macri that has censored several international media outlets and keeps social movement leader Milagro Salas imprisoned have any right to make any comment on the situation in Venezuela?

The Latin American right and imperialism are now trying something concrete to end Mercosur as it is and to re align it towards a predominantly ultra-neoliberal orientation. They are attempting to institute a coup in this institution similar to what they already did in Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012) and Brazil (2016), all of those were against progressive national popular leaders and the regional left. To achieve this new goal they are using media groups to heat up their constant harassment against Venezuela. Why don’t they just acknowledge that Venezuela is already the pro tempore presidency of Unasur, and that they will soon be the PPT of the Movement of Non-Aligned countries? They seek to hide this important information which would undermine their arguments opposing the legitimacy of the Presidency of Mercosur that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is in line to be.

The Network, in their tireless struggle in defense of humanity, supports the PPT of Venezuela and asks all intellectuals in the continent to take a position against this arbitrary decision on the part of some foreign ministries. Venezuela is not nor will it ever be alone before this onslaught of the regional and international right. With Venezuela are people who dream of a better and more humane world.

Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity.

(REDH - Red de Intelectuales y Artistas en Defensa de la Humanidad)