Despite the chaos in Venezuela, Caracas will host this year’s meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum, an event which will bring together hundreds of socialists and Communists who support the Maduro dictatorship; at a cost to Venezuela of at least USD $200 million, and will be held within days of a new national blackout that has left the country in the dark.

While the South American country faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the regime is spending a fortune to host the event, which could be used to save the lives of hundreds of Venezuelans who are at risk of death due to lack of medical treatment and food. The priority of the dictatorship is to congregate hundreds of Communist and socialist allies in Caracas, as he claims to be the victim of an economic blockade that does not allow him to import food or medicine.

Venezuelan deputy Leonardo Regnault denounced that hosting the Sao Paulo Forum will cost Venezuela USD $200 million.

“This forum is a temple set up for friends to come to do an ideological pilgrimage, while the Venezuelan people suffer from hunger and misery, unable to meet basic needs, while they die to the conditions in hospitals, and have no access to medicine and food,” he said.

Regnault argued that, with the amount spent by the regime in this forum, “the Coche Hospital, that has been closed for more than eight months, could have been repaired. It could also have been used to help kidney patients, patients with chronic illnesses, or to combat childhood malnutrition.”

During the blackout in Venezuela, most of the states in the country went dark; however, resources are being diverted to ensure that political proselytizing and propaganda will take place within the framework of the Sao Paulo Forum.

The Forum will be hosted from July 25 to 28 in Caracas, and will be attended by 800 delegates; among them will be a delegation of the FARC, which according to the journalist Maibort Petit, got permission to leave Colombia thanks to a letter that the Chavista Diosdado Cabello sent to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).

The reaction to news of the Sao Paulo forum was swift; Colombian Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal, from the Democratic Center party, called the forum the “ideal setting for the permanent incubation of revolutionary leftism.”

In a strongly worded letter, the senator alleges that the event is held in homage to “rulers who seize power and become genocidal dictators that claim to promote class struggle while they imprison, torture, and murder those who have the courage to oppose them.”

Sao Paulo Forum supports Maduro’s crimes

The president of the Grand National Alliance, Enrique Aristeguieta Gramcko, issued a public letter Monday in rejection of the Sao Paulo Forum:

“When you come to our country, to support the Venezuelan regime, you are betraying your own postulates; because Maduro has impoverished the citizens, violated human rights, destroyed the mining sector, and fiercely attacked the indigenous Pemon people,” says Gramcko.

“When you come to Venezuela, you are conveniently ignoring the fact that Maduro’s regime is not a government, but a conglomerate of criminal organizations. Do you not know that we have become the world capital of cocaine? Have you never heard of the Cartel of the Suns? No one informed them about the links with Hezbollah? Have you not seen the videos of smuggling in official vehicles?” he said.

“Attendees of the Sao Paulo Forum: what you come here to support is something else; it is organized crime; and, as such, they do enormous damage to the cause they claim to defend,” he said.

According to the lawyer and political scientist, Carlos Sánchez Berzain, “the Forum of Sao Paulo has demonstrated that it is the political disguise for an organized crime syndicate. In its statement in Havana in 2018, the slogan «until victory always» seeks to legitimize – among others – the criminal acts of Nicolás Maduro and the crimes of Daniel Ortega; describes the prosecution of justice against Rafael Correa as political persecution and questions the validity of the rule of law, supports the fourth consecutive candidacy of Evo Morales, as well as defending the cultivation of coca, and justifying the violation of the human rights of the people of Cuba.”