Havana.- The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, thanked Fidel Castro (1926-2016) this Wednesday for the “encouragement” he gave to his political career in a message sent to the international colloquium dedicated to the Cuban leader, which is being held in Havana on the occasion of his centenary.
“If today I am at the head of the Presidency of Brazil for the third time, it is thanks to the encouragement and wisdom of Fidel Castro,” stated Lula da Silva, who aspires to a fourth term at 80 years old.
The president of the South American country stated that on the centenary of Castro’s birth, he gives “the people of Cuba the same message of strength and hope” and called for “fraternity and justice to persist amidst adversity,” state media reported.
The closeness between Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro
Lula and Castro maintained a close friendship, and regarding this, the Brazilian president expressed after the island leader’s death in 2016 that he felt his passing “like the loss of an older brother” and recalled that both maintained for decades “an affectionate and intense relationship, based on the search for paths to the emancipation” of their peoples.
The Brazilian intellectual and theologian Frei Betto was the bearer of Lula’s message, which he read at the international colloquium Fidel: Legacy and Future, which will close the commemorative program of activities this Thursday, August 13, when the one hundredth anniversary of Castro’s birth is celebrated.
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In his speech, Betto remembered the leader of the Cuban revolution, who governed the island for almost 50 years and acknowledged “the need to open spaces for understanding” in the interview he conducted with him in 1985 over four different sessions that totaled 23 hours and became the book “Fidel and Religion”.
