The former president of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, in an address to the public the day after getting out of prison, expressed solidarity with the left-wing governments in the region, and told the President of the United States of America (USA) Donald Trump to mind his own business.
On Friday, Lula received numerous messages of support from current and former Latin American leftist leaders.
The former Brazilian president, imprisoned since April last year and freed after the decision of the Supreme Court, spoke in front of hundreds of members of the metallurgical workers' union in Sao Bernardo del Campo.
Most of Lula's speech was devoted to the current Brazilian president, the extreme right-winger Jair Bolsonaro, but he took a few minutes to present his view of the situation in Latin America.
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"Evo Morales was elected (in Bolivia), but the right, like here, did not want to accept the result. We should be in solidarity with Bolivia, we should be in solidarity with the people of Chile, we should be in solidarity with the people of Argentina. We should ask "I pray to God that Comrade Daniel (Martinez) wins the elections in Uruguay so that neoliberalism is not planted there. We should be in solidarity with the people of Venezuela," said the former leader.
Lula added that "it is normal to have critics (...) but the people of a country should solve its problems".
Followed by applause, Lula used the opportunity to criticize Donald Trump, with whom Bolsonaro shares many political and ideological views.
"Let Trump solve the problems of the USA and not bother Latin Americans, no one chose him as a world guide," he said.
Lula became known as a trade union leader precisely in São Bernardo, where he surrendered to the police on April 7, 2018, to begin serving his sentence for corruption.
The former head of state claims that he is not guilty and that the trial against him was political and staged.
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