Portuguese → English transcript

In the eight years I was president of Brazil,

I had the opportunity to live alongside Nicolás

Maduro, who was the foreign affairs minister

of Venezuela. Maduro stood out brilliantly

in the struggle to project Venezuela in the world and in the construction

of a more democratic and supportive Latin America.

He played a decisive role in the formation of Unasul and

CELAC, and his deep affinity

with our dear and much-missed friend

Hugo Chávez was always visible. The two shared the same

ideas about the destiny of our continent and

the great global problems. What is

your name?

My name is Luis. What are you doing

here in Brazil?

Why did you come here?

I came fleeing from Venezuela a year ago, because of the

dictatorship that is happening there, because there you cannot

speak against the government. The person who speaks

in Venezuela against the government ends up in jail or

ends up dead. Because there it is a dictatorship. I am

going to tell you something. Why Lula must not

win. Because Lula is a friend of the disgrace

we have in Venezuela. A country as rich

as Venezuela, in all Latin America and in

the worlds. Because… I am Venezuelan,

Venezuela has the greatest wealth in the worlds

in oil. And we are ending up eating dog,

eating cat and eating everything that is no good

just to be able to survive. More than that. Chávez

and Maduro had the same ideas with regard

to the challenges that Venezuela had ahead of it,

in defense of the poorest. They have to take

food out of the trash. Yes, we are hungry.

We have to change the president, boss. Because

we cannot live like this. This is trash. For the

same reason, because of the situation we are in,

just imagine. We cannot… we cannot be like

this. We have to remove the president, we want to

remove him. We are people from the streets but we want to

remove the president. We want to remove him. We cannot

live like this anymore, eating from the trash. I am 26

years old and this is the first time in my life I do this

for my children, for me. How often do you have to

do this?

Every day. Every day. Because right now

one salary is not enough for anything. The great work

of Chávez was to transform Venezuela into

a fairer country, carrying out a massive process

of transferring oil income for the benefit of

the most suffering sectors of society. There in Venezuela

meat is what?

The meat is dog. At first I thought that

It was a joke, but no, now it’s proven.

We hear a “woof woof,” we run out to

grab the dog to eat. There’s nothing. There

In Venezuela is the prime beef the dog?

Uh-huh. And Lula talking about eating prime beef here.

He eats prime beef?

Today I eat prime beef. A chicken… it’s a year

and a half of minimum wage to buy a chicken.

How do you manage?

If you are lucky you eat once a day. Just one. The

decision to choose a new president will belong

exclusively to the Venezuelan people. I do not want to

interfere in an internal matter of Venezuela.

But I cannot fail to give my testimony in

the name of the future of this country so dear to the

Brazilian people. One phrase sums up everything I feel:

Maduro as president is the Venezuela that Chávez dreamed of.

You spent your lives saying that Maduro was

a bad man. Many years. Many, many. I

did not become more radical. I just became more

mature. More mature. I just became more mature.

More mature.