Brazil Will Not Allow Foreign Countries Passage to Attack Venezuela

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil believes that a peaceful solution must be found for the Venezuelan crisis and says will not allow foreign countries to use its territory as a starting point to send military troops across the border in Venezuela, said the country’s Vice-President, General Hamilton Mourão, on Monday after the Lima Group meeting region in Bogota, Colombia.

“Brazil does not consider this at all,” Mourão told to Brazilian reporters. “You have to always remember that any presence of a foreign force in our country has to have authorization from the National Congress, the government cannot simply do this,” Mourão added.

Brazil, like the eleven other countries in the region, has recognized opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the interim president of Venezuela.

Although Mourão defends a peaceful solution to the conflict in Venezuela, Brazil’s VP said he supports financial and economic sanctions against the government of Nicolas Maduro.

The border between Venezuela and Brazil has been closed since last Thursday night by the Maduro government. Trucks carrying humanitarian aid, scheduled to cross the border on Saturday, returned to Brazil on Sunday without being able to deliver food and medicine to the Venezuelan population.

On Sunday night, the mayor of Santa Elena de Uairén travelled through a wooded area to reach the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima, where he asked for help and that at least twenty-five people had been killed and more than 80 wounded in Santa Elena.

According to local news approximately seventy Brazilians have sought refuge in the Brazilian consulate in Santa Elena de Uairén trying to cross the border back to Brazil.