President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during a 2024 meeting with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert / PR.
Guacamaya, December 17, 2025. Brazil and Mexico, through their respective presidents, have reiterated their interest in mediating the growing tensions between the United States and Venezuela. The leaders stressed on Thursday their willingness to help seek peaceful solutions to avoid an armed conflict in the region, especially after Washington’s announcement of a naval blockade against Caracas and threats of military action on Venezuelan territory.
During a press conference in Brasília, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva emphasized his role as mediator. “I do politics by seeking solutions to problems,” said the president, after confirming recent conversations with Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro to promote a “diplomatic agreement and not a fratricidal war.”
Lula questioned the reasons behind the escalation—“I don’t know if it’s about oil, critical minerals (…) or to topple Maduro”—but underlined that “things are not solved with gunfire” but through dialogue. The Brazilian head of state recalled that he spoke with both leaders in early December and even proposed resuming contact with Trump to prevent an increase in hostilities in the region.
Meanwhile, from Mexico City, President Claudia Sheinbaum offered to convene American and other countries to seek a “peaceful solution” to the crisis. “We do not agree with interventions (…) and we are in favor of the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” she said during her morning press conference. She added that this “goes beyond Maduro’s government,” which she described as “another matter.”
Sheinbaum invoked the Mexican Constitution and United Nations mechanisms in rejecting “interventionism and interference,” though she clarified that she has not received formal requests to mediate. The Mexican president had already shared this position a day earlier, urging the UN to prevent “bloodshed” in the region.
Petro Shifts Tone but Maintains Rejection of “Interference”
On Wednesday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro for the first time referred to Nicolás Maduro as a “dictator” in posts on X (formerly Twitter), marking distance from the Venezuelan leader. “Maduro is a dictator for concentrating powers,” he wrote in response to a journalist. “You call someone a dictator when they steal elections,” Petro later added, having questioned Maduro’s legitimacy since July 2024.
Petro even invited opposition leader María Corina Machado to “physically come to Colombia to freely deliver her lecture” regarding her planned participation at the Hay Festival in Cartagena de Indias. “She could get on stage and dance a good vallenato, or a cumbia, or a porro pelayero, and talk with me about Caribbean peace and not invasions,” he concluded.
In recent days, Donald Trump has intensified his rhetoric against Venezuela, ordering a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned tankers” entering and leaving the country. Today he also stated that he does not need Congress’s permission for attacks against drug cartels on Venezuelan territory, amid a military deployment in the Caribbean that includes bombings of narco boats, leaving nearly a hundred dead.
