Total condemnation of Maduro, calls for unity and support for Trump: The Madrid Forum in Buenos Aires

The Madrid Forum met once again to bring together the Ibero-American conservative community. This time, it was held in Buenos Aires and featured Javier Milei as the keynote speaker. It was the first time that a sitting head of state took the podium at the event. The libertarian was joined by Santiago Abascal, Mark Klugmann and Mike Gonzalez, among many others. VOZ was present during the two days and even participated in the panels on Venezuela and Israel.

The Fundación Disenso, directed by Jorge Martín Frías, brought together 40 prominent speakers from more than 15 different countries. "The objectives of the meeting are to support the Venezuelan people and condemn the lukewarm response of the international community, as well as to recover the spaces of freedom taken away by the criminal left and the non-left in the Western world," the group said before the event on their website. In turn, the there was local collaboration by the Fundación Rioplatense de Estudios (FREE).

Mario Noya, editor-in-chief of VOZ, was one of the featured speakers on the panel addressing the situation in Israel, which was also moderated by Karina Mariani, editor for VOZ. In turn, Orlando Avendaño, also an editor for VOZ, participated in the panel that analyzed the possible outcomes of the situation in Venezuela. The event even showed one of the voting records from the Venezuelan election.

'The bad guys are united'

The opening words were given by Santiago Abascal, president of Vox, a Spanish political party. "The bad guys are united," he initially lamented, although this phrase would be taken up by many of the speakers throughout the two-day event.

"The Madrid Forum implies that we good guys are starting to be organized and united," he continued, and then remarked on the need to "take back all the spaces of freedom that have been taken away from us long ago."

Abascal wasted no time and quickly embraced the slogan, condemning Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Although he celebrated the "overwhelming" triumph of Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, he criticized "part of the international community" for "refusing" to recognize the results, thus emboldening the "tyrant."

Then, in front of a full auditorium, Argentina President Javier Milei took the stage. The libertarian received a standing ovation and spoke for more than an hour, during which he made his characteristic economic analyses, celebrated his administration and appealed to the "forces of heaven" to continue guiding his country.

"The noblest fight one can take up, the fight for freedom. ... We are committed to be the best government in history and with what we have done we already gave enough proof, we had indicators of a country at war. Having controlled inflation, the dollar, the deficit and attracted investments, we are doing it. But most of politics, journalism, civil associations and others cry out to the sky and call us murderers and cruel in the name of the poor and put sticks in the wheel so that everything explodes," added the president, who, of course, ended his speech with the characteristic cry: "Long live freedom, dammit!" 

In turn, he described the Maduro regime as a "murderous dictatorship" and affirmed that "for evil to triumph, it is enough for the righteous to do nothing."

'The Venezuelan dictatorship is an organized crime group'

One of the most outstanding panels was the one that analyzed the situation in Venezuela. In addition to VOZ Editor Orlando Avendaño, it was composed of Vladimir Petit and Alejandro Peña Esclusa and moderated by renowned Venezuelan host Nitu Pérez Osuna.

"This regime not only kills dissidents and kidnaps political leaders, but also kidnaps and tortures children. Why does it do it? Nicolás Maduro's regime is not a normal dictatorship. It does not operate with the stimuli to which authoritarian regimes normally react. It is a cartel, it is an organized crime group and it behaves like an organized crime group," explained Avendaño.

Petit then highlighted the importance of the alliance between Maduro and the Venezuelan military for the dictator to remain in power. However, he was optimistic about being able to return to his country, thanks to the fact that "in the battlefield there are people who neither bend nor surrender," referring to González Urrutia and Machado.

Lastly, Peña Esclusa explained in detail how the Venezuelan dictatorship exported the industry of fraud throughout Latin America. In turn, he criticized part of the international community for not doing more to wear down the Venezuelan dictatorship. "Lula is the creator of the Sao Paulo Forum with Fidel Castro. They, Petro and López Obrador, with the support of Josep Borrell in the European Union, are helping assure that Edmundo González is not recognized as president-elect of Venezuela," he added.

'Israel's common enemies'

Later it was time to talk about Israel, although specifically about the war between Israel and Hamas. After a brief introduction by Mariani, Ernesto Araujo, former Minister of Foreign Affairs under Jair Bolsonaro's administration in Brazil, was the first to take the floor.

"The Jewish people are once again suffering a crisis of democracy. The attack is on Israel, it is on the Jewish people and it is fundamentally on democracy," he said.

Klugmann made a historical analysis of the region, stressing the need to strengthen a "trilateral" alliance between Washington, D.C., Jerusalem and Latin America.

Then came the turn of Mario Noya, who tried to find an answer to the following question: Why is Israel hated? "Antisemitism and phobia towards the State of Israel are irrational. It is hated because it is a state that defends itself, that places importance on its identity. ... It is also hated because, being the first socialist experiment that was successful, they didn't kill people. The Soviet Union was made to look criminally unnecessary," he explained.

The dangers of 'lawfare'

Here the featured speaker was Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Speaking fluent Spanish, he analyzed Donald Trump's judicial situation in the United States.

"The Harris-Biden administration has begun to employ attacks against conservatives because Trump is winning in most of the decisive states. I never thought this would happen in the United States," he explained.

"This has to stop. This cannot continue to be the normal. It is a 'lawfare' against the rule of law," he added.

The declaration of the Third Regional Meeting of Madrid Forum

Santiago Abascal was in charge of closing the event with the reading of the "Declaration of Rio de la Plata," which had the following points:

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