Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 2000s. This group included, among others, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Kirchner has been an unconditional supporter of Chávez and Maduro. As Paraguay rejected the incorporation of Venezuela into the Mercosur trade bloc, she took advantage of the impeachment of Fernando Lugo to claim that Paraguay had suffered a coup d'état and proposed to temporarily remove the country from the bloc. With the support of the other presidents, Paraguay was removed
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for a time, and Venezuela was incorporated into the Mercosur. She maintained her support of Venezuela even during the large 2014 Venezuela protests and the imprisonment of its leader, Leopoldo López. Kirchner had a rocky relationship with the United States. Several items from a US air force plane, such as drugs and GPS devices, were seized by Argentine officials, which caused a diplomatic crisis. US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said that they were standard tools used in counter-terrorism tactics which were being taught to the Argentine police during the joint operation, and asked for the return of the