End Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s dictatorships this year 2023

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy)The year 2023 is here and in the Americas; Cuba’s dictatorship is 64-years old; Venezuela’s is 24-years old; Bolivia’s is 17-years old; and Nicaragua’s is 16-years old. All of these dictatorships ruling over narco-States under the leadership of Cuba, replicating its system that includes State-terrorism, political prisoners and exiles, misery, the institutionalized violation of human rights and impunity. They are a threat against all countries of the region where they expand as 21st Century Socialism with ill-gotten moneys, coups d’état, electoral fraud, terrorism, forced migration and narcotics’ trafficking. To end these dictatorships must be the indispensable objective of democracy in 2023.

Castrochavism’s dictatorships must end as the peoples fight for their freedom and, through civil resistance, clamor for them to end. To end Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s dictatorships is not only possible, but is also necessary and urgent. It is an obligation of all democratic States, governments, and leadership from throughout the world in accordance with the charters of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Interamerican Democratic charter, the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights, or the Covenant of San Jose, the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime or the Palermo Convention, the International Penal Court’s Statute of Rome, and more.

In order to indefinitely wield power, dictatorships pursue the internal control of their States that can be best summarized as: 1. “State terrorism” consisting of “the commission of crime by the government to instill fear in the population so it assumes behaviors that would otherwise not be possible.” 2. The creation and sustainment of groups of collaborators, to whom they financially reward to simulate the existence of opposition, thus birthing the “functional opposition” that simulates democracy but does what the “vote-catching dictatorship” orders them to do. 3. A narrative that counterfeits the reality and presents organized crime as a political effort in its “anti-imperialism” fight. 4. The unlimited enrichment of the regime’s members through their management of the “narco-State”, corruption, and crime. 5. The guarantee of “impunity” that is granted by the four previously mentioned components.

State-terrorism is implemented with the total control of the branches of government that continue to exist but are manipulated at whim. The so-called Legislative Branch passes legislation with “despicable laws” that violate human rights instead of protecting them, decrees amnesty to grant impunity and criminalizes basic individual rights and freedoms. The so-called Judicial Branch is the principal means for repression and persecution that, falsifies accusations, violates the basic legal principles of “due-process, impartial judgement, and presumption of innocence” and more. Castrochavism calls “judges and judgements” the executioners and the proceedings that are the lynching of innocents.

The functional opposition seeks to give legitimacy and lawfulness to the Transnational Organized Crime dictatorships of the 21st century. They are individuals and/or groups who assume the identity of social movements or political parties to falsify the reality. The opposition is a basic component of democracy as “a control and limitation factor of sworn governments and who have the alternative of being elected to the government.” This is why a “functional opposition” is a fake opposition because is part of the dictatorial narrative, part of the guarantee of impunity and because it will never have a chance to be elected to the government because it is part of the “vote-catching dictatorship” in which people vote but do not elect.

Surprisingly, the anti-imperialist discourse continues to work, even though dictatorships’ high-ranking officials, their families, and beneficiaries enjoy in the United States the financial results of their crimes against humanity, as proven in the case involving the daughter of dictator Hugo Chavez, relatives of the Castro’s and other cases linked to the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.

At the international level, similar control elements are at work. Fear, economic interests, private profitable businesses under the shadow of governments, the relationships of impunity, financing of electoral campaigns, the effects of the trans nationalization of organized crime and its influence over democratic systems, parliaments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), international organizations and governments. All of these are the main international pillars sustaining dictatorial regimes.

The world’s democratic leaders can no longer continue to dismiss their “international legal obligations” of: 1. Bringing to light the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as Transnational Organized Crime’s systems and the greatest threat against international peace and security. 2. Backing the peoples’ civil resistance by applying existing legal standards that enable to treat the peoples as subjects of international law and to treat those wielding power as “transnational organized crime” operators who are masked by “sovereign impunity.” 3. Implement disabling collective sanctions. 4. Capture and prosecute organized crime dictators applying the Palermo Convention and executing existing warrants for their arrest.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas