The loss of freedom and democracy is the root cause for economic crises

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
May 6, 2025

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Dictatorships from Cuba and Venezuela have taken their peoples to misery, the one from Bolivia continues to be in an irreversible crisis heading that way, and the one from Nicaragua -following that same path- still covers up poverty with developmentalism. For brief periods dictatorships can present the illusion of improving the lives of the people, but the outcomes are always of scarcity and hardship for the people, and an illicit enrichment for those wielding governmental power. When freedom is suppressed violating human rights, democracy disappears and crises and misery are the unavoidable consequences.

The so-called “crises” of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are not an economic problem, or a case of an “economic model” gone wrong, they are a problem of the absence of freedom and democracy. They are crises of human rights disguised as political crises, discussed as economic crises, dealt with antiimperialist narratives, and planted as humanitarian crises.

The origin of these crises is the concentration of power, the absence of control mechanisms, the inexistence of checks and balances because of the absence of separation and independence of the branches of government, the ending of the rule of law and its substitution with the dictatorship’s despicable laws. These crises are originated due to the absence of freedom of speech, the control and manipulation of public opinion, the existing repression and imprisonment or exile of the people, the indefinite permanence in power and the impunity taunted by government officials, amongst other catastrophic elements best summarized as “the loss of freedom and the violation of human rights.”

We all accept that an economic model is “a process formulated by a government to organize its economic activity.” In this sense, we can further summarize three great economic models: “The one consisting of a directed economy in which the State intervenes to regulate specific activities; the liberal model through which the State trusts the market’s capacity to regulate activities by itself; the mixed model that combines the previous two models.” Each of the three models, however, must be based on conditions of freedom and respect for human rights. When these elements of democracy do not exist, they give way to a “dictatorial model” featuring centralism, secrets, repression, falsification, corruption, crime, impunity, and every possible way to suppress freedom.

Dictatorships have as a purpose to pauperize and take to misery the peoples because -by doing so- they can subject them. By impoverishing the people and taking them to extreme misery they generate a dependency on the governmental power wielded by dictators and ensure their indefinite permanence, dictators are then able to control everything from food, employment, family, freedom, and the very life of every individual. Under a dictatorship, the citizenry is turned into subjects, then serfs, and ultimately into slaves.

How can we solve the crisis that the Cuban nation suffers? How to exit from the crisis that the Venezuelan nation lives under? How can we revert the crisis the Bolivian peoples are victims of? In what ways can we avoid the worsening of conditions of the Nicaraguan peoples? Anyone who offers “economic measures, emergency plans, adjustments or changes to the model” are deceiving the people’s expectations because they are proposing to address only the symptoms while tolerating the dictatorship’s agenda without any intention for, and possibility of, a solution.

The peoples’ crises under a dictatorship can only be solved by attacking the root cause, that is by attacking the dictatorship itself, something that must end for democracy to return. The ultimate issue is freedom. The crises produced by dictatorships can only be solved by recovering freedom for the peoples, restoring the validity of human rights, restoring the essential components of democracy. There is no “developmental plan” possible without democracy.

Dictatorships counterfeit information, they have no institutions, and they are bankrupt. It is not possible to even know the amounts of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, or Nicaragua’s foreign or internal debt. They have ended free initiatives and subject or mediatize private property, they punish private businesses, and they repress transparency. In order to hide their illicit enrichment and rampant corruption they repress and kill people, they built narco-States, and direct Transnational Organized Crime from the seat of government.

*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday May 4, 2025