Carlos Sanchez Berzain Abogado | Estadista | Político | Politólogo
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
February 27, 2019
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The first two decades of the 21st century in the Americas stand out by the irruption, apex, and fall of dictatorships that sprang up as a result of Cuba’s Castroist expansion with Venezuela’s resources gifted by Hugo Chavez, birthing the “Castroist Chavist” system. After controlling practically the entire region, this system now oppresses Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. These dictatorships are in a crisis and have been identified as “Transnational Organized Crime’s dictatorships” that agonize and commit more crime like what Maduro did with his crazed aggression against international humanitarian aid, showing to the world they are criminals and that the peoples’ famine and misery is their business.
Historically, the 20 years of Castroist Chavist intervention in the Americas is a brief period, but from a perspective of human suffering, institutional and economic damage, it is a long and extreme period. The basic element of Castroist Chavist dictatorships is the supplanting of policies and politics by crime as a “group of Transnational Organized Crime”. Everything done by Castroist Chavist governments constitutes a crime, nothing is political. Its control over the States and political positions they have is a major façade of the most important and unprecedented criminal organization known to date.
The dictatorial expansion that started with the squandering of Venezuela’s wealth, was reinforced by an unprecedented transnational corruption scheme promoted and executed from the “Forum of Sao Paolo” –another Castroist tool in the region- with Lula da Silva today a convict serving two penal sentences, that has left behind as reminders the “lava jato” scandal and the Odebrecht construction company that sucked in another 15 construction companies to participate in this Organized Crime’s operation.
One other source of Castroist Chavist’s revenue is narcotics’ trafficking that now has Venezuela with Chavez and Maduro, and Bolivia with Evo Morales, identified as narco-states, plus a vast money and asset laundering network. The Cuban dictatorship’s involvement with narcotics’ trafficking goes back to at least the time of the proven relationship it had with the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, a guest of Fidel Castro that, culminated with the death by a firing squad of General Ochoa, as an escape goat to conceal the dictator’s involvement.
The installation, incentives and support of international terrorism to keep busy and manipulate the will of democratic governments, adding others to the Castroist operations, such as the FARC, ELN, or MRTK, and the opening to Islamic terrorist groups in the Americas is another of the very lucrative criminal actions of the Castroist Chavist system, proven by the political use of their controlled states, in actions with the appearance of new international policies, with the creation of the “ALBA’s Anti-Imperialist Military School” in Bolivia, with its declared antagonism against the State of Israel and so forth.
The local corruption, that of contracts, overprizing, projects that are fully paid for but are never done, that of those businesses that result from the Government’s control of the economy, or of permits to devastate forests and the wildlife therein, or the mineral exploitation, or importation permits, or that of extortion and the seizure of communications’ enterprises and media, the businesses resulting from the crisis and misery due to the lack of food and medicine, to sum it up, the crime that thrives due to the absence of the Rule of Law and results from all power resting in the hands of the Castroist Chavist system, encompass just about all crime known to mankind.
So, as not to doubt of the criminal nature of the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, we have to add the theft of the Venezuelan wealth to the transnational corruption, to narcotics’ trafficking, to the laundering of assets and money, to international terrorism, to the local corruption, to the crimes against freedom, human rights, and to the crimes against humanity. Undue detentions, torture, fraudulent prosecutions, manipulation of the judicial to persecute and to cover up the crimes of the dictator and his accomplices, assassinations, bloody massacres, genocide, forced mass migrations, exile, assassination of reputations, and more crimes publicly proven and documented by the communications ‘media.
This brief summary shows the nature of the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia –orchestrated by Cuba- and can help to better understand the reason and actions, typically Castroist, of dictator Maduro who attacked and will continue to attack humanitarian aid. These regimes “are criminal, the peoples’ famine and misery is their business”.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director, Interamerican Institute for Democracy.
Published in Spanish by Infobae.com on Sunday, February 24th, 2019
Translated from Spanish by, Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.