The OAS under attack of dictatorships and the urgent role of the United States

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The Cuban peoples’ peaceful demonstrations asking for freedom and the dictatorship’s response with crimes against humanity and state-sponsored terrorism, are being manipulated by the 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- with the creation of multiple conflicts. They are now executing an attack against the Organization of American States (OAS) proposing to substitute it, while they orchestrate an extensive plan to assassinate Secretary General Luis Almagro’s reputation. In this regard, it does not appear coincidental that the President of the United States had nominated its Ambassador at the OAS, due to the urgent role of defending democracy and the institutionalism that behooves it.

With the same intensity with which Cuba’s dictatorship commits crimes against the Cuban people, it has brought to the forefront the existence of its Castrochavist dictatorships’ system comprised by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, by Fernandez/Kirchner from Argentina and Lopez Obrador from Mexico, in an effort to place itself as the victim and in an attempt to legitimize as “political” the nature of is criminal dictatorship.

Beyond the traditional false claims against the United States and the worn-out story of the blockade, dictatorships of the 21st Century Socialism, unleash an attack against the OAS, whose “substitution by an agency that is no one’s lackey” has been proposed by Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador in his speech commemorating the 238th year of Liberator Simon Bolivar’s birth, this past Saturday 24 July in Mexico.

Castrochavism’s spokesperson has asked for “the substitution of the OAS by a new agency that includes all countries from Latin America and the Caribbean and settle conflicts between them”, all while at the same time they were celebrating in Mexico the “Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC in Spanish)” with which Castrochavism wants to replace the OAS. The dictatorships from Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have quickly endorsed the elimination of the OAS while their media and operators apply the assassination of Secretary Almagro’s reputation with despicable and false accusations.

From 2005 to 2015, Castrochavism took ownership of the OAS by controlling the votes of States that made up “Petrocaribe”, whom it subordinated -to say the least- with oil from Venezuela. In that decade, it established Mr. Insulza as Secretary General, ignoring, violating, and allowing the violation of human rights, the principles of the OAS, of Bogota’s Charter and of the Interamerican Democratic Charter.

Things changed with the election of Luis Almagro as Secretary General and with new democratic governments in the region who modified the internal correlation of the 35 votes belonging to the 35 member-States of the OAS. Almagro broke the OAS’ obfuscation with his reports on Venezuela, applying the Interamerican Democratic Charter, and started the path -that he is still on- to return the OAS to the fulfillment of its principles.

Cuba is the 36th State of the OAS, it was excluded in 1962 and on 3 June of 2009 its exclusion was rescinded. Cuba’s dictatorship has not wanted to be integrated into the Interamerican System, preferring to manipulate through dictatorships and governments under its control. Factually speaking, without being a member Cuba controlled the OAS in the decade from 2005 to 2015.

Dictatorships are not compatible with the Interamerican System that establishes “democracy as the right of the peoples” and determines the fundamental components of democracy, and -amongst others- identifies as crimes the acts of regimes similar to Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s. An OAS that fulfills its principles is a natural enemy of dictatorships, because it is responsible to ensure that there are no dictatorships.

Within this scenario of attacks against the OAS to coverup the crimes of Cuba’s dictatorship and those of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s (countries that all have repression, political persecutions, imprisonments, and exiles), the President of the U.S. has nominated Professor Frank O. Mora as U.S. Ambassador to the OAS who has promised to be “an administrator of United States’ values such as democracy and human rights in the hemisphere and beyond”.

The confirmation process will reiterate to Ambassador Mora the need to retake the leadership of the United States in the Interamerican System through the defense of democracy and human rights which means “the end of dictatorships”. Let us hope that Mora will be identified in the history books as the Ambassador to end Cuba’s dictatorship and along with it the disgrace of the Americas. Cuba’s peoples have already started, now it is only necessary to help it with clarity, opportunity, and without fear.

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

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.