The defense of democracy starts with the ending of dictatorships

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The Americas are enduring migratory crises, narcotics’ trafficking, public insecurity, destabilization of governments and democratic institutions, manipulation of educational systems, an onslaught against freedom and human rights, and a long litany of attacks that produce social and economic crises and, through it all, there are reactions to only mitigate the symptoms. The root cause of this process of destabilizations and crises rests in the non-democratic regimes who cause them and use them to further their objectives. The defense of democracy and the peoples starts with the ending of dictatorships.

Factual reality proves that in the Americas the migratory crises that democratic countries endure are caused by humanitarian crises caused by the dictatorships from Cuba and Venezuela. Facts also prove that; the onslaught of narcotics’ trafficking is executed and sustained by the dictatorships of the narco-States in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua; the permanent destabilization and conspiracy efforts against democratic governments come from those same dictatorships as a system of transnational organized crime; the permanent conspiracy against economic and social stability in the region is orchestrated and operated by Castrochavist dictatorships exacerbating conflicts and conducting confrontations.

Using their international representation, dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, who subordinate the para-dictatorial governments of Brazil, México, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, attack international peace and security, backing -directly or through their abstentions- Russia’s invasion to Ukraine and the forming of a worldwide block against democracy that was activated by Lula da Silva. They also do it by promoting a fake narrative of them executing a war against narcotics’ trafficking and through the impunity they grant to known criminals who they promote in elections.

Over the years in this century, 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships have taken an active initiative -generally criminal or in violation of human rights- that produce migratory, narcotics’ trafficking, public insecurity, social and economic crises. To deal with these crises they are facing, democratic governments are only reactive, seeking ways to mitigate the symptoms rather than taking initiatives against the root causes. Up to now, dictatorships take a strategic advantage of democratic governments’ absolute lack of identification of who or what the enemy is and of the absence of foreign policies for the fulfillment of their national and international obligations.

To be solely reactive and be trapped in the dictatorships’ ambush, to place everyone at risk to endure crises and to blame democracy, are ways that ultimately help the dictatorial regimes from Cuba and Venezuela. The tolerance shown to the regimes from Bolivia and Nicaragua, helping them in the hope that migration will be mitigated or that some political prisoners will be released, or a promise for peoples’ freedom will be extended, or fallaciously thinking that in the next elections -under a dictatorship- things can change, are all synonymous to helping dictatorships.

Setbacks that dictatorships have had in their process of growth -which is the same as of destabilization and destruction of free societies- can be attributed to isolated factors such as; freedom of the press that made public the Lava Jato scandal of transnational corruption, something that -up to now- has gone unpunished in most of the countries involved; legal rulings by independent judges who sentenced criminals wielding power but were unable to execute those sentences because of annulments or cover-up; designations but not recovery as narco-States; failed attempts to transition towards democracy in Bolivia and Venezuela due to the subjection of those who instead of effecting such transition were part of the dictatorial continuity.

The final objective result is less democracy and more dictators and dictatorships. More impunity and loss of credibility of freedom’s principles and values, more narco-States and narcotics’ trafficking with direct attacks against democratic societies, more crises in the economies of democratic countries due to the cost of migratory and criminal pressures promoted by dictatorships, growing impossibility of good governance under democracy without a progressive subjection to the dictatorships’ criminal conditionalities.

There is no way freedom and democracy will survive if their leaders fail to identify the enemy clearly and objectively and take steps to end the attacks and neutralize the attacker. To be mindful of only the consequences and not the root causes, only aggravates the situation. This is about understanding that the defense of freedom and democracy starts with the ending of dictatorships as a strategy, objective, and fulfillment of obligations mandated by each democratic country’s constitution, the Interamerican Democratic Charter, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Statute of Rome, the Palermo Convention, and more.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas