The serious breach of obligations with freedom and democracy in 2023 predicts the agenda for 2024

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The First Global War, started with Russia’s invasion to Ukraine, was escalated by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel and the line of confrontation of dictatorship against democracy, crime against freedom, reverberated globally. In the Americas, 21st Century Socialism dictatorships, part of the attacks and terrorism, incremented the violation of human rights with its system of State-terrorism but was not able to avoid its sustained course of decline slowed only by tolerant democratic leaderships that incurred in the serious breach of their obligations with freedom and democracy in 2023 that predicts the agenda for 2024.

What we saw in 2023 leaves no doubt of the global confrontation of crime against freedom. Crime is used by dictatorships who wield power with “State-terrorism” committed from and by governments to instill fear in the populations they subject. Crime, committed by these governments, is used to conduct, protect, and justify narcotics’ trafficking, international terrorism, forced migrations, human trafficking, assassinations, and all other sorts of crime they pretend to present and soften with political narratives; crime with which criminal groups wield power since over 65 years ago in Cuba, 25 years in Venezuela, 20 years in Bolivia, and nearly 40 years in Nicaragua.

Civilizations are sustained by a universal lawful order based on the respect and protection of the rights of every human being; life, freedom, and security, not being subjected neither into slavery, nor servitude, nor torture, nor cruel punishment or treatment. To have the right to due legal process, equality before the law, not to be arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, uprooted, or exiled, to have freedom of movement, freedom of speech, to have the right to own private property, and more.

The worldwide lawful order is obligatory and is expressed in the United Nations charter, in treaties of regional institutions as the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU), the Organization of African States, and others, and in Charters, or Conventions on specific matters as in the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IDC), the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime or the Palermo Convention, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Interamerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (ITRA) or in treaties of specialized institutions, and in hundreds more that are produced by national constitutions.

The 21st century phenomenon is that organized crime has expanded in the take-over of governments and its assumption of political power. The Americas have gone from having one dictatorship in 1999 -Cuba- to currently having four dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua) and four “Para-Dictatorial” governments (Mexico/Lopez Obrador, Chile/Boric, Colombia/Petro, and Brazil/Lula da Silva. States and leaders of democracy, instead of stopping the expansion and the presence of organized crime in the political power of governments, have granted it recognition.

The coexistence and equalitarian relation of democracy with organized crime’s dictatorships is a flagrant violation of the legal, humanitarian, and political principles of civilization. To equally treat the fulfillment of the obligations to respect life, freedom, private property ownership, the right to pursue happiness, with those who assassinate, torture, persecute, imprison, exile, rob, traffic and subject people, is tantamount to violating national and international laws that Heads of State, Heads of Government are obliged to meet and respect in countries with democracy.

Regrettably, this is exactly what has happened in 2023 in the Americas; dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have operated as normal subjects and their criminal groups made up by dictators, operators, judges, and pseudo-legislators, have been treated as mandataries of the popular power they have usurped. Promoted by the “Para-Dictatorial” governments of Lula, manipulating the governmental power in Brazil and of Lopez Obrador misusing that of Mexico, they have convened summits and other events to present as normal the criminal dictators of the region, to obtain funds and give them sustainability.

Dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, despite the fact they are a single transnational unit dubbed 21st Century Socialism – or Castrochavism- and are integrated in the international aggression and terrorism by dictatorships from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, are neither viable nor sustainable, are condemned to disappear and traverse in their agony at the expense of the blood, misery, and violation of human rights of the people. Castrochavist dictatorships are falling because they do not have an economy, they have popular repudiation, have lost their narrative of false revolutions, and are out of options.

This past year 2023, has been a year of defeat for the Castrochavist dictatorships. They lost the Para-Dictatorial government of Fernandez/Kirchner in Argentina; despite assassinating Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador they could not restore Correa’s regime, they could not penetrate into Paraguay and Uruguay, they lost to Peru’s democracy after Castillo’s coup and the violence from Bolivia in December of 2022; the true opposition of Venezuela elected Maria Corina Machado as its only candidate with a 92.5% backing; Petro’s crimes of high treason in Colombia were publicly revealed, Cuba’s dictatorship was declared guilty by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the assassination of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero; Nicaragua’s dictatorship fled away from the OAS confirming its crimes; the Constitutional Tribunal of Bolivia’s dictatorship did not have any option but to disqualify Evo Morales.

The security and normalcy of Americas’ democratic countries hinges on the liberation of the Cuban peoples that in-turn will bring the liberation of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and the disappearance of Para-Dictatorial governments. The only thing missing is for democratic leaders and governments to meet and fulfill their legal, humanitarian, and political obligations so that “… man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression…” as is mandated in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The serious breach of these obligations predicts the agenda for 2024.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas