The cause of hemispheric insecurity are the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Narcotics trafficking, forcible migrations, people’s insecurity, terrorism, social and economic crises, lack of sustainable development, political prisoners and exiles, internal clashes, the repositioning of antiimperialism and antisemitism, suppression of freedom of the press, penetration by China, Russia, and Iran, and many other hardships the peoples of the Americas endure today, are the effects caused by dictatorships of 21st Century Socialism or Castrochavism. The existence of a group of transnational organized crime regimes that controls Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua is the root cause of the insecurity crises in the region.

Through the Palermo Convention, the international legal order establishes -amongst other mandates- the definition of an “Organized Criminal Group” by stating “(a) Organized Criminal Group shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.”

To have the international representation of member States of the international community gives dictators the condition of legal subjects, with the same authorities and privileges of any other democratic head of State but with the difference that dictators use such condition to protect, promote, and legitimize crime. Proclaiming narcotics trafficking as an instrument of their antiimperialist fight, promoting the failure of the war on drugs, and requesting the legalization of hard drugs, using terrorism, and turning the perpetrators into victims, protecting the guerrillas, and presenting the assassins as fighters, condoning the forcible migrations these very same dictators cause and justifying them with the counterfeited narrative of poverty.

Dictatorships in the Americas are one sole body led by Cuba that has expanded, along with its system using State terrorism, and has converted Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as its satellites. They lost Ecuador when Rafael Correa was no longer in power, and now they attempt to destroy Colombia’s democracy where they have started to repeat its “constituent” agenda with a minority government but with control of the violence and crime. To ignore this factual reality or to try to disguise it, because of convenience or fear, is the greatest mistake of democratic leaders because it is equivalent to failing to identify the adversary and its capabilities thereby dooming the success of any strategy.

Dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua started out as the populist Bolivarian movement under the sponsorship of dictator Hugo Chávez -very opportunely deceased to enable Cuba’s leadership- all have as their political brand “21st Century Socialism” AKA “Castrochavism” along with other important operational mechanisms such as; “the Forum of Sao Paolo” and their common intent to re-create a political block with “the Puebla Group.” Their narrative is to present as leftist political movements all criminal events that range from the violent usurpation of power, State terrorism, persecutions, undue detentions, torture, uprooting, corruption, assassinations, conspiracies, kidnapping, extortions, narcotics’ trafficking, human trafficking, all sorts of financial crimes, crimes against freedom, and crimes against humanity.

The expansion of this criminal group is not bound to just have the indefinite control of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, it expands through mechanisms for the take-over of power using elections in countries with democracy. It sponsors candidates, indefinitely insisting and pressuring them, it invests extraordinary ill-gotten resources towards the destruction of the democratic leadership system and the assassination of reputations, it modifies the electoral rules and it wins elections, as it has happened; in Mexico with Lopez Obrador, in Chile with Boric, in Colombia with Petro, in Argentina with Fernandez/ Kirchner, and in Brazil with Lula. It is these “Para-Dictatorial Governments” who -although they are minority governments- place the foreign affairs of the countries they control and their internal resources at the service of dictatorships. Facts corroborate this.

Dictatorships and Para-Dictatorial Governments of 21st Century Socialism or Castrochavism, have the same foreign affairs policy of surrendering to the dictatorships from China, Russia, and Iran. While confronting democracies, they proclaim themselves as antiimperialist, attack Israel, and provide aid to, or bypass the criminal aspects of, Russia’s invasion into Ukraine. All Castrochavist dictatorial regimes and others they have influence over, have; great debt to China, surrendered their natural resources and territory to Russia, entered into accords and treaties with Iran, and a host of many other arrangements and more. Consistently, these secret or disguised decisions can be considered “high treason” that under democracy could not have had the approval or passed the scrutiny of public opinion, the rule of law, or the approval of any branch of the government.

The strategic expansion of the dictatorships from China, Russia, and Iran in the Americas, is the result of the absence of democracy in countries under the control of organized crime and the root cause and origin of hemispheric insecurity.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas