Cuba, the dictatorship-in-chief that occupies and subjects Venezuela, must be incriminated and can no longer remain impune

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Two months after the opposition’s triumph at the 28-J presidential elections in Venezuela, the dictatorship’s fraud has failed and the regime has degraded their alleged victory to internal control actions through State-terrorism at the hands of occupation forces and a growing international isolation. Nicolas Maduro is defeated but the Cuban occupation forces -that subjects and represses with impunity- still remains intact and behooves us now to identify and incriminate it as the main enemy of Venezuelan peoples who fight for their freedom.

The first decision made by Hugo Chavez, when he assumed Venezuela’s presidency on 2 February of 1999, was to salvage Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba that was at that time agonizing in its so-called “special period,” an increasing state of progressive misery and a direct consequence of the disappearance of the former Soviet Union (USSR) that had maintained Cuba as its satellite, economic and military parasite, and had maintained Castroism throughout the Cold War. Fidel Castro had previously welcomed Chavez to Havana’s airport on 13 December of 1994, two years after the failed coup d’etat perpetrated by Chavez in Venezuela, and that was the beginning, unless they had met before the coup.

Chavez became the funding partner and visible leader of the Bolivarian Populist Movement that evolved as today’s 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- with Fidel Castro as an important contributor to its operational and intelligence system, and with Lula da Silva who, along with the Forum of Sao Paolo, had sustained the Cuban dictatorship from the time of the fall of the Berlin wall and disappearance of the USSR. It is possible that Chavez’s leadership had been a temporary manipulation of Castroism that included even Fidel Castro’s subordination to Chavez but, this fact alone determined the expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship in the Americas and its total control of Venezuela.

History proves that with the death of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela became a territory occupied and controlled by Cuba’s dictatorship who installed Nicolas Maduro as its operator to subject Venezuelan peoples. The death of Hugo Chavez was the determinant fact that yielded the control of Venezuela to Cuba and also granted Cuba the leadership of its group throughout Latin America.

Hugo Chavez’s death announced to have occurred on 5 March of 2013 was a questionable date and it appeared to have been manipulated, Chavez had allegedly died between the 28th and 30th of December of 2012 in Havana. The objective of the manipulation was due to the dispute over the inheritance of Venezuelan Castroism for Maduro and Venezuelan Chavism for Cabello. Cuba’s dictatorship settled the dispute by imposing its operator.

The most important fact of Chavez’s death, however, is who caused it and to whom it benefitted. The book “The Future Has Its History” by Henrique Salas Romer, in its chapter titled “The Invasion is Completed” page 283 and following includes the transcript of a dialogue between Cuba’s ambassador to Venezuela German Sanchez Otero and Raul Castro in which “they discuss what to do with Chavez … we have to see if it’s convenient to continue with Chavez at the helm or we have to make a slight change and look for someone closer, more in-line with the Cuban revolution…” Also adding with regards to Chavez “he has ideas that look somewhat like ours… but they are not the same… he believes he is the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar and we have our own revolution… there cannot be two leaders…”

Did the Cuban dictatorship kill Hugo Chavez? In any event, it is the beneficiary, because Castroism went from being the #2 to being in-command and to have total control of Venezuela and 21st Century Socialism, imposing its “docile and easy-to-handle Nicolas Maduro as its operator.” The most concrete evidence was seen at the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama, wherein Cuban dictator Raul Castro assumed Latin America’s leadership and the President of the United States recognized him as that and a few months later restored diplomatic relations with the dictatorship.

There is an abundance of proof; years’ worth of historical registries of international relations, internal control, oil supplies, direct and indirect resources, submission, replication of intelligence mechanisms, armed forces, penetration of Russia, China, and Iran, all using the Cuban dictatorship as facilitator, installed State-terrorism regulated and controlled by Cuban operators with an antiimperialist discourse and the same methodology of extortion with which Cuba, in order to protect itself, has moved the epicenter of discord to Venezuela. Criticism and discussion over the violation of human rights and crimes against humanity are no longer aimed at Cuba but to its main colony which is Venezuela.

In the chess game of the dictatorship’s assault on democracy in the Americas, Cuba has been able to direct any and all attacks to be against its pawns (Venezuela’s dictatorship) all while the king (Cuba’s dictatorship) is ignored and is not even part of the play who operates with impunity with the “plausible denial” which is “the capability of the leadership in a formal or informal chain of hierarchy to deny the knowledge , participation, or responsibility of any condemnable action or crime ordered to be committed by its subordinates.”

The clock is ticking against Nicolas Maduro who, by his own agenda, must transfer the presidency to President-Elect Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia on 10 January of 2025. Maduro, the puppet operator is defeated, but the Dictatorship-In-Chief remains intact; repressing, torturing, and assassinating in Venezuela, with the possibility of even dispensing of Maduro through a negotiation that will allow it to continue retaining power even after the government is transferred. This is about understanding that in Venezuela the oldest dictatorship in the Americas is coming to an end, this is why the challenge is colossal and it behooves all democracies of the region to be involved.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas