The end of playing both sides for para-dictatorial governments from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
January 27, 2025

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Para-Dictatorial are those “democratic governments who serve organized crime’s dictatorships, sustain them, seek to legitimize them, ignore their international obligations, betray, and hinder their national interests.” These are the presidents from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras, who have placed government, country, foreign policy, and internal resources at the service of dictatorships who, under the command of Cuba, subject the peoples from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. The foreign policy of the United States, with Trump 47, forebodes the end of playing both sides; to reap benefits as democracies, while they serve crime.

Twenty-First Century Socialism, with a label of being “anti-imperialism,” a populist narrative, the use of State-terrorism with political prisoners, with narcotics’ trafficking, forcible migrations, common crime, human trafficking, political destabilization, attacks against the principles and values of freedom, and many other forms of “hybrid warfare,” sustainably and relentlessly attacks Americas’ democracies. Dictatorships of 21st Century Socialism, attack, invade, and threaten the entire region backed by para-dictatorial democratic governments whose presidents they have taken to power so that they function as its satellites.

We need to reiterate that hybrid warfare is “the strategy in which all types of conventional, or irregular forces, means, or procedures, are used (insurgence, terrorism, migration, common crime, narcotics’ trafficking, cybernetic crimes…).” It is “a new type of warfare that considers asymmetric warfare as obsolete (regular army against an insurgent force),” and that it has “the advantage that the aggressor can avoid being identified as the attacker.”

The current objective reality and the historic reality of the past few years show that the stability of democratic countries of the Americas has been, and continues to be, attacked with forcible migrations, narcotics’ trafficking, transnational common and organized crime, human trafficking, internal destabilization, assassination of democratic leaders’ reputation, physical assassinations, terrorism, and a system aimed at weakening the principles and values founded on human rights and basic individual freedoms.

The most important victim is the United States but other countries such as; Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Panama, Paraguay, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, truthfully all democratic countries of the Americas, have suffered and endure the consequences of forcible migrations caused and manipulated by dictatorships of 21st Century Socialism, of narcotics’ trafficking operated the narco-States of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, of the penetration of criminal organizations who are the operative instruments of this system of permanent destabilization that functions with the complicity of para-dictatorials.

Organized crime that controls Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, uses the sovereignty of international representation and politics to destroy democracies. In its attacks -through elections in democratic countries- it seeks, and is able to form governments under its control, sponsoring and promoting candidates who -once in power- turn the country into a para-dictatorial State. This is the case of Lopez Obrador and now his successor Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Xiomara Castro in Honduras. This would have been the case of Gabriel Boric from Chile who has now detached himself.

Para-dictatorial governments “advocate” and benefit from the entire democratic system and from within it sustain dictatorships, this is how they play both sides. Clearly seen by the position of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras, in regard to the result of the Venezuelan elections, and their backing to the occupation and invasion -along with all fraud and crimes that played into it- that Nicolas Maduro, as the spearhead of 21st Century Socialism, perpetrates under the command of Cuba’s dictatorship.

In the economy and commercial’s realm, they benefit from the whole democratic system of free trade while they sustain criminal groups implicated with dictatorships, such as; the National Liberation Army (ELN ) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), drug cartels from Mexico who control States from that country as narco-States; they disguise and sponsor China, Russia, and Iran’s operations; back Russia’s invasion to Ukraine; they condemn Israel’s self-defense against terrorism; attack the international economy system and propose worldwide alliances with dictatorships, as Lula has done; or break extradition treaties to protect narcotics’ traffickers as Castro in Honduras.

Para-dictatorial governments have the United States as their market and participate in hybrid warfare attack operations. Mexico, for example, welcomed with military honors and decorated Cuba’s dictator Diaz-Canel and also protected Nicolas Maduro instead of executing an international arrest warrant against him. Mexico also protected Evo Morales extracting him from Bolivia to avoid his arrest. Para-dictatorial governments contract with Cuba’s Castroist dictatorship to hire enslaved personnel and coverup Daniel Ortega’s crimes, giving this dictator the condition of a legitimate government…

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday January 26, 2025