Carlos Sanchez Berzain Abogado | Estadista | Político | Politólogo
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
February 21, 2025
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Organized crime cannot coexist with the citizenry’s security and prosperity because their business is to attack and destroy them. When organized crime controls States, it subjects the peoples with their narrative of “revolution” and assumes international representation as in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. The resulting crisis of security and freedom is permanent because democratic governments from the Americas coexist with dictatorships and by being its victims they become their attacker’s backers.
It is not possible to explain the existence of Cuba’s dictatorship for over 66 years, that of Venezuela’s for 25 years, of Bolivia since 2006, of Nicaragua since 2007 in its second stage, without a solid network of sympathy, complicity, accommodations, arrangements, pressures, businesses, lobbies, concessions, and all types of mechanisms that can be whittled down to be plain coexistence, meaning to coexist, cohabitate with 21st Century Socialism, ergo with organized crime.
The history of the Americas in this century is branded by the existence of several dictatorships of 21st Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, that expanded starting from Cuba in 1999, when Hugo Chavez assumed Venezuela’s presidency and the “antiimperialist populism” was able to control the whole Latin American region, including the Organization of American States (OAS) with Insulza. Cuban Castroism expanded as Castrochavism under the command of Chavez until his death when its control passed to the Cuban regime that converted Venezuela as its main satellite. This leadership enabled the Dictatorship-In-Chief to restore diplomatic relations with the United States, while it heightened a “hybrid war” against it.
The paradigms of freedom, human rights, democracy, fight against the trafficking of narcotics, sustainable development, fight against poverty and inequality, free market, treaties of free trade, and others -agreed upon at the First Summit of the Americas in 1994- were supplanted by the antiimperialist populism that, initially with Venezuelan oil monies and thereafter with monies of the narco-States and crime -that included the Lava Jato huge operation- took over Latin American democracies, subordinating them and in some cases destroying them.
Twenty-five years after the rescue and beginning of the expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship, there are three recognized dictatorships in the Americas, these are; Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and one covert dictatorship which is Bolivia. All four dictatorships are an organization of Transnational Organized Crime and wield power with State-terrorism, political prisoners, exiles, assassinations, impunity, corruption, the total concentration of power, the existence of functional oppositions, manipulation of the judicial branch to repress. All are launching bases for China, Russia, and Iran, attack the State of Israel, and back terrorism, they are also narco-States, are “antiimperialist,” and coexist with democracies of the Americas.
Twenty-First Century Socialism uses the democratic system as the mechanism for the destruction of democracy through the financing of campaigns, destruction of political leaders and organizations, the assassination of the leaders’ reputation, the physical assassination and a long list of crime that enables them “to win elections.” This is how they impose “para-dictatorial governments” that today are the governments from; Brazil with Lula da Silva, Mexico with Sheinbaum, Colombia with Petro, and Honduras with X, Castro.
Countries that remain democratic and do not have a para-dictatorial government are under a constant threat of violence, terrorism, common crime, narcotics’ trafficking, and attacks or campaigns to discredit their leaders, and different forms of a “hybrid warfare” that includes the diplomacy of terror -that was at first well-funded by Venezuelan oil monies- and now shows an overabundance of available resources.
The greatest attacks against Americas’ democracies have been, and continue to be, narcotics’ trafficking of cocaine now aggravated by fentanyl, forcible migrations, human trafficking, the expansion of Transnational Organized Crime with gangs such as Tren de Aragua, the thugs’ participation in local politics with phony resources, control of the news media, cybernetic attacks, and more. The most notable victim is the United States, but also Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and all countries of the Americas where, in this century, the prevalence and consumption of drugs have exponentially multiplied and poverty and the citizenry’s insecurity have grown.
These attacks come from the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua because all four are narco-States and allies of China who is the main producer of fentanyl. Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are also the greater ejectors of migrants due to the fear instilled in them, but beyond that they are also stepping stones for the extra-continental migration. The role of the para-dictatorial government of Mexico since Lopez Obrador has been the open attack through narcotics trafficking and the facilitation of forcible migrations.
A long, detailed listing of attacks by dictatorships against democracies can be found in books, reports, academic, security, and intelligence organizations’ analyses. The coexistence of democracies with organized crime must end and a beginning is to end the existence of dictatorships, because anything other than that will only fix the symptoms and not the cause.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.
Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas
Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday February 16, 2025