Poverty is a tool of twenty-first century socialism to oppress the peoples

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
March 19, 2025

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) While democratic societies along with their economic and political systems have freedom, welfare, and prosperity of their people as objectives, dictatorial regimes and any other type of authoritarianism use poverty as a mechanism to increase the citizenry’s dependence and control. Poverty, as shown by Cuba and Venezuela’s situation and the path Bolivia and Nicaragua have chosen to follow, is the tool of 21st Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, to oppress the peoples.

In democracy that -as a minimum- is founded on freedom, respect for human rights, equality before the law, separation, and independence of the branches of government, and accountability, sovereignty rests in the people and those who govern them are temporary mandataries and stewards responsible of improving the quality of life of their constituents. Any situation that is bad, hard to handle, or a crisis, points out to the loss of popular backing and emergent liabilities.

With the 1999 merger of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Luz Ignacio Lula da Silva, when Chavez ascended to the presidency of Venezuela, the expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship was disguised as populism, anti-imperialism, and a war against poverty. Political leaders, parties, and institutions of democracy were attacked for the lack of better results to favor the poor. The expansionists benefitted from the wealth and reserves built up in democracy and used Venezuela’s oil and wealth, the Lava Jato corruption scheme funded by Brazil, the excessive international borrowing of funds, and crime to dazzled everyone with their effectist actions that did not solve anything.

The developmentalism on which their narrative was founded in the first years of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA in Spanish) project, today known as 21st Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, was strengthened with the creation of a large number of new rich who, soon thereafter, exerted their influence on international finance. The bourgeoisie from 21st Century Socialism still remains unpunished in the shadows of millionaire fortunes that buy them mechanisms for their protection.

All of this “21st Century Socialism’s fight against poverty” process was strengthened with the operations they control as narco-States, narcotics’ trafficking, transnational organized crime, forcible migrations, human trafficking, and all sorts of crime, while the peoples’ situation was ever-closer to more poverty and loss of freedom.

Twenty-five years after the expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship was started, the result is the expansion of the hardships and poverty Castroism endured while in their “Special Period,” before Chavez’s rescue in 1999. They have expanded; poverty, corruption, crime, narcotics’ trafficking, and the hopelessness of countries they control, such as; Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua and of those countries they have influenced to their favor; Argentina with Kirchner, Brazil with Lula, Ecuador with Correa, Mexico with Lopez Obrador, and more. Cuba is, without a doubt, the epicenter and the greatest victim of these crimes that can be narrowed down to extreme poverty, total inequality between the peoples and the perpetrators who wield power.

Factual reality proves that without freedom there is no initiative, neither competition, nor a market, there is no expectation of earnings, there is no investments, without private property there is no development. The concentration of power only brings pilfering, abuse, crime, and corruption, and along with them it brings the destruction of the productive infrastructure, statism, and bankruptcy that takes the nation to more poverty. It was not enough for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) to succumb, it was necessary that -filled with the same and even worse flaws- a replica be birthed in Latin America as 21st Century Socialism.

What -in the world of freedom- we do not understand or takes us too long to do so, is that the objectives and tools of 21st Century Socialism and of non-democratic regimes are different to those in democracy. In a dictatorship it is about wielding power indefinitely with impunity and at any cost, reason why it becomes a priority for people to lose their freedom so they can be subjected to the control of the regime, meaning to lose their initiative, lose options to compete, lose their expectations, in summary for them to be poor or poorer than before. Dependency on the State must be generated.

As people grow poorer, they depend more on the centralized authority, on the authorizations, licenses, subsidies, distribution mechanisms, education, food, personal identification, all the way to their freedom of movement and travel. People will depend on the regime for just about their every need and will end up relying on the State to be able wo work, or if they work, if they eat and when and where they eat, or if they can enjoy freedom of movement and under what conditions, and much more. You only have to see the Cuba and Venezuela of today, and the path followed by Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Poverty is the dictatorships’ specialty. Whenever there are crises, electrical blackouts, lack of dollars, fuel, when there is no national production, there is neither food, nor ways to purchase them, and there is growing hopelessness in the population, this is the environment to oppress and to stay in power. Poverty is complemented by State-terrorism and they can indefinitely wield power with impunity.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday March 16, 2025