Twelve certainties to understand 2022

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Calendar year 2022 has started and is vital for the survival of the peoples and the continued existence of democracy to understand what is happening. To understand means “to have a clear idea of things, to perfectly know something, to know”. As we start the third year of the third decade of the 21st century, the factual reality shows us things and facts overwhelmingly clear, truths, certainties notoriously known. Let’s remember -from a descriptive, yet not all inclusive- perspective that:

1. In the 21st century, there are two Americas; the democratic one and the dictatorial other. The axis of their confrontation is; democracy/dictatorship and not right/left. Their confrontation is not ideological but existential.

2. Democracy in the Americas is “the peoples’ right” that “governments have the obligation to promote and to defend”. It is defined by the Interamerican Democratic Charter that is a “founding treaty” that identifies the “essential components of democracy to be: Respect for human rights and basic individual freedoms, access to governmental power and discharging its duties subject to the rule of law, the conducting of periodic, free and fair elections based on universal and secret suffrage concepts as an expression of the people’s sovereignty, the existence of a plurality of political parties and organizations, and the separation and Independence of the branches of government”.

3. Just because international law is not complied with, such as in the case of the Interamerican Democratic Charter, that does not invalidate such law. What this does, however, is to place in evidence those who violate it, and clearly identifies dictatorial regimes.

4. Democracy is the exercise of politics and dictatorships are transnational organized crime that should no longer be seen as political because they have institutionalized crime to indefinitely hold the government’s power with impunity. Dictatorships are narco-States who hold power through State-sponsored terrorism and sponsor international terrorism.

5. The dictatorial America is led by Cuba and is the re-creation of 20th Century Castroism turned into 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- an expansion of the 63 years old dictatorship that controls Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua along with the subjugation of the current governments from Mexico with Lopez Obrador, Argentina with Kirchner, and Peru with Castillo.

6. While the democratic America acts disorganized and confronted, Castrochavism has Unity-of-Command, unlimited financial resources, open and internationally coordinated operations coordinated by the Cuban G-2, the Forum of Sao Paolo and the Group of Puebla.

7. The structure of 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships is based on the destruction of the “Republic” and of the “Nation”, the “multiplication of the axis of confrontation” with Constituent Assemblies, despicable laws (that violate human rights) and the supplantation of democratic institutions replicating the methodology of the Cuban dictatorship.

8. They build “vote-catching dictatorships” in which “people vote but do not elect” and through the commission of serious crime and electoral fraud they demand and act with a false international legitimacy. They establish a “functional opposition” and turn it into a “hostage” that they use to sustain themselves thus blocking the process of the peoples’ liberation.

9. To have politically persecuted, imprisoned, and exiled are notorious features of dictatorships operating in an international declarative system that is too slow and ineffective and does not prosecute in a timely fashion for crimes against humanity.

10. Dictatorships are subject of sanctions imposed on them, yet they continue their eligibility for international financial credit and none of the democratic States even calls their ambassadors for consult. International financing and cooperation organizations continue benefitting dictatorships. Ironically, dictatorships survive with commercial relations they maintain with democracies against whom they conspire. There are no “disabling sanctions”.

11. It would appear as though dictatorships are gaining ground, but they are slipping. In 2021 they re-took Bolivia, controlled the presidency of Peru and advanced in Chile, however, they suffered their most important defeat conducted by Lenin Moreno with the transition back to democracy in Ecuador and their loss in Argentina. They asserted their dictatorship in Venezuela and consolidated their crimes against humanity in Nicaragua. They also suffered the greatest of all defeats, still ongoing, in Cuba, starting on 11 July.

12. Democracies are not all that well, but dictatorships are far worse. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua do not have a good economy, they lack the support from the people and govern based on State-sponsored terrorism and the fear they instill, they lack a historical narrative and are identified as organized crime.

It is in this environment the Americas begins its new year. It has proclaimed “Homeland and Life” “you 59, I double 2”. Well, the double 2 has arrived and is beginning. . .

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

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.