The role of democracies in the unavoidable collapse of the dictatorship from Cuba

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The factual reality of disgrace and misery that Cuba’s dictatorship has taken Cuban people is undeniable proof of the regime’s social, political, historical, and economic unfeasibility. The dictatorship agonizes, heightening the suffering of the people that it subjects and to whom it has deceived for the past 65 years in a “pseudo-revolution” that is nothing more than a system of organized crime that has run out of options and whose collapse is only a matter of time. The liberation of the Cuban people with democracy is the only way out and democracies, from the Americas and the rest of the world, have a role they have yet to assume.

In 1999, Cuba’s dictatorship agonized in its so-called “special period” that had started when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dissolved, because Castroism was a parasitic satellite of the USSR within the framework of the Cold War. When everyone expected the Cuban dictatorship would follow the same footsteps of the USSR, Hugo Chavez took Venezuela’s presidency wherefrom -with Venezuela’s oil and money- he took Castroism out of its agony and started, along with Castro and Lula da Silva (Forum of Sao Paolo), the greatest attack against democracy based on Castro’s illusion of internationalist expansion with which the 21st century turned out to be the stage for the transformation of 20th century Castroism with the political narrative of “21st Century Socialism.”

Cuba’s dictatorship went from being on the brink of disappearance to control the most powerful and wealthiest anti-democratic movement led by Hugo Chavez until his -very opportune- death that transferred the total control to Castro. The initial populist Bolivarian movement built Petro-Caribe with which it controlled the votes of all of the Caribbean States in exchange for Venezuelan oil, and afterwards controlled the Organization of American States (OAS) with Insulza, while it generated hard and soft coups d état in the region with the complicity of the subjected inter American organization that ignored the Inter American Democratic Charter, coinciding with the unexplainable distancing of the United States from the region.

In the 7th Summit of the Americas in Panama on the 10th and 11th of April of 2015, Cuba assumed the Latin American leadership, acknowledged by the United States whose president met with the dictator agreeing “to work quickly to normalize relations and reopen embassies,” something that happened “on 1 July of 2015 when representatives of both governments exchanged credentials and accreditation letters from both of their presidents in which they affirm they have decided to reestablish diplomatic relations and open embassies in the respective countries starting on 20 July of 2015.”

Undoubtedly, that was the most important success of the Cuban dictatorship that controlled the dictatorships from Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua and several other Latin-American governments subordinated to its power. But things started to change with the international scandal labeled “Lava Jato,” with changes in governments, the election of a new Secretary General of the OAS, the passing of Fidel Castro and the down turn of Venezuela’s oil wealth that did not take long to be supplemented by the narco-States that 21st Century Socialism dictatorships are.

Cuba’s dictatorship was salvaged in 1999 by the high treason to the homeland that Hugo Chavez committed, but it was sustained in the 21st century by the subordination of democratic leaders and governments who, with different levels of indifference, subjugation, or convenience, decided to co-exist with the organized crime that Castrochavism leads, all at the expense of their own and their peoples’ security. Today, none of that is neither valid, nor enough because the Cuban peoples, subjected to famine and misery, enduring the lack of electricity, and under State-terrorism, fight for their freedom asking for “homeland and life” and fighting a system that is already defeated, all while the peoples of America ignore or disown the Cuban dictatorship.

Today, Cuba’s dictatorship solely sustains itself by the internal fear generated by the commission of; daily crime, repetitive and institutionalized crime, crimes against humanity, violations of human rights and by the failure of democratic leaders and States to fulfill their international legal obligations. Dictatorships are an anomaly in the Americas where, by mandate of the Interamerican Democratic Charter “democracy is a right of the peoples,” but they are an aberration in a world that proclaims the “respect for human rights.”

There will neither be another Chavez, nor another Venezuela, to salvage Cuba’s dictatorship. Neither Russia, nor China, nor Iran are in conditions to neither sustain, nor maintain the parasite known as the Cuban dictatorship who contributed to the USSR’s dissolution and put into misery the wealthiest country of Latin America that Venezuela was.

The more grievous Cuba’s situation turns, the more treacherous its regime becomes. A regime that has, and continues to, operate guerrillas, terrorism, narcotics’ trafficking, invasions, assassinations, coups, massacres, assassination of reputations, and all sorts of crime. The rejection of the Cuban peoples is decisive and active but, up to now, the international attitude is of indifference, dangerous, and shameful.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas