Devastating consequences for the peoples due to the loss of democracy

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 23/10/2024

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The expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship, implanting its system and operation in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and -for over 10 years- in Ecuador, stole democracy from those peoples with devastating consequences for human rights, freedom, the wrecking of the productive system, loss of sovereignty, deterioration of the quality of life, increase in poverty and inequality, increase in insecurity, prevalence of crime, corruption, and the destruction of the minimum conditions for subsistence.

Reality shows that even the worst government in a democracy is better than any dictatorship. Respect for human rights and basic individual freedoms, subjection to the rule of law, the separation and independence of the branches of government, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the temporary nature of the presidential mandate and the incumbents being held accountable and responsible, are basic components of democracy and highlight the fundamental differences with 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships who takeover the government for an indefinite period and use State-terrorism and the commission of all possible sorts of crime in order to remain unpunished.

Without legal or social control, without a free press, without a system of checks and balances in the discharge of the duties of the position, and without alternance and a date to surrender the government, it is impossible for a government to be good. Dictatorships who at the beginning years of their governmental regime promise economic development with public works, populist gifts -either of money or material goods- or offers of economic and social improvement end-up annihilating their countries’ economy, plunging the peoples into misery and hopelessness. The current reality of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as well as the sequels in Ecuador prove it.

The alleged economic success of dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador in Correa’s first years, was based on; the resources left behind by the democratic governments they replaced, their irresponsible internal and international indebtedness, and by the squandering of earned resources from companies in existence that -at a time of increasing international prices- were doing well but that ended-up, however, going bankrupt, as Cuba’s producer and exporter of sugar, Venezuela’s producer and exporter of oil, and the producer and exporter of natural gas in Bolivia. All followed by the willing surrender of their nation’s sovereignty and the devastation of natural resources that we witness today.

Without freedom there is no possibility of success and what dictatorships do and need, as something of paramount importance, is to liquidate freedom in order to be able to concentrate power. This is why a dictatorship is defined as “the political regime who, by force or violence, concentrates all power into a person, group, or organization and represses human rights and basic individual freedoms.”

By depriving human beings of their fundamental freedoms, the objective of dictatorships from 21st Century Socialism is to force them to depend on the regime. People must depend on the government to the point of being entirely subjected by it, this is why they concentrate employment through statism, they control freedom of movement with rigid identification and tracking systems, they subordinate the production means and assets, they satanize and destroy private property and any free initiative, hinder any possibility of entrepreneurship, control education by indoctrination, they produce laborers who will depend on the regime that is practically enslaver, control the provision of groceries and basic needs, and freedom is conspicuously absent.

Anyone who defends even minimum gaps of freedom or resist the dictatorship is persecuted with false accusations and using a judicialized system of repression is imprisoned, tortured, condemned, and his/her life, personal property, and family are destroyed. They force many into selective and massive exile, to opposing leaders they apply costly campaigns of “assassination of reputation” and those who insist are assassinated through very opportune accidents, attempts by third parties, criminal actions, or illness.

This is the system that quickly and irrevocably takes the country to poverty and misery, which is the exact situation the dictatorships want for their peoples. The total dependency they achieve with the misery is manipulated with the creation of narratives to create irreconcilable enemies such as the “North American imperialism,” “capitalism,” “private entrepreneurs,” and other local narratives that befit their interests.

The misery that was deliberately created by dictatorships from 21st Century Socialism, will be attributed by the dictators and their propaganda teams to foreign powers, or internally to traitors of the revolution. While -all along- the dictators and their inner circle become grossly and visibly wealthy by corruption, narcotics’ trafficking, and their management of organized crime.

Apparently, poverty and misery are strategic objectives of dictatorships with which they achieve the total dependency and control of the people. Their populations, forced into exile, end up maintaining their families with migrants’ remittances, and the dictatorships and/or narco-States will demand foreign aid and assistance, while they always have millionaire resources for conspiracies against the very peoples who help them.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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