CastroChavism: Organized Crime in the Americas by José Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, Bolivia’s former Minister of Defense and the author of XXI Century Dictatorship in Bolivia.
(16)
[Venezuela and Bolivia] are dictatorships that reach[ed] power through elections and through successive coups that liquate democracy.
(17)
The two Americas make up an axis of confrontation in which perpetual and arbitrary control of power, on the one handed, branded dictatorship with ideology as a pretext; versus democracy, with respect for human rights, alternation in power, accountability and free elections, declaratively protected by the inter-American system, enshrined – among others – in the inter-American democratic charter.
From 1959 to 1999, the Cuban dictatorship is “Castroism.” From 1999 onwards it is “Castrochavismo,” led by Hugo Chavez until his death.
(18-19)
It began as progressive leftist populism, and was successively called ALBA Movement (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America); the Bolivarian Movement; and after a few years Socialism of the 21st Century.
Castro receives a new source of financing for his conspiratorial and criminal actions with Chavez’s surrender not only of Venezuela’s money and oil but, as we have learned today, of the entire country. This allowed the dictator to reactivate genuine Castroism under the mantle of the Bolivarian Movement, or ALBA, and disguise it as democracy. With Venezuela’s money he started conspiracies, which led to the fall and overthrow of democratic leaders. The first one occurs in Argentina, with the fall of President De La Rua. The second happens in Ecuador and it is Jamil Mahuad who pays the proce. The Third one is the overthrow of President Gonzalo Sanches de Lozada in Bolivia. The fourth is in Ecuador, with the fall of President Lucio Gutierrez. They also overthrew the OAS Secretary General, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, who had just been elected. A false case of corruption was planted in Costa Rica, where Rodriguez ends up being illegally detained, making room for Insulsa to arrive.
The nascent CastroChavista organization expands with Lula da Silva taking power in Brazil with the Workers Party, whose government he used to strengthen the extraordinary flow of economic resources with transnational corruption .A sample of such crimes include the infamous case of “Lava Jato – Odebrecht”
The destruction of democracy becomes noticeable in the exiles, who had been purely Cuban and are now regional – waves of Venezuelans Bolivians, Nicaraguans, Ecuadorians, Argentines, and Central Americans.
(21)
An electoral dictatorship is a political regime that by force or violence concentrates all power in a person or in a group or organization that repressed human rights and fundamental freedoms and uses illegitimate elections, neither free no fair, with fraud and corruption, to perpetuate itself indefinitely in power.”
(23)
Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua… are criminal entities that must be separated from politics and must be treated as transnational organized crime from within the framework of the Palermo Convention and other norms, without the immunities or privileges inherent to the heads of State or government.
(24)
Castrochavista dictatorships are in crisis, but are not defeated. They are called out as regimes that violate human rights, that have no rule of law, where there is no division or independence of public powers, and that are narco States and creators of poverty. To remain in power, they apply the uniform strategy of “resisting at all costs, destabilizing democracies, politicizing their situation and negotiating.”
The first element of this strategy, of “retention of all power at all costs,” can be seen in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba – where they imprison and torture political prisoners. The President of the Human Rights assembly in Bolivia has just reported that there are 131 deaths without investigation from killings that the government has committed, and there are more than 100 political prisoners.
(25)
The second element of their strategy is to “destabilize democracies,” for which they conspire against those who accuse them and against the governments that defend democracy. The destabilization range from false news and character assassination of leaders whom they designate as right wing, to criminal acts of terrorism, kidnappings and narco guerrillas.
The third element of their strategy is to “politicize their situation and their criminal acts.” When the dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua improperly imprison a citizen, when they torture them, when they evn kill them – they call it defense of the revolution.
These four dictatorships are narco states and, to justify themselves, they argue that “drug trafficking is an instrument of struggle for the liberation of the peoples”
Evo Morales in 2016 at the United Nations said that “the fight against drug trafficking is an instrument of imperialism to oppress the peoples”.
Jesus Santrich fled from Colombia to Venezuela, proclaiming that he had been persecuted by the right. The bosses of the ELN narco-guerrillas of Colombia are under protection in Cuba.
The third element of Castrochavismo, which consists in politicizing their crimes, serves to ensure that when they kill any person they say that they are defending the revolution. When they torture they say they defend the popular process of liberation of peoples and so on.
The fourth element of Castrochavista strategy is to “negotiate”. They negotiate in order to gain time, demoralize the adversary, collect bills from their allies or extort money from third states to gain their support or at least neutralize them.
From these four elements, they survive.
(27)
Political events are based on respect for the “rule of law,” which is simply that “no one is above the law,” on the temporality of public service, on accountability and public responsibility, where you can take on an adversary. But organized crime has no adversaries, it has enemies and the difference between an adversary and an enemy is that the former is defeated or convinced, whereas the latter is eliminated, and this explains the number of crimes that Castrochavismo commits in the Americas.
(30)
The peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia are fighting against the dictatorships that oppress them, but it is not a local or national oppressor, they take on a transnational enemy, united by the objective of retaining power indefiniately as the best mechanism for impunity.
Castrochavismo as a transnational organized crime structure is a very powerful usurper with a lot of money, a lot of criminal armed forces, control of many media and many mercenaries of various specialties at its service, which has put the peoples they oppress in a true and extreme “defenseless condition.”
As long as there are dictatorships there will be no peace or security in the Americas.
(33)
It is vital to differentiate and separate that which is “politics” meaning an activity of public service, from that which is “organized crime” and “delinquency.” Politics with its ideologies, pragmatisms, imperfections, errors, crises, even tainted by corruption is one thing, but another very different things is politics and power under the control of associated criminals who turn their politics into their main instrument for the commission of crimes, the setting up of criminal organizations, the seizure and indefinite control of power with criminal objectives and for the sake of their own impunity.
Politics is legal, meaning that it is conducted in pheres considered to be “just, allowed, according to justice and reason” because it is of order and public service….
(35)
Castro, Maduro, Ortega and Morales are not politicians, they are not corrupted government – they are organized delinquency that holds political power and plans to indefinitely keep holding it. They can no longer keep being treated as politicians, and least of all as State Dignitaries.
(42)
CastroChavist is the label for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez’s undertaking that, using the subversive capabilities of the Cuban dictatorial regime and Venezuelan oil, has resurrected – commencing in 1999, the expansion of Castroist, antidemocratic communism with a heavy antiimperialist discourse.
(46-47)
What is happening in Venezuela today is the result of almost two decades of progressive and sustained abuses to freedom and democracy, violation of human rights, persecutions, electoral fraud, corruption, violation of the sovereignty of the country, theft of government and private resources, killing of the freedom of the press, elimination of the rule of law, disappearance of the separation and independence of the branches of government, control of the opposition, imprisonment and forced exile of political opponents, narcotics trafficking and all that may be necessary to make Venezuela a Castroist-model dictatorial “narco-state with a humanitarian crisis.”
The international democratic community has understood that for the sake of their own interests and security, it must preclude Venezuela from turning into the second consolidated dictatorship of the Americas, and prevent the dictatorships of Bolivia and Nicaragua from following that path. Liberating Venezuela is a strategic necessity.
(49)
In Bolivia, the top and perpetual leader of the coca leaf harvesters, Evo Morales, is the head of the Purinational State of Bolivia wherein “by decree of law” he has increated the lawful cultivation of coca by 83% from 12,000 hectares to 22,000 hectares and has increased the cultivation of unlawful coca from the existing 3,000 hectares in 2003 – the year they toppled President Sanchez de Lozada – to the current 50,000 hectares.
Evo Morales’ drug czar Colonel Rene Sanabria was arrested by the DEA for cocaine trafficking and has been sentenced by US judges to 15 years in jail.
(55)
In democracy, corruption is not the rule but the flaw, it is the violation of normalcy, “the misuse of government power to get illegitimate advantages, generally in a secret or private way”, it is “the consistent practice of utilizing the functions and means of the government for the benefit – whether this benefit be financial or otherwise – of those who are involved with it.” In a democracy, there are investigations, prosecution, and punishment with accountability, there is separation and independence of the branches of government, the Rule of Law exists, and there is freedom of the press. On the other hand, however, in dictatorships, corruption is the means, the cause, and the end objective of getting to, and indefinitely remaining in power.
(61)
The Venezuelan dictatorship is the Gordian knot the keeps the Venezuelan people from recovering their freedom and democracy, one that at the same time sustains dictatorships in the America, specifically in Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as a system of Transnational Organized Crime – they are a real danger not only for this region, but the whole world.
(62)
The hub of narcotics trafficking that Venezuela has been turned into, with the Colombian FARC’s cocaine and with Evo Morales’ coca growers’ unions from Bolivia, has penetrated the entire region and impacts the whole world with serious consequences in security and the wellbeing of people.
(65)
A well-orchastrated international system of public relations, lobbyists who work for the Cuba-Venezuela-Bolivia-Nicaragua group, the subjecting of PetroCaribe countries with bribes of Venezuelan oil, it’s penetration into international organizations, its control over the national news media and its creation and influence over international media, its collusion with important magnates and businessmen, and its repetitive anti-U.S. discourse along with its opening to Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, have all been factors – that have allowed the existence of the Ortega’s Crime Dictatorship in Nicaragua.
(67)
Cuba with the Castro’s, Venezuela with Chavez and Maduro, Bolivia with Evo Morales, Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega, and Ecuador with Rafael Correa, replaced freedom of the press with a system of control of the information with prior censorship, self-censorship, financial and judicial repression. They appropriated themselves – through transfers under duress, seizures, intervention, and violence – of private news media in order to place them at their service, they have supported and created state media, founded and funded regional media, they manage the official propaganda as a mechanism for extorsion, they use taxes as a means of pressure and retribution, they extort companies regarding the assignment of propaganda, they start and sustain “assassination of reputation” campaigns against journalists and owners of news media.
(74)
Crimes committed by the 21st Century Socialist Regimes range from persecution with the aim of physical torture and killing, judicial trials with false accusations heard by “despicable judges”, the application of the regime’s pseudo-laws violating human rights or of “despicable laws”, restricting freedom of speech or freedom to work, to be employed, or discharge a profession, assassinating the individuals reputation to convert the wrongly accused as an undesirable, subjecting the person into a condition of being defenseless, depriving him/her of a job and much more.
(75)
…they’ve replaced politics with criminal practices in order to totally and indefinitely control political power.
Extortion is a key feature of the Castrochavista methods that is further proof of the Transnational Organized Crime nature of these dictatorships.
Extortion is “the pressure exerted on someone – through threats – to compel them to act in a certain way and obtain a monetary or other type of benefit.” The legal definition of extortion includes “the intimidation or serious threat that restricts a person to do, tolerate the doing or not doing of something for the purpose of deriving a benefit or undue advantage for one’s self or someone else.”
The Castrochavista constitutions have established “the law’s retroactivity” and have suppressed or limited parliamentary immunities in order to keep extorting members of the opposition.
Judges, prosecutors and even attorneys are extorted. Several cases corroborate this, cases, such as Venezuela’s Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni’s jailing, violations, and tortures; the fired prosecutors and judges who were afterwards prosecuted in the case of Magistrate Gualberto Cusi in Bolivia, as well as the jailing of defense attorneys; the persecution and exile of Magistrates from Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal “ the legitimate one in exile,” or that of Attorney General Ortega, the assassination of Prosecutor Alberto Nisman in Kirchner’s Argentina, and dozens more.
The imprisonment, torture, humiliations, assassinations, and exile started as extrortions and are dictatorial warning operations in order to ensure the submission of the system it manipulates “setting precedents” of its decision to use extortion to obtain benefits for the dictator and his Organized Crime group who is called government. Benefits range from financial gain, cover up, and impunity, to the indefinite tenure in government.
(78)
Cornered by crises, the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, have gone into an attack more and the meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum in Havana was the scenario to launch their new phase of destabilization.
Dictatorships attack with forced migration, the generation of internal violence, and destabilization.
(79)
All of the region’s democratic countries are under the pressure of forced migration caused by Venezuela’s dictatorship that has converted on of its shameful problems into a problem for the whole region. Democracies must now deal with problems in: their security, unemployment, provision of health care, their handling of massive numbers of people in transit, identification issues, budgets, and human rights, all because the Castrochavista criminal regime of Nicolas Maduro has transformed its crimes and its effects into a political weapon. Very similar to the so-called “Mariel’s exodus” promoted by Dictator Fidel Castro against the United States, but many folds greater and for an indefinite period.
(81)
The Sao Paulo Forum is 1990 was the dictatorial reaction to the crash of Soviet Communism and was gathered, for the first time, with the objective of addressing the international scenario following the fall of the Berlin Wall and to confront the “neo-liberal” policies. It is the tool with which the Castroist dictatorship formulated the “multiplication of the confrontation axis” strategy, going beyond class struggles to the fight against any elements that may be useful to destabilize democratic governments.
The 21st Century in the Americas is the history of the Castro-Chavista buildup…
The worn-out cliché of “liberation of the peoples” as an “anti-imperialist” argument and slogan for massive demonstrations, has remained to become “the people’s oppression” that is corroborated by the quantity of massacres, assassinations, torture, political prisoners, exiles, and the daily life the people must endure.
(83)
It has become necessary for Americas’ leaders and politicians to clearly differentiate themselves from the criminals who hold power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Not doing so implies the assumed risk of being accomplices and concealers.
(89)
The price for Pablo Iglesias and PODEMOS backing to the investiture of the PSOE would be the sustainment of the dictatorships for which Iglesias works and their funding, are now amply evident in Spain’s new foreign policy aiming to sustain the CastroChavista dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia.
(92)
Is the use of force the only options for the dictatorships to leave?
Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia are under regimes that after applying all possible simulations and misrepresentations in order to be a revolution, a democracy, populist, leftist, and socialist governments but are nothing by Organized Crime’s organizations that hold power by force.
Alleging self-determination of the nation state while oppressing the citizens and violating their human rights is but another flaw of the CastroChavista dictatorships.
(95)
The parameters to qualify a regime as a dictatorship, an Organized Crime dictatorship, and a criminal government, are set out but existing universal and regional standards, such as: the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of Bogota, the Convenant of San Jose, the European Union Treaty, the Palermo Conventions, the Interamerican Democratic Charter, and many more.
(102)
The dictatorial nature of a regime is proven by its violation of all essential components of democracy through the supplanting of the democratic order, manipulation of constituent referendums, consults and elections, down to the imposition of a fraudulent legal framework, a “legal” scheme, that nowadays is the legal system in existence in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Correa’s Ecuador.
(105)
Why Abstention?
To run as a candidate in a dictatorship is to dress up a tyrant as a democrat.
(106)
For elections to be free and fair, there must be “conditions of democracy” in existence, this is the minimum presence of the essential components of democracy that will enable all citizens to be wither voters or be elected, will guarantee an equity of options to the candidates, transparency in the process, impartiality in the electoral authorities, offer guarantees of resources with impartial judges, with freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and guarantees against electoral fraud, timeliness and more.
(109)
In 1961, Cuba’s dictatorship birthed; Nicaragua’s National Liberation Army (ELN) afterwards converted into the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), then later converted into the 13th of November Revolutionary Movement (MR13N), and the Revolutionary Armed Forced (FAR) in Guatemala. In 1962, it birthed Venezuela’s National Liberation Armed Forces (FALN), the Colombian Self-Defense Forces turned into the Southern Block Forces afterwards turned into the Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC). In Peru, it birthed the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR), in Bolivia the National Liberation Army (ELN), in Uruguay the Tupamaros, as an urban guerrilla, in Argentina the Montoneros, and in the 70’s the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), in Brazil the Revolutionary Movement 8 (MR*), and many more. The Castroist movement did no spare any country from staining it with the blood of guerrillas.
(120)
The OAS has two charters; the Charter of Bogota which birthed the organization and the Interamerican Democratic Charter, with which democracy was institutionalized.
Article 1 of the IDC mandates that “America’s people haec the right to democracy and their government has the obligation to promote and defend it.”
(123)
The Palermo Convention for Human Trafficking should be applied to the Cuban physicians.
(134)
What dictator Nicolas Maduro and his regime insist in presenting as “elections” is a chain of serious crimes to misrepresent the popular sovereignty, sustain the narco-state, and guarantee himself impunity. The “organized crime group” that hold power has committed, and is willing to commit, whatever crime may be necessary to continue receiving the criminal benefits that have taken Venezuela to the current state of its ongoing crisis.
(188)
Fear is an essential component of dictatorships, this is why they kill the “Rule of Law” and supplant it with the “Rule of the State” with despicable laws to enable them to persecute, imprison, dishonor and wrest the property of, citizens.
The foreign enemy is useful in order to blame the United States for all disastrous results from the organized crime that holds political power, such as what the Castros’ have done for so many years and now Maduro, Morales, and their thugs do.
Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia claim the “right” conspires, pays politicians, and wants them toppled, attributing to themselves the position of being “leftist”, socialist, and communist when in reality they are criminal “fascists” whose sole ideology and objective is the total and indefinite control of power along with their illicit enrichment.
(193)
Odebrecht is one of the Brazilian companies implicated in the Forum of Sao Paulo’s criminal network implemented by Lula de Silva with the dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez with the payments of millions of dollars in bribes.
(202)
Hugo Chavez allied himself with Fidel Castro in 1999 when Cuba agonized during it’s “special period” as a parasite state that, since the breakdown of the Soveit Union, did not have a way to survive. With Venezuela’s oil, Chavez salvaged the only dictatorship there was at that time in the Americas and kick started the recreation of Castroist expansionism under the labels of the Bolivarian Movement, ALBA, and 21st Century Socialism and that is today known as “CastroChavismo”.
