Bastions of authoritarianism in Latin America

A new democracy report in the world was published by The Economist. The Global Democracy Indexan indicator that the british magazine since 2006, its goal has been to measure the state of democracy in the world. This new edition has brought to light a set of data that builds a precise paradigm on the democratic regression that the planet is experiencing, and above all Latin Americawhere the situation continues to deteriorate.

Latin America on this occasion fell back in the ranking. The region has barely 3 full democracies (Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay). In recent times, countries that used to be full democracies have become failing democracies and failing democracies have led to hybrid regimes. Currently, 8 countries in the region are considered hybrid regimes or what some call competitive authoritarianisms. Countries that maintain some facade of democracy, but practice dictatorial practices such as human rights abuses, concentration of power in the hands of one person or a ruling elite, and nullification of the principle of separation of powers, fall into this category.

The Savior This is a country that is already in the hybrid category. It recorded the second-highest score drop in the entire region. The use of justice for political purposes, the affecting of the independence of organs of public power and the persecution of the press are some of the symptoms of authoritarianism overflowing that identifies this country. This is one of the cases that perhaps deserves to be studied, because of the characteristics in which this process of erosion of democracy is taking place and the speed with which it has occurred.

Venezuela again, it stands out for the most negative aspect of this classification. Our country has been classified the most authoritative on the continent and one of the 20 most authoritative in the world. The dictatorships of Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega and Diaz Canel These are the three lowest rated diets in the region. Between the three countries, there are more than 800 political prisoners, thousands of victims of arbitrary arrests, cruel and inhuman treatment and extrajudicial executions. justin Nicaragua They have just freed 200 political prisoners, whom the dictator used as bargaining chips in a negotiation with the UNITED STATES. Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua These are three sources of destabilization of the continent. The three epicenters of organized crime, where illegal actors conduct illicit economic operations. The three axes that protect the interests of China, Russia, Iran and other anti-Westerns. In short, they are bastions of authoritarianism.

This growth of regional and global authoritarianism strikes me as particularly significant in light of the liberation process for which we Venezuelans are fighting. In the book “The Coming Country” that we have just published, we rightly underlined that one of the stakes of this strategic conceptualization of our crisis is to understand the postulate that we are fighting against a process which is global. Today there is an autocratic solidarity that is more resilient and stronger than democratic solidarity; and that it is united not only by values ​​but by obscure interests. Populists of this era devote themselves full time to seeing how they erode democracy, how they retain power indefinitely, and how they rule by cruelly subjugating the people. They are characters who do not contemplate the democratic idea that power is to serve, on the contrary, they use power.

In other words, there is a global alliance against democracy and, in this context, Maduro has made Venezuela the backyard of a set of anti-Western and anti-democratic actors. Maduro would never have escaped international pressure without the support of Russia and Iran, nor would he have installed such a sophisticated surveillance system within intelligence agencies without the support of Cuba. I would never have succeeded in commercializing blood gold without the support of Turkey and China. These are simple examples of what I am trying to explain about the challenges of liberating a country in an international context of authoritarianism.

Norbert Bobbio, in one of his many essays on political theory and democracy, stressed the urgent need for a democratic international society to safeguard an internal democracy. In Bobbio’s scientific contribution on the analysis of democracy, only a global democracy can bring out internal micro-democracies. It’s like a democracy virus. To the extent that there is a pro-democracy trend at the global level, more democracies will emerge at the local level. On the contrary, to the extent that there will be more authoritarianisms on the planet, there will be a greater probability that new authoritarianisms will emerge in other territories. This is why the struggle in the world today is not between left and right, but between democracy and authoritarianism, it is a titanic battle between good and evil. Who will win it? It will depend on the hours of work that each front will devote. For the time being, the authoritarians devote themselves to it full-time. What are we going to do, we democrats?

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