If organized crime continues to control governments and states, there is no future for democracy.

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 08/09/2025

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Replacing politics with crime, public service with oppression, and the rule of law with state terrorism are just part of the expansion that the Cuban dictatorship, cloaked in 21st-century socialism, has implemented to oppress the peoples of the Americas, with bloody evidence in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Objective reality proves that organized crime controls governments and states, protecting its crimes with immunities and privileges that falsify and destroy democracy.

The regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are narco-states, that is, countries where "political institutions are influenced by the power and wealth of drug trafficking, whose leaders simultaneously hold positions as government officials and members of illegal drug trafficking networks, protected by their legal powers."

To maintain their power indefinitely and with impunity, these regimes have institutionalized a system of "state terrorism," committing daily crimes against humanity and atrocious human rights violations. These crimes result in persecution, imprisonment, political exile, and a widespread state of defenselessness among the population, which they subject to fear.

Until recently and throughout this century, the international and inter-American systems have been inefficient, failing to fulfill their obligations, and tolerating and coexisting with organized crime, which, through populist narratives, has seized and retained power to expand its system of "hybrid warfare" against the democracies of the Americas.

Drug trafficking and terrorism as weapons against democracy are nothing new. Their public and sustained formulation dates back to the early 1960s, when dictator Fidel Castro called for "flooding the United States with drugs" as part of his anti-imperialist revolutionary arsenal, while at the same time promoting and organizing virtually every guerrilla group in the region.

The growth of drug trafficking, under the guise of blaming the victims for crime, claiming that consumer countries are responsible and that as long as there is a market, there will be production, is merely public proof of the level of influence and penetration that crime has achieved at the political, business, academic, and economic levels. The growing prevalence of drug use in drug-producing countries and in developing countries demonstrates the falsity of this argument. Drugs harm and kill young people and adults throughout the Americas and around the world, regardless of ideology, race, or position.

The shift in U.S. foreign policy, followed by Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and other states, has the merit of clearly identifying the aggressor, pointing to drug trafficking and terrorism as the holders of power in governments and states from which people are attacked with impunity, crimes are committed under dictatorial cover, and crimes against humanity are perpetrated with anti-imperialist rhetoric and claims of sovereignty.

21st-century socialism—which is the expansion of the Castro dictatorship in Cuba—in addition to controlling the dictatorships/narco-states of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, has managed to install subservient governments in Mexico under López Obrador and now under Sheinbaum, Brazil under Lula da Silva, Colombia under Petro, and Honduras under Castro, which have placed their foreign policies at the service of crime, to the detriment of their sovereignty and gravely harming their people. The evidence is their cover-up of narco-states, the criminal cartels that control them, and their eagerness to present crimes as political acts.

It's not just about governments protecting crime; it's about governments whose leaders commit crimes. There are countries completely controlled by narco-terrorist criminal groups, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. There are countries with territories, states, municipalities, towns, or provinces under the control of criminals who have seized control of local governments, politics, justice, and terror, as demonstrated by cases in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and others.

The dismantling of organized crime that controls countries is an international legal obligation and a legitimate right of defense for countries under attack and the international community. The silence of the Organization of American States on this matter is deafening.

Dismantling organized crime that controls territories, states, provinces, or municipalities within a country is the obligation of national governments, such as Ecuador, which has launched an open and determined fight, or, as in Mexico, which appears to have opted for coexistence, or in Argentina, where it seems better to continue ignoring the problem.

The region's leadership understands that the future of democracy depends on removing organized crime from the control of countries and territories. It's not easy, but there is no other option.

*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».