Impunity is not an option in dismantling the criminal group known as 21st-century socialism

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 25/05/2026

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The 21st-century socialism that expanded Cuba's dictatorships into Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro, Nicaragua under Ortega and Murillo, Bolivia under Morales and Arce, and Ecuador under Correa, and that controls quasi-dictatorial governments in Brazil under Lula da Silva, Mexico under López Obrador and Sheinbaum, and Colombia under Petro, has shattered freedom throughout Latin America by altering constitutions, laws, economies, and social behavior, with terrorism, narco-states, impunity, manipulation of crime, hybrid warfare, and more. The dismantling of these dictatorships is underway, but the criminals are trying to relinquish power rather than the government itself, and to prevent this, it is crucial to remember that their impunity is not an option.

The so-called socialism of the 21st century is not a political entity, it is an “organized criminal group” defined by article 2.a. of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime or “Palermo Convention” as “a structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the purpose of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses established in accordance with this Convention with a view to obtaining, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.”

From its inception with Hugo Chávez's rise to the presidency of Venezuela in 1999 and his immediate public association with dictator Fidel Castro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, founder of the São Paulo Forum, 21st-century socialism—which began as populism, the Bolivarian movement, the ALBA project, and is also Castro-Chavismo—took root and expanded, founded on the criminal system of Cuba's Castro dictatorship. Venezuelan oil money and Castro's criminal methodology fueled the largest and most sustained attack against freedom and human rights in the Americas.

The “organized criminal group” began with Chávez, Castro, Lula and their entourages, exactly fulfilling the definition of the Palermo Convention because “they acted in concert to commit all the necessary crimes, directly and indirectly, with a view to obtaining economic benefits, perpetuating themselves indefinitely in power and taking power in all the countries of the Americas (another material benefit).”

The group expanded under the dictatorships of Morales in Bolivia, Ortega in Nicaragua, Correa in Ecuador, and with quasi-dictatorial governments such as Kirchner in Argentina, Lugo in Paraguay, Toledo in Peru, López Obrador in Mexico, Boric in Chile, and Castro in Honduras, who imposed their rule through all kinds of crimes, from electoral fraud to forgery and murder.

The history of the 21st century in the Americas up to 2025 is a chronicle of the expansion of the Cuban dictatorship under Hugo Chávez's leadership until 2013, when his convenient death occurred. Since then, the Cuban dictatorship has assumed power, turning Venezuela into its main satellite state. In this first quarter of the century, under the guise of revolution, liberation of the people, the fight against poverty and inequality, and anti-imperialism, the most atrocious crimes against human rights and freedom, crimes against humanity, economic crimes, drug trafficking, and more were committed in the Americas, as evidenced by the political prisoners, those tortured, murdered, and massacred, the exiles, the expropriated, the persecuted, and those subjected to state terrorism in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador.

The population map of the Americas changed as a result of the crimes of the “organized criminal group” of 21st-century socialism, with nearly 9 million Venezuelan exiles, more than a million Cubans, and hundreds of thousands from Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The economic model of Latin American countries abandoned institutional frameworks and the pursuit of transparency, replacing them with the transnational corruption of “Lava Jato,” the rise of the newly rich, and contracts with indeterminate external debts from China, Russia, Iran, and others.

Social behavior also changed, because people who could not migrate to survive submitted to the insecurity of narco-states, to receiving benefits in the form of bonuses and assistance, to having more and more needs and less freedom while they watched as groups linked to the regime established themselves as "the new bourgeoisie".

The aggression through hybrid warfare mechanisms that 21st-century socialism perpetrated for decades against all the countries of Latin America created a crisis in the security of the United States, and since the 2024 election process, the now President Trump 47 proposed what he has issued as the “National Security Strategy,” changing the geopolitics in the Western Hemisphere and proceeding to dismantle the dictatorships of 21st-century socialism, which has turned Nicolas Maduro and some members of the criminal group into prisoners and has the Cuban dictatorship under ultimatum.

Dismantling the criminal network of 21st-century socialism means ending the dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The national security of the United States can become the security of all the peoples of the Americas, and impunity is not an option to achieve this.

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

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