Latin America, where dystopias become reality

By: Hugo Marcelo Balderrama - 28/09/2025

Guest columnist.
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When we talk about dystopia, or also anti-utopias or cacotopias, we refer to a fictional vision of human society in which, simply put, things go very badly for ordinary people, but very well for the powerful. The genre has developed, although not exclusively, in literature, philosophy, and cinema. Let's look at some examples:

In 1984, the British writer George Orwell described a futuristic England, called Engsoc, governed by a regime of permanent surveillance under the authoritarian gaze of Big Brother. Communications technology simultaneously serves two functions: surveillance and indoctrination, and social engineering processes have a single goal: to make people love their tormentors.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a future in which technology has come to control every aspect of human life. In this society, reproduction takes place in synthetic wombs, and humanity is heavily stratified into immutable groups (alphas, betas, gammas), which are kept under control through hypnopedia and a drug called soma, which induces a state of happiness and tranquility. The protagonist, a "savage" born in the outside world, will enter this society, one who shares humanity's greatest desire: freedom.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a futuristic American society where firefighters burn books. Anyone who reads it is a danger, because knowledge generates questions; questions lead to rebellion, and rebellion is something that totalitarian regimes do not allow.

I often talk to my students about the novels mentioned above. The result is always the same: they perceive the stories not as science fiction or fantasy, but as something perfectly tangible in everyday life.

The reason is very simple: we lived in the 21st century amidst cruel attempts to put dystopias into practice, let's see:

Book censorship was established as state policy in Cuba after Fidel Castro's victory. Criticizing socialism, satirizing one of its members, and questioning Castro's policies were sufficient grounds for the dictatorship to place works on the threat list and their authors as pro-Yankee worms. Thus, a huge number of books and authors, both national and foreign, have been banned by Cuban publishing houses for various reasons. Many of these episodes occurred solely as a replica of censorship in the Soviet Union, since the titles involved little or nothing related to Cuban or Latin American reality, for example, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago.

In Bolivia, Evo Morales and his henchmen attempted to replicate the Cuban model, since the Avelino Siñani Law, under the guise of decolonization, sought to impose a biased view of history on children. One in which Morales is not a cocaine bandit, but a social activist fighting for Bolivian indigenous people, even for the world.

In the days of the coca grower, Bolivia had its own version of Huxley's Soma: it was public spending that bought consciences, silenced voices, and made many "happy." The "savages" and "infidels" were all of us who dared to question the official narratives about the Bolivian economic "miracle."

Likewise, in Orwellian fashion, the coca growers used state terrorism to silence dissenting voices, as in the case of the Hotel Las Américas in 2009.

Not to mention Venezuela and Nicaragua, where dictatorships have fused witchcraft with ideology to transform their tyrants into omniscient and omnipotent beings. A kind of dictatorial religion that seeks to absorb every aspect of their subjects' lives.

But while dictators live in their ivory towers, ordinary people have to face the consequences of rampant drug trafficking, rising inflation, increasing poverty, and the brutality of dictatorships. In short, Latin America is where dystopias become reality.

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