The judicialized violation of human rights as a weapon of 21st-century socialism must end in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 23/08/2026

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Committing crimes to seize and indefinitely hold power with impunity, and then blaming the victims while judicially violating their human rights, is a methodology employed by the Cuban dictatorship and has expanded as state terrorism in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and their para-dictatorial governments. The use of prosecutors and judges as weapons of 21st-century socialism, criminalizing human rights violations, is ongoing, has resulted in deaths, thousands of prisoners, millions of political exiles, and must end without impunity.

To institutionalize its dictatorial system of 21st-century socialism, or Castro-Chavismo, it replaces all the essential elements of democracy with mechanisms of "state terrorism": it changes laws that protect freedom and fundamental rights with "infamous laws" that violate human rights, creating a system of norms that falsifies the structure of the rule of law; it controls all the organs of the State, taking over the judiciary, extinguishing the separation and independence of powers; thus, it judicializes political repression, nullifying real opposition and free political association, thereby constructing its "functional opposition" to operate the "electoral dictatorship" in which the people vote but do not choose.

The regulations imposed by the so-called left or Castro-Chavismo with constituent assemblies, changes to laws, codes, types of crimes, procedures, systems, violation of universal principles of law, liquidation of accountability and transparency, in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador with Correa, Argentina with the Kirchners, Brazil with Lula, Mexico with López Obrador and more, have produced the barbarity that is summarized in the “judicialized violation of human rights”.

This criminal process of destroying freedom and democracy has spawned "hitman prosecutors" or accusers who target the innocent, falsifiers of evidence, human rights violators, and thugs with the power to dispose of people's lives and property; and it has produced "infamous judges" who lack honor because they apply laws that violate human rights, disregarding principles, values, and universal legal and moral norms, issuing sentences and rulings that support state terrorism and grant impunity to those in power. They are not justice; they are part of the narco-terrorist criminal group.

This is a regime of "defenselessness," defined as "the situation in which someone is placed when their right to defense is unduly prevented or limited," and it involves the "unjustified alteration of equality." Citizens under dictatorial regimes live in a state of defenselessness and therefore become impoverished, migrate, or succumb to misery.

This scenario of organized crime normalizing its hold on political power is fully in effect today in Cuba and Nicaragua, whose dictatorships remain intact; and it shows signs of dismantling in Venezuela and Bolivia. To end dictatorships, it is necessary to remove power—not just the government—from organized crime, which controls the dictatorial legal system it has created.

The geopolitical shift in the Americas, which began in 2025 and was most significantly signaled by the capture of Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026, raises expectations of the end of the dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua, demonstrates growing progress in Venezuela under US tutelage, and opens spaces for freedom initiatives in Bolivia, whose government has thus far remained a continuation of the plurinational narco-state system.

In this context, judges and constitutional courts in Bolivia, addressing “actions for freedom” which is the plurinational substitute for “habeas corpus”, have begun to partially restore the validity of human rights such as “the right to personal liberty”, “judicial guarantees”, “the principle of legality and non-retroactivity”, “the presumption of innocence”, “legal equality”, “due process”, “the impartial judge”, and more, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mandatory by articles 7, 8 and 9 of the American Convention on Human Rights or Pact of San José.

This is the case with the lawsuits filed by former ministers of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, which have resulted in two rulings in Santa Cruz courts and one in Cochabamba that have annulled the trials and the judicial persecution unleashed by the perpetrators of the crimes, disguised as accusers, witnesses, or victims. The Constitutional Court “recognized violations of due process, equality before the law, the right to uncover the truth, and the right to a comprehensive investigation, as only the former officials were prosecuted without investigating those who benefited from the amnesty decreed by Carlos Mesa.”

The true investigation into the beginning of Bolivia's crisis, with the coup d'état that the conspirators and beneficiaries call "the Gas War," is now underway. This led to the Castro-Chavista dictatorship of Evo Morales and Luis Arce, the replacement of the Republic of Bolivia with a plurinational narco-state, more than 20 bloody massacres, over 300 political prisoners, more than 27,000 exiles, the depletion of gas reserves, the lack of gasoline, diesel, dollars, and gold reserves, over 60% national poverty, capitulation, treason, confrontation, impunity, and more.

It is a breath of freedom, which may be suppressed by the Plurinational Constitutional Court—an organ of the dictatorial system—when it reviews its rulings, but recourse remains with the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The fight for freedom continues.

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

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