The summit meeting of organized crime from the Americas disguised as ALBA in Venezuela

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 01/05/2024

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The summit meeting of dictators from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua in the city of Caracas, under the banner of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Treaty of the Peoples Trade, or ALBA-TCP, is the most recent proof of manipulation of the international system by Transnational Organized Crime in its strategy to coverup as politics the crimes it commits and will -as it claims- continue to commit. What has been attempted to be presented as a meeting of presidents, has been a summit meeting of Castrochavism’s criminal kingpins and followers.

Castrochavism is the descriptive label of the Transnational Organized Crime that usurps political power in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that must be treated as a structure of organized crime and not a political process. Its criminal nature is defined by the Palermo Convention or the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Article 2, Section a) that states; “Organized criminal group shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.”

Dictators from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have turned the countries they rule over as narco-States, protection centers, and centers for the exportation of crime, and they cling to power through the practice of State-terrorism which is “the use of illegitimate methods, the commission of crime by a government with the objective of instilling fear or terror amongst the civilian population in order to reach its objectives or promote behaviors that would otherwise not occur.” All of these actions are serious crimes that render the Palermo Convention as applicable by its mandate of Article 2, Section b) stating; “Serious crime shall mean conduct constituting an offense punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty.”

ALBA-TCP is a system created by the dictatorships from Cuba and Venezuela on 14 December of 2004 to expand their influence and weaken the institutionality of the international system. It is defined as “a platform for the integration of countries from Latin America and the Caribbean that emphasizes solidarity, complementarity, justice, and cooperation…” Evo Morales added Bolivia to this system in 2006, Daniel Ortega did likewise and incorporated Nicaragua in 2007, Rafael Correa added Ecuador in 2009 but retrieved in 2018, Manuel Zelaya added Honduras in 2008 but retrieved in 2010. The Caribbean States of Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent, the Grenadines, and Santa Lucia asked to be added.

The so-called “ALBA Summit Meeting 23” has simply been an emergency meeting of 21st Century Socialism’s dictators -all of them undergoing crises of popular rejection and misery- caused by the strategic defeat of Venezuela’s dictatorship in its electoral process of holding “elections under a dictatorship” with the vetting of Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia as the sole candidate from the opposition in the aftermath of the dictatorship’s disqualification -through criminal actions- of the winner candidate in the primary elections Maria Corina Machado and her designated replacement Corina Yoris. The dictator and also candidate Nicolas Maduro, with a popular rejection that exceeds 80%, is the sure loser in the upcoming elections of 28 July, unless the organized crime of 21st Century Socialism repeats operations as those executed in Venezuela in 2018, Bolivia in 2020, and Nicaragua in 2021.

The so-called “Declaration of the 23rd Summit Meeting of ALBA-TCP in Caracas” issued on 24 April of 2024, has 22 declarative and repetitive statements of support to the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, it also has antiimperialist and anti-European proclaims and ask the latter for “compensation for their colonialism and the horrors of slavery.” The “declaration” has complaints for sanctions imposed, protests for the identification of human rights violations perpetrated by dictatorships, their hidden protection to international terrorism, and more. The “declaration” has a central message in its Statement # 18 that states: “We salute the electoral process that will take place on 28 July of 2024 in Venezuela and ratify our respect for each country to elect its authorities, without any intervention or meddling of any type that attempts against the integrity and transparency of its democratic process.”

Dictatorships from 21st Century Socialism are not asking for “free and fair elections based on the concept of universal suffrage as an expression of the peoples’ sovereignty,” quite to the contrary, they are supplanting this universal human right and international legal obligations with an argument that may be correctly in form but not actually valid of “the right of every nation to elect its authorities without intervention of any type,” and adding a remark highlighting this to mean a democratic exercise by stating that each nation has the right “to a democratic process.”

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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