The transition as a manipulation by dictatorships to buy time

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 26/04/2026

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The dictatorships of 21st-century socialism are falling. Cuba's is dying under an ultimatum, counting down the days; Venezuela's is in the process of being dismantled; Nicaragua's is exposed under escalating sanctions; and Bolivia's has lost power. But all are applying the rule of "ceding ground to buy time," hoping to provoke some event that will distract or weaken the US government, or that Trump will become president for the 47th time. These dictatorships have transformed the concept of transition into a manipulative narrative to buy time while clinging to power.

The end of the dictatorships that controlled Latin America throughout this century is a priority for the Trump administration. The need to restore U.S. domestic and international security has identified the centers of attack as the 21st-century socialist dictatorships under Cuba, with Venezuela as its main base. The U.S. National Security Strategy, published in November 2025, is the guiding document for the geopolitical changes underway.

The central issue is that the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, and their para-dictatorial governments in Brazil under Lula, Mexico under López Obrador and now Sheinbaum, and Colombia under Petro, under the guise of leftist, progressive, populist, and anti-imperialist rhetoric, are transnational organized crime regimes. They have supplanted politics with crime in political power, politics, and government.

All the dictatorships of 21st-century socialism, or “Castro-Chavismo,” are narco-states that sponsor and protect terrorism. They serve as bases for extra-hemispheric dictatorships like those of Iran, Russia, and China, institutionalizing human rights violations and wielding power through state terrorism, with political prisoners and exiles, massacres, torture, and assassinations, in order to subjugate their populations indefinitely. Those who hold power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, under this system, have perpetrated virtually every crime defined in their countries' penal codes, international law, and crimes against humanity.

The dismantling of 21st-century socialist dictatorships in the Americas is exemplified by Operation "Spear of the South," the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro, the "Shield of the Americas," and more. This includes the fight against narcoterrorism, the control of forced migration, anti-narcotics operations, the dismantling of cartels, combating transnational organized crime groups, the dismantling of conspiracies and manipulated electoral campaigns, the capture of drug kingpins, the monitoring of financial transactions, and a long list of other measures currently underway.

The breaking point for the dictatorships was the arrest of Nicolás Maduro—now the imprisoned Maduro facing justice—on January 3, 2016. Since then, Venezuela has been under the tutelage of the United States, which has undertaken the difficult strategy of dismantling the dictatorship through the very mafiosos who comprise it, with a three-stage agenda: stabilization (preventing the collapse of the state by controlling oil sales), recovery (rebuilding the oil industry with opening to investment, releasing political prisoners, and allowing the return of exiles), and transition (holding free elections and consolidating democracy).

In less than four months, progress on the agenda is remarkable, but it's crucial to note that the "tutela government" is delaying, maneuvering, and doing things half-heartedly to avoid free elections, because elections are what bring about a change of government and its effective separation from power. Their strategy is to buy time by partially ceding ground to maintain their grip on power, which is why it's urgent to expedite the elections, as change will only occur with a new government that is not part of the dictatorial system.

The Cuban dictatorship, crippled since losing control of Venezuela, intends to negotiate a pseudo-modernization of its system with the United States while retaining power. The aim is to change the model so that nothing changes until Trump leaves, thus repeating the strategy of buying time that has allowed them to attack the United States and the Americas for 67 years. Trump's ultimatum can only be aimed at ending the regime, which is the only possible change for the national security of the United States and of democracies.

The Nicaraguan dictatorship is being exposed; it feels the sanctions and pressures within the framework of the new geopolitics, but it intends to resist by buying time and relying on the powerful private economic groups with which it coexists. The end of the Cuban dictatorship will mark the end of Ortega and Murillo.

In Bolivia, the dictator left, but not the dictatorship. The 21st-century socialist system that supplanted the Republic with a plurinational state, that tried to destroy the Bolivian nation by creating 36 distinct nationalities, that established a narco-state, and that subjected the country to foreign powers, remains intact. There is still hope that President Rodrigo Paz will bring about change.

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

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