To restore freedom to political prisoners and exiles from the dictatorships/narco-states in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia
By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 01/02/2026
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Throughout the 21st century, the Americas witnessed the expansion of the Cuban dictatorship after Hugo Chávez rescued and joined forces with Fidel Castro. Thus was born Castro-Chavismo, also known as 21st-century socialism, which became the most successful transnational organized crime group. Employing state terrorism, it used the judicial system to justify repression with fabricated accusations, infamous laws, and prosecutors and judges who acted as executioners and hired killers. The victims of these crimes are the political prisoners, those persecuted, and exiles in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, who must be granted their freedom unconditionally and without impunity for their perpetrators.
The dictatorships of 21st-century socialism supplanted the legal system of democracy with constituent assemblies and reforms that institutionalized human rights violations, eliminated fundamental rights and guarantees, altered justice systems, replaced prosecutors and judges with their puppets, concentrated power, and institutionalized state terrorism and impunity. This model was already established in Cuba and was implemented in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, all under dictatorships, and even in countries that maintained their democracy, such as Argentina.
I have defined the “infamous law” as “a norm that, drafted and established following the formal procedure for its creation, violates human rights and fundamental freedoms in its object and content.” This concept corresponds to the systematic action of Castro-Chavismo to implement its system throughout Latin America. The purpose of the infamous laws is to establish the institutional framework to “judicialize repression”; these are laws to systematize “state terrorism,” which consists of “the commission of crimes by the government to generate fear in the population and thus achieve submissive behaviors that would otherwise be impossible.”
Through infamous laws, Castro-Chavismo orchestrated the replacement of democratic prosecutors and judges with operatives under its control. It installed "executioner or hitman prosecutors and judges." They are executioners because they "punish unjustly and mercilessly, obeying orders disguised as judicial decisions"; hitmen because "they are physical and character assassination killers, hired thugs who violate human rights." These executioner prosecutors, judges, and hitmen are criminals who falsify documents, commit perjury, impersonate officials, and more, and are currently serving in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
Those imprisoned, exiled, and persecuted are accused of having committed the most serious crimes for being leaders and/or denouncing crimes perpetrated by those in power in dictatorships/narco-states. They are victims of false accusations, persecution, imprisonment, convictions, confiscation of property, and the subjection of their families to extortion and defenselessness. The oppressors call it "vaccine" to ensure that no one else dares to oppose the regime.
It is the judicialization of political persecution and the criminalization of the opposition or dissent. Instead of the forceful operations of the dictatorships of the last century, Castro-Chavismo uses laws, prosecutors and judges, the media it controls, and the entire state apparatus to fabricate narratives that turn the victims of the dictatorship into criminals. They assassinate their reputations, and if they don't force them into exile or underground, they imprison them to subject them to torture, abuse, and even death in detention.
Political and civic leaders, journalists, military personnel, religious figures, women, men, children, nationals and foreigners—no one is exempt from repression. If the victim avoids imprisonment, the persecution becomes transnational because they use the legal standing of the country they control to request extraditions and spread slander by repeating the narrative they have created to undermine the possibility of protection. They perpetrate transnational assassinations such as that of Venezuelan Lieutenant Ronald Ojeda, kidnapped and killed in Chile; the murders of Nicaraguans Gerardo de Jesús Gutiérrez, Rodolfo Rojas, and Santiago Rivera Müller in Honduras; Jaime Luis Ortega and Roberto Samcam in Costa Rica; Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador; and more.
Today there are 1,204 political prisoners in Cuba, certified by Prisoners Defenders; in Venezuela, 711 remain according to Foro Penal; in Nicaragua, 62 are verified by the Mecanismo; and in Bolivia, more than 200 remain according to the Global Human Rights League. Furthermore, the so-called “release” is not freedom, but only conditional. They remain subject to the infamous trials that led to their imprisonment, are granted provisional release or house arrest as a “benefit,” are prohibited from making statements or recounting the atrocities they suffered, are extorted through their families, and more. They are not in prison, but they have suffered civil death.
After the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, the dismantling of the Venezuelan dictatorship/narco-state began with the release of political prisoners as a first step. Although Delcy Rodríguez announced an amnesty and the closure of El Helicoide prison, freedom is not simply that. Trials must be dropped, exiles and those persecuted through fabricated legal proceedings—both civilian and military—must be included, the infamous laws must be repealed, and there can be no impunity for human rights violators, the perpetrators, and the operators of state terrorism.
*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy
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