Reviewing chilean “exceptionalism”
Once again it is useful to remember the golden rule of democracy: if the election is legitimate the ballot box is always respected, but at the same time the electorate is responsible of its decision.
Articles and opinion columns by Latin American analysts who take an unwavering stand for freedom, including members and directors of the IID.
Cuban dictatorship’s crimes against humanity & state-sponsored terrorism cannot remain unpunished
In response to the peaceful demonstrations by the Cuban people asking for FREEDOM, COUNTRY AND LIFE that began on July 11, 2021, Díaz-Canel made a public apology for the crimes against humanity that he instructed to be committed against the civilian population, calling for “combat “Against an unarmed people. The suppression of the internet is part of the state terrorism that the leaders and operators of the Cuban dictatorship are committing … The security of the Castro dictatorship and its institutionalized hitmen is impunity, against which democracies and the international system have the Obligation to identify the perpetrators so that crimes against humanity and state terrorism are punished.
The limits of political language
Today, our political discourse resembles gossiping. George Orwell, in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” But the language of political speak was not always as banal and devoid of substance.
Cuba: end of the rope?
Again the intractable Latin American elites held tight to the status quo. And slowly through the centuries the narrative that the state knows better than the individual took hold in the region.
‘Patria y Vida’
We are now witnessing massive protests across Cuba with protesters chanting ‘Patria y Vida,’ meaning ‘homeland and life.’ Patria y Vida is the theme of a song written by Cuban dissidents that has resonated with Cubans in dramatic contrast with the government’s slogan of ‘Patria o Muerte,’ or ‘homeland or death.’ The lyrics of Patria y Vida highlight the lack of freedom in Cuba. Patria y Vida has become the protester’s anthem.
Democracies from the world owe concrete actions to the Cuban nation.
The peaceful demonstrations that started on 11 July of 2021 asking for freedom, have shown the extraordinary courage and decision of the Cuban people and have revealed the dictatorship’s crimes against humanity, but they also have shown the apathy, fear, and weakness of democratic leaders and an international system that does not work.
Countries with political prisoners, persecuted and exiles, are dictatorships
With such a judicial system in existence today in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that is truly a system of judicialized persecution, citizens are imprisoned and exiled. The violation of human rights in 21st Century Socialism is fully documented and written in despicable laws, procedural legal records of judicial tribunals, and rulings and sentences dictated by judges, magistrates, and tribunals that are instruments for the violation of; human rights and basic individual freedoms, the “presumption of innocence”, the “legal due process”, the “retroactivity of the law”, the “impartiality of the judge” and more.
The Chilean constitutional convention and the elephant in the china shop
In the Chilean past, other constitutions have been imposed by one sector to the others and it would be extremely negative to repeat that history. After the 1988 plebiscite the opposing factions of that time were sharply divided, because one sector did not accept a full democracy and other did not like the predominance of market forces. To move to a basic agreement allowed for a very virtuous period as it is internationally recognized.
They sound alike, but they are not the same.
Ironically, while the American left argues for a Scandinavian socialist model, the Scandinavian countries have been moving away from their socialist model of the 1970s, for the last two decades. Today, countries like Denmark and Sweden score at the very top of economic freedom. This is telling because American politicians that label themselves as democratic socialists point to the Nordic countries as examples to follow. We are left to wonder if they are fundamentally ignorant or just deceitful.
Haiti: Chips are down for the Hemisphere.
In the post Covid 19 world when scarcity of public funds can affect armies throughout the hemisphere mercenary squads could mushroom. And most probably neither the OAS or the UN will do anything worthwhile to reverse course. We might as well end like Africa where the main trade passages are taken by organized crime.