A Dictator Is a Dictator Is a Dictator
Let’s hope that prior to any debate, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Salvadorans can all agree on one thing: we’re all suffering under dictatorships.
By Oscar Martinez (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – I write this column fed up with the simple-minded official ditty that Nayib Bukele, his functionaries, and his faithful followers repeat to the point of exhaustion in my country of El Salvador: that the majority elected him, that the majority continue approving of him, hence he’s not a dictator but a democratic leader elected by the majority.
I write this sick and tired of the many Latin Americans who have suffered dictatorships, yet buy this joke. I write this column a bit worn out as well from being the new kid in the Latin American Dictatorship Club, and after hearing Venezuelans repeat that after six years in power, he’s just getting started, that maybe he’s not really a dictator yet. And the Nicaraguans who tell me that Bukele hasn’t needed to use violence; of the Cubans raising their ancestral complaint that they were forgotten for decades, and that our situation “is barely three hairs of a beard” compared to theirs. I sense honest affection in these conversations among exiles most of the time, but on some other occasions also a little spite and condescension.
Beginning with the first argument, the thousands of Salvadorans and non-Salvadorans who bring up Bukele’s popularity, well, I want to say the obvious: that a democracy isn’t a popularity contest, that it doesn’t consist of showing up at a school every five years, standing before a small box, then folding up a little paper and sticking it in. A system like that should be termed a “paperocracy.” Instead, a democracy is a set of checks and balances so that the others – those who don’t think like you, those who are less numerous than those who think like you, those who lost, the minorities – can also live with dignity and share your same rights. That popularity isn’t a blank check to do anything you feel like and leap over the Constitution, to illegally reform the other state powers to gain control over them and deform the elections while you hold power, locking up anyone you want and putting in the judges you want, and extending your period in power.
Latin America is full of examples of democratic leaders who left power with scant popularity; and of dictators like Pinochet who left power after decades of torture, disappearances and assassinations, despite the fact that, even so, nearly half the voters wanted him to continue.
An election is just that, an election. A survey is that – a survey. A turn of the screw in the system, nothing more. What comes later, when the one chosen begins to change everything to serve him or herself, to control everything, to convert the other into enemies and persecute them, and to continue changing the laws without stopping, that’s the chosen one’s own decision, not a mandate from that imaginary entity called “the people.” As journalist Maruja Torres supposedly said once: “dictatorships are like bicycles: if they stop, they fall.”
Hence, they continue pedaling in the wrong direction, while many people stand at the side of the road applauding, cheering on the ascent of someone who will spit on them from the summit. I recall the magnificent Salvadoran play called “The Phenomenon,” which ended with an eloquent phrase from the main character: “one for one, and everyone else can go eat shit.”
But a dictator is a dictator is a dictator… Even if they keep pedaling, even if they’re applauded along the road. They’ll see soon enough what happens when the applause stops. One for one… And you already know what befalls the rest.
Now, I must address the Latin Americans from the Dictatorship Club. What do I have to tell them, since it’s they who come from what will be the future for Salvadorans? Shall I tell them that we were reading each step of dictator Daniel Ortega as if it were a move that would shortly be applied to us? And was applied. And will be applied. What should I say to my fellow journalists who are Venezuelans, since they’re the deans of investigative journalism from exile in this century? When I stand before them, I get out paper to take notes on.
And to the Cubans, when for decades many of us didn’t believe that was a dictatorship, but said it was a revolution and sang fervently at the top of our lungs choruses we didn’t understand. What can I tell them? I know – forgive me. Forgive me for so much cynicism. Forgive me for having left you all alone for so long, for having celebrated your oppressors and sung the songs that many of you only heard in hate rallies orchestrated by your tyranny. Forgive me for having condemned you with our ingenuousness as “non-persons,” as writer Reinaldo Arenas said. Forgive me for so much silence.
I do hope, however, that those petty arguments tinged with ideology that are discussed about in exile bars and expatriate gatherings will gradually disappear, and that the leftist from El Salvador, still clad in his red T-shirt, will acknowledge aloud for one damn time, 66 years after the triumph of the revolution, that Cuba is a dictatorship, beyond the US embargo, far beyond; and that it has condemned so many to death, to the sea, to exile, to prison; and that the Cuban in Miami who votes for Trump will say without blushing that Bukele, Trump’s friend, is also a dictator. Much younger than the other old geezers, but a dictator nonetheless; more extravagantly dressed than his bearded counterparts—which is saying something—but a dictator nonetheless; more right-wing for now, but a dictator. Yes, even if he is a dictator who is against their dictatorship, he is a dictator.
Because a dictator is a dictator is a dictator. Even when they’re so different, and it can be said that the Latin American dictators have many differences. But if speaking about dictatorships means sanitizing those dictators you like and lashing out at the rest, then every argument becomes as tiny and annoying as the noise of an insect.
May we all leave behind the discomfort and indifference among dictator’s victims. Just as it must have stung the Cuban and Venezuelan for decades that so many foreigners would go around defending the revolutionary projects of tremendous incompetents and tyrants they never suffered under, we Salvadorans are bitterly surprised when, in our exile, a Cuban or Venezuelan congratulates us for Bukele.
As Churchill said, among so many other things: “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”
And because a dictator is a dictator is a dictator.
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Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.