The so-called “troika of tyranny” in Latin America – the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua –, coined by John Bolton, National Security Advisor during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in reality was always a misleading simplification.
Despite sharing some common elements due to their authoritarian resilience, the dictatorships of the 21st century were never a homogeneous block and beyond their strengths and weaknesses, their particularities merit the design of differentiated policies towards each country, as is indeed happening in Trump’s second presidency, although always under the exclusive seal of MAGA interest. Three months after the removal of Nicolás Maduro by force from the United States, the mirror of Venezuela reveals that the paths of the improvised doctrine Donroe They do not necessarily lead to a transition to democracy.
Cuba has been a single-party authoritarian regime for more than 60 years, Party-Army-State, whose inefficient model of centralized state economy, aggravated by the US embargo, depends on a gigantic external economic subsidy, first from the USSR and then from Chavista Venezuela. Before reaching the stage of collapse that the country has been in for several years, the Cuban regime ruled out or was incapable of carrying out profound economic and political reforms when they were inevitable, after the “special period” in the nineties, during the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2014, and after the 2021 protests, which today represents its greatest vulnerability to the “maximum pressure” of Donald Trump.
Venezuela, under the populist regime of Hugo Chávez, became the main economic support of Cuba and only partially of Nicaragua until 2017. With Maduro, as heir and coordinator of an authoritarian corporation, the economic failure and political repression continued that caused a mass exodus, crowned by the monumental theft of the 2024 elections. The United States military intervention removed Maduro from power, but left intact the Chavista regime led by Delcy Rodríguez, to control oil and natural resources in a authoritarian “innovation” that Luz Mely Reyes describes as “a kind of 21st century colonialism.”
Nicaragua is a dynastic dictatorship, converted into a matrimonial “codictatorship.” Ironically, its fragility lies in the extreme centralization of power in a personalist regime that, like that of the Somozas in the last century, depends on a family. According to the latest report of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem 2025), Nicaragua is the least democratic country in Latin America, even below Venezuela and Cuba, and ranks fifth in the ranking of the worst autocracies in the world after Eritrea (179), North Korea (178), Myanmar (177), Afghanistan (176), and Nicaragua (175). However, Nicaragua enjoys greater economic autonomy than Cuba and Venezuela, it does not have oil resources that attract the voracity of Trump’s policy, but there are no blackouts either, the economy is not collapsing, but rather there is economic stability, and its dynamism depends on private sector exports to the United States market which, combined with family remittances from migrants in that country, represent more than 50% of the national economy.
With the fall in oil prices between 2018 and 2020, the three Latin American dictatorships survived the decline of the Bolivarian Alliance (Alba) as a club of autocracies aligned with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, immune to diplomatic pressures from the OAS and the European Union.
Since 2025, the United States’ policy of force has attempted to fill the political vacuum left by the impunity of dictatorships and the failure of the democratic agenda. The capture of Maduro after the military intervention of the United States led to a regime supervised by Donald Trump, which closed the key to Venezuela’s economic cooperation with Cuba, and is cutting military and security ties. Under the United States oil blockade, Cuba does not have an economic outlet, but it still has reserves of state repression to try to contain a new outbreak of social protest, while negotiations begin between Secretary of State Marco Rubio with the business consortium GAESA—the Army-party-businessmen fusion—which is projected as the core of the stability that Trump demands in a transition, whatever its outcome.
The fall of Maduro in Venezuela has not had any economic impact in Nicaragua, but the political blow has been devastating for Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The message loud and clear is that when faced with the determination to use force, even outside international law, the codictators are expendable and there is no international ally that can provide them with protection. And on the other hand, it warns the Nicaraguan opposition that the end of the codictators does not necessarily lead to the restoration of freedom and democracy, but rather would be generating some perverse incentives among those aspiring to inherit power at the top of the regime, while placing the country in a waiting period. Political scientist Manuel Orozco, researcher at the Inter-American Dialogue, summarizes it this way: “there is no domino effect ―after Venezuela and Cuba“But Nicaragua remains on the United States agenda.”
The example of Venezuela triggered the paranoia of the co-dictator Rosario Murillo, who ordered greater control, surveillance and repression against potential opponents, including the more than 10,000 deportees who have been secretly received, as part of her collaboration with Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. And although there is no indication that there is any official negotiation with the United States, in the political and civic opposition in exile, frenetic activity has been unleashed under an unappealable reasoning: if in the Venezuelan transaction Trump is excluding the opposition led by María Corina Machado, after Edmundo González massively won the 2024 election and prevents them from returning to the country, to maintain authoritarian control with Delcy Rodríguez, what could be expected in Nicaragua, where the opposition leadership is not only dispersed, but also, despite the majority rejection against the regime, has not managed to validate its legitimacy, and cannot demonstrate freely under the police state?
For this reason, among the five opposition platforms – Monteverde Democratic Concertation (CxL, Unamos, UNAB), Espacio de Diálogo, Nicaraguan University Alliance, PUDE-Ruta por el Cambio, and Gran Confederación Opositora -, urgent calls have arisen to create a “Transitional Commission”, agree on a democratic transition roadmapand assume peremptory demands for unity in action to get out of the dictatorship.
As the political scientist and former political prisoner highlights Félix Maradiaga, founder of Ruta por el Cambio, Nicaragua has an opportunity that it cannot waste: “expecting the Trump administration to do the work for us opponents would be a mistake. Washington can exert pressure, but the legitimacy of the opposition and minimal cohesion are tasks that only Nicaraguans can solve. Outsourcing those responsibilities is political abdication.”
After Venezuela decreed an amnesty that has freed 503 political prisoners, and Cuba announced a pardon for 2,000 prisoners, demand has increased for the release of all political prisoners in Nicaragua, the cessation of religious persecution, and the suppression of a repressive system that has stripped more than 450 citizens of their nationality, keeps hundreds de facto stateless, and promotes transnational repression.
The million-dollar question is, how does the power of a police State to restore democratic freedoms break, from exile, or how does it fracture, from within, an authoritarian power that has managed to maintain total control, despite the wounds and fractures caused by the internal purges of the dynastic succession of Rosario Murillo?
Without a doubt, Donald Trump’s actions have decreed the countdown for dictators, but not for the dismantling of dictatorships. The democratic transition will only be possible if, in addition to external pressure, a legitimate opposition leadership is imposed, capable of organizing and mobilizing civic resistance in conditions of repression; political incentives to form a national alliance that includes dissidents and former allies of the regime around a minimum transition program; and an international, Latin American and European environment that places democracy with justice without impunity at the forefront, as a counterweight to Donald Trump’s transactional doctrine.
*A version of this article was originally published on The Country.
