IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 41

Burmese generals is not so unusual in
the contemporary dictatorships. Other
experiences followed the same pattern
defined by history: the very top of the
power taking the first steps towards
transition.
Dictatorships are always trying to sell
the image of a corporation with ironclad
internal unity and unshakable will. Such
image has successfully managed to
endure for years, but nothing is more
deceptive. In the contemporary world,
social phenomena suggest another
functional
way.
Although
the
dictatorships hide their weaknesses as
much as possible, the changes in the
internal and/or external conditions that
secretly and essentially support them
led to the dissolution, as if by magic, of
the much-displayed unity. Then, the
dictatorships appear divided by narrow
interests and secret struggles. That´s the
beginning of a hasty end.
The collapse of the former socialist bloc
in Eastern Europe perfectly fits the
profile. Except for Romania, all
European communist dictatorships
collapsed softly. It was surprising to the
contemporaries, who were expecting a
fierce resistance by the forces that had
tenaciously defended the model of a
closed society. All the armed forces and
the political police, well-trained and
ready to face any threat against the
communist order (as it had happened in
East Germany, Hungary, Poland and
Czechoslovakia), became useless at the
real moment of change, when the key
supportive factor disappeared: the
Soviet
willingness
to
militarily
intervene
for
preventing
any
transformation of the totalitarian states.
That´s why the highly trained repressors
gave up without provoking a popular
blood bath. On the contrary, they
peacefully surrendered their weapons
and quietly disbanded. There were
neither revenge nor firing squad against
the bulk of the Communist Parties´
chiefs, the same cadres who had
encouraged the army and the police

against the people for years.
Such a behavior was awarded with a
soft oblivion in a silent consensus after
years of ferocious tyranny. There were
only a few immediate legal proceedings
because of crimes committed by
notorious members of the old regimes.
The criminal convictions and sentences
were even less remarkable, both in
number of people and years in jail.
Cynicism?
Indifference
by
an
overwhelming majority of victims and
victimizers? Or simply a desire to
finally start living and making sense
without constantly thinking about
running away from the country as the
only solution?
One way or another, when the time
comes, the nations must take a decision:
either arresting the vast majority of the
people (who have a desire to start
expanding in pursue of progress) and
making a comprehensive review of past
for establishing the degrees of
culpability of everyone (unfortunately,
at some point or during much of the
time, the people are accomplices of the
dictatorship they suffer) and bringing all
perpetrators and collaborators to justice,
or just facing the future falling on them
with their benefits, but also lashing out
hard against all the accumulated
backwardness due to the prolonged
despotism.
Examples in our continent
Even
the
numerous
right-wing
dictatorships in Latin America curiously
repeated the same intrinsic pattern of
the totalitarian dictatorships that
collapsed in Eastern Europe. Like them,
all military right-wing dictatorships
dissolved one after another from within
after the radical end of a supportive
external condition: The Cold War.
Could we describe the same behavior to
explain why, thirty years before, the
Trujillo dictatorship was put to an end
in the Dominican Republic? It was a
right-wing
authoritarian
regime
imposed by a caudillo, but with big

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