President Donald Trump has not quite turned America into a dictatorship, wrote Eduardo Porter in a lengthy analysis for The Washington Post — but many of his actions bear a striking resemblance to how Latin American dictators in the present and the recent past have maintained control.
One key way he is doing so, Porter wrote, is "forced disappearance."
"The U.N.’s Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance characterizes the practice as when officials of the government arrest, detain or abduct people, refuse to disclose their fate or whereabouts, and don’t even acknowledge that they have them, putting them beyond the protection of the law," he wrote.
It was commonplace in Chile under Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s — and it's what Trump did to around 100 Venezuelan migrants.
"They were detained, denied the chance to challenge their removal in court and summarily sent to an infamous prison in El Salvador, under cover of an 18th-century wartime emergency law of dubious current relevance," wrote Porter.
Trump characterizes them as murderous gang members, but offered them no trial to establish the facts — another common hallmark of banana republics.
The authoritarian regime in Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro, notably, has several key features in common with what Trump is doing now, Porter warned — and Venezuela he noted, was relatively stable and democratic for decades until Hugo Chavez and Maduro systematically dismantled all the institutions that give people a voice.
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"As Venezuelan observers will tell you, the Trump administration’s tactics closely mimic the standard patterns employed by a police state: It establishes a permanent state of exception to suspend civil rights to fight an absolute evil, be it crime, drugs or terrorism. It frames reestablishing security as its central goal, and it focuses repression on a population lacking a political constituency, such as poor slum-dwellers in Maduro’s case, or immigrants in Trump’s," wrote Porter.
Moreover, "Venezuela’s infamous civilian 'colectivos' are not part of the state but exercise violence at arm’s-length on its behalf. They look spookily like the Proud Boys, told by Trump to 'stand back and stand by' and who ultimately took it upon themselves to soothe the president’s grievances by assaulting Congress four years ago."
"It’s hard for Americans to believe that their country — the oldest constitutional democracy on the planet — could suddenly start behaving like a banana republic from 100 years ago. Even the most alarmed analysis of America’s dark political swerve has stopped short of claiming Trump is doing a full Pinochet," wrote Porter. Yet it's possible: "As researchers from the V-Dem Institute in Sweden put it in a research report last month, 'the USA could become the fastest autocratizing country in contemporary history that does not involve a coup d’état.'"
Many of America's institutions are still constraining Trump, Porter concluded, and he hasn't yet tried to invoke the Insurrection Act or use the military to crush dissent — but it seems to be on his mind.
"If he pulls it off, I bet Maduro will call with congratulations."
