*

 

Ricardo F. Morín

January 13, 2026

Oakland Park, Fl.

Author’s Note

This installment continues the diagnostic examination of Venezuela’s political condition and focuses on the ethical and institutional consequences that emerge when authority, governance, and accountability are no longer aligned.  Rather than advancing prescriptions, it examines how the degradation of human rights, the normalization of violence, and the diffusion of responsibility function as systemic conditions within a prolonged authoritarian context.  The inquiry remains situated within a broader historical pattern, attentive to structures rather than events and to consequences rather than intentions.

 

Chapter XVII

 

The Fourth Issue

 

On Human Rights

 

1

 

Venezuela’s modern political history has been marked by recurring skepticism toward collective institutions and a persistent substitution of personal authority for shared civic frameworks.  Over time, this pattern has contributed to the displacement of trust in freedom as a lived condition rather than an abstract principle.  In such contexts, human rights do not disappear rhetorically;  they lose their operational force.  Their absence becomes visible not in formal declarations, but in the diminished capacity of individuals to act without fear, to participate without coercion, and to sustain dignity without dependence.

 

2

 

Human rights function diagnostically as thresholds rather than aspirations.  Where they are upheld, individuals retain agency within social and political life;  where they are suspended, social potential contracts regardless of available resources.  Venezuela’s prolonged crisis demonstrates that material abundance alone does not produce freedom.  Without institutional guarantees securing bodily integrity, political participation, and legal equality, democratic development looses operative continuity, and social life reorganizes itself around survival rather than possibility.

 

3

 

Isolation—whether political, ideological, or institutional—accelerates this contraction.  When governments or social groups withdraw from accountability, corruption ceases to be an anomaly and becomes a governing mechanism.  In Venezuela, prolonged isolation from democratic norms and international oversight has coincided with the loss of social trust as an operative condition and the normalization of arbitrariness.  From a diagnostic standpoint, the State’s primary responsibility is not moral leadership but the protection of social conditions that allow individuals to exercise meaningful choice.  Approaches such as the framework of capabilities articulate this responsibility not as charity, but as an institutional obligation to preserve the material and political preconditions of dignity.  ^[1]

 

4

 

At the core of human rights lies liberty understood in dual form:  protection from violence and access to the material conditions required for survival.  These dimensions are inseparable.  Political conflict is not evidence of social failure;  it is an expected feature of plural societies.  What distinguishes authoritarian systems is not conflict itself, but the suppression of ethical constraints governing how conflict is addressed.  Where power replaces reciprocity, and coercion substitutes for legitimacy, human rights cease to function as safeguards and instead become symbolic artifacts detached from lived reality.  ^[2]

 

---

Endnotes — Chapter XVII

 

§ 3

 

• [1] Nussbaum, Martha C., Women and Human Development:  The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4–14, 71–72, 114–123.

 

§ 4

 

• [2] Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge:  Harvard University Press (1971), 111, 337–338, 511, 515, 545.

 

---

Chapter XVIII

 

The Fifth Issue

 

On the Nature of Violence

 

1

 

Violence disrupts social order not only through physical harm but through the collapse of accountability that enables it.  Its regulation depends on two interdependent structures:  the social contract and governance.  The social contract establishes the conditions under which individuals relinquish certain freedoms in exchange for protection and justice.  Governance operationalizes that contract by translating authority into predictable, constrained action.  When governance fails—whether through incapacity, corruption, or deliberate distortion—violence ceases to be exceptional and becomes systemic.

 

2

 

The distinction between legitimate force and illegitimate violence is structural rather than rhetorical.  Legitimate force is bounded by law, proportionality, and accountability;  it exists to preserve the social contract.  Illegitimate violence arises when power is exercised arbitrarily, severed from ethical constraint and institutional oversight.  Historical revolutions demonstrate that when governance collapses entirely, violence may emerge as a substitute rather than a solution.  Such substitutions rarely restore order;  instead, they entrench instability, break authority into non-accountable centers, and prolong social recovery across generations.

 

3

 

In contemporary Venezuela, violence has become an instrument of political preservation rather than public protection.  State forces and allied militias have been deployed repeatedly to suppress dissent, particularly during the nationwide protests of 2017 and 2024.  These actions resulted in deaths, widespread injuries, mass detentions, and the systematic targeting of opposition figures.  Prominent political leaders were imprisoned or forced into exile, while judicial institutions—including the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia—functioned not as safeguards but as mechanisms legitimizing repression through legal form.  ^{[1]  [2]  [3]}

 

4

 

Official narratives frame such actions as defenses of national security.  Diagnostically, however, they indicate the dissolution of the social contract.  When the State directs violence inward, legitimacy collapses even if authority remains.  Governance becomes performative, law becomes procedural, and violence is normalized as a method of rule.

 

5

 

Freedom persists not through force but through sustained resistance to the normalization of violence.  Societies that fail to interrogate coercion—whether imposed or tolerated—gradually adapt to it.  Diagnostic vigilance requires recognizing how violence migrates from exceptional response to ordinary governance, reshaping institutions, expectations, and civic behavior in the process.

 

6

 

Where accountability is restored, violence can be restrained within ethical bounds.  Where it is absent, violence becomes self-perpetuating.  The preservation of justice, therefore, depends less on moral resolve than on the reconstruction of institutions capable of enforcing limits on power.

 

---

Endnotes — Chapter XVIII

 

§ 3

 

• [1] Newman, William, “Venezuelan Opposition Leader Leopoldo López Sentenced to Prison Over Protest,” New York Times, September 10, 2015.

• [2] “Venezuelan Opposition Politician Manuel Rosales Arrested,” BBC News, October 15, 2015.

• [3] “Venezuela Police Raid Arrests Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma,” BBC News, February 20, 2015.

 

---

Chapter XIX

 

The Ultimate Issue

 

On the Persistence of Injustice

 

1

 

The durability of injustice within any political system depends less on the intentions of leaders than on the distribution of accountability.  When responsibility is concentrated at the top and diffused below, political life becomes insulated from consequence.  In such systems, citizens are rendered spectators rather than participants, and governance proceeds without corrective pressure.  ^[1]

 

2

 

Apathy is not merely a personal disposition;  it is a political condition produced by sustained exclusion from meaningful agency.  Where participation carries risk without influence, disengagement becomes rational.  Over time, this withdrawal stabilizes injustice by removing resistance from the system.

 

3

 

Justice and freedom are not static achievements;  they emerge from continuous negotiation among competing interests within constrained frameworks.  Authoritarian systems thrive on illusion precisely because they eliminate negotiation and substitute certainty for adaptability.  Effective governance depends on the capacity to absorb conflict without suppressing it.  ^[2]

 

4

 

Individual agency remains relevant not as moral heroism but as structural participation.  When citizens retain the capacity to recognize difference, confront bias, and act within shared institutions, injustice encounters friction.  The restoration of justice depends on reconstituting conditions under which individuals can act without fear and without illusion, and on reconnecting personal responsibility to collective structures rather than isolating it within conscience alone.  ^[3]

 

---

Endnotes — Chapter XIX

§ 1

• [1] Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (1994): 55–69.

 § 3

• [2] Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom (New York:  Knopf, 1999), 123–137, 146–159, 282–287.

§ 4

• [3] Nussbaum, Martha C., Women and Human Development:  The Capabilities Approach, (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66–72, 104–110, 124–130.

---