There is no possible technical discussion or ideological nuance that counts: what is at stake is a moral definition. While one part of the continent is beginning to shake off the yoke of 21st-century socialism, another one —the usual one— keeps defending the indefensible, downplaying the horror, and betting on others' failure as a political strategy. It is not a circumstantial deviation. It is in its DNA.
21st-century socialism did not leave "alternative models" or "popular experiences." It left political prisoners, massive exile, and institutional terror. It left states turned into control apparatuses, devastated economies, and broken societies. Venezuela is the most brutal example and, at the same time, the mirror that Kirchnerism refuses to look into. El Helicoide, with more than 850 political prisoners, is the ESMA of Chavismo: torture, persecution, disappearances, prisoners of conscience, and a regime that turned the state into a criminal machine. That is what for years they justified, minimized, or directly applauded from Buenos Aires. They did it in the name of a supposed "popular sovereignty" while millions of Venezuelans fled hunger, repression, and fear.
For this reason, Nicolás Maduro's capture is not an isolated event or just another episode on the regional political board. It is a paradigm shift. It is the sign that the continent is beginning to close a stage of planned misery, massive exile, and institutional terror. It is the beginning of the end of a narrative that for two decades romanticized dictatorships while demonizing imperfect but free democracies. The veil of the narrative is beginning to fall. When the narrative falls, the moral responsibility of those who kept silent, downplayed, or looked the other way is exposed.
In the face of that, there is no possible neutrality. Whoever keeps silent, consents. Whoever downplays, is an accomplice. Kirchnerism is once again, once more, on the wrong side of history. Not by mistake, but by conviction. Not out of ignorance, but because of ideological affinity. Its silence was never prudence: it was calculation. Its lukewarmness was never balance: it was complicity.
