When a Colombian-born American judge presided over the corrupt criminal trial of a U.S. president for the first time in history, many Americans couldn’t believe this was happening in their country. Rogue prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s case against President Donald Trump was nothing short of unjust political persecution and blatant lawfare. 

For Latin Americans, it was, unfortunately, more of the same. 

In 2021, former center-right Bolivian President Jeanine Añez was incarcerated and still faces 30-years in prison on trumped up “genocide” charges. Former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is facing false allegations of orchestrating a “coup” against the regime of Lula da Silva. Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was just formally charged with witness tampering after current President Gustavo Petro stalled the appointment of a new attorney general in Colombia and then allegedly used his intelligence to spy on the constitutional court.

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The common denominator is that the leftist ruling power in each country is weaponizing its legal system against its political opposition. 

This lawfare, along with informational and psychological warfare, is one of three methods of non-kinetic war employed by the Communist Party of China (CCP) who referred to lawfare as the use of weaponized judicial institutions to achieve strategic ends. 

In Latin America, where China has grown inordinate influence in the last twenty years, the strategic ends are to establish a new style of dictatorship, not concentrated around the presidency but focused on extra-legal, prosecutorial power for what many legal experts are calling, a juristocracia. 

This new wave of corruption is different from the Latin American left’s original subversion of democratic institutions to install socialist dictatorships in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. 

Unlike the “Pink Tide” of the past, the new wave of Marxist leaders in Latin America is creating a blueprint for burgeoning judicial dictatorships. In essence, lawfare is the latest weapon of the Latin American left to shift the region from fledgling democracies to repressive juristocracies that provide impunity to criminals and criminalize political opposition. 

Currently there are at least eight countries in Latin America that are in an intense political battle for control of the country’s national courts and top prosecutors. Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Honduras all face internal and external political pressure to either install or remove chief prosecutors and judges. 

And the Latin American left is capturing judicial institutions and expanding extra-legal prosecutorial powers to control everything from elections to free speech.

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The weaponization of government has spread from Latin America to the United States. A recent report by the House Judiciary Committee drew striking parallels from Brazil’s censorship regime to the Biden administration’s actions urging social media platforms to censor Democratic rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or silence critics like Tucker Carlson. These actions undermine the rule of law and weaken America’s moral standing at home and throughout the Americas. 

Make no mistake: the politicized trials against former President Donald Trump are interpreted by many in Latin America as emblematic of America’s decline as a superpower. The lawfare against President Trump is a sign that the United States has embraced the worst aspects of politicized legal systems all too common in Latin America. 

Members of the U.S. Congress should draw these parallels and continue to produce reports and hearings, like that of House Judiciary Committee, to raise awareness about the impact of these trials. Our allies and enemies are watching, especially those in Latin America.    

There is an old saying by the former Peruvian President Oscar Benavides: “To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law.” Until and unless this weaponization of the legal system against political enemies in our country ends, that old saying might become the new reality here in America.