Installed governments and dictators: the puppets of the North

Governments installed and dictated: the puppets of the North

Talking about “national sovereignty” in Africa or Latin America always requires adding a footnote, a silent warning. Because although official discourse proclaims independence, in practice our strategic decisions have been tied down, monitored, and often directly dictated from abroad. From the Cold War to the present day, many governments in the Global South have been shaped—and dismantled—by the interests of the Global North: the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and, more recently, the European bloc.

Political freedom, that great, sacred word, has been more fiction than reality.

How is it decided who really governs?

External control is rarely visible to the naked eye. It doesn't always come with tanks in the streets or generals seizing power. Today it's more sophisticated, more surgical, cleaner in appearance, but infinitely more damaging.

Northern control operates through a combination of political, economic, media, and military mechanisms that shape our countries without many citizens noticing.

These are their main tools:

1. Coups d'état and political assassinations

The most brutal and direct form of control.

When a leader attempts to reclaim natural resources, alter geopolitical alliances, or challenge historical dependency, the response is often swift and violent. Intelligence agencies—such as the CIA in the United States or the French DGSE—have funded, planned, or facilitated coups throughout the Global South.

Emblematic examples:

1. Salvador Allende (Chile, 1973): overthrown for daring to nationalize and redistribute.

2. Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso, 1987): assassinated after challenging the African neocolonial order.

3. Patrice Lumumba (Congo, 1961): eliminated for demanding control of Congolese copper and uranium.

The formula is repeated: the leader who tries to use national wealth for his own people ends up being considered "dangerous" to the powers.

2. Functional dictatorships

When it is not possible to impose an obedient democratic leader, an authoritarian one is installed. These dictatorships do not arise spontaneously; they are sown and nurtured from the outside.

• Pinochet in Chile,

• Videla in Argentina,

• Mobutu in Zaire

They all shared the same goal: to ensure the unimpeded flow of natural resources and foreign investment. While the population was repressed, the doors were opened to massive privatizations, enormous debts, and concessions that impoverished entire generations.

Internal repression always coincided with a complicit silence in the northern capitals.

Training and co-opting of elites: Perhaps the finest and most effective mechanism. Thousands of young leaders, military personnel, economists, and politicians from the Global South are trained in universities, foundations, and military academies in the Global North.

When they return to their countries:

• They think like Europe,

• They govern like Washington,

• They legislate like Paris,

• but they manage the poverty of their own people.

  
  

They are elites trained to maintain the neocolonial structure without the need for direct intervention.

Conclusion:

What remains is a political map under tutelage. Presidents can be elected by their people, yes. But they only hold office as long as they don't cross the red line of imperial interests.

When a leader decides to prioritize their people instead of prioritizing multinational corporations, history is already written:

First come the smear campaigns, then the assassination attempts, then the coups, the economic sanctions, the financial strangulation, and, in extreme cases, death.

Sovereignty, then, is not a right: it is a daily battle against forces that never appear in the news, but that decide who lives, who governs, and who falls.

Glossary:

CIA — Acronym for the Central Intelligence Agency . It is the main foreign intelligence service of the United States, historically known for orchestrating coups and covert operations in Latin America and other regions to align governments with Washington's interests.

Co-optation — The process by which a dominant power or group assimilates leaders, intellectuals, or elites from another group (in this case, from the Global South) so that they adopt its ideology and serve its interests without the need for force. Example: Training future presidents in universities in the Global North so that they govern with a foreign mindset.

DGSE — Acronym for the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (General Directorate of External Security). It is France's intelligence agency, mentioned in the text for its historical influence and operations in former French colonies, especially in Africa.

Functional dictatorships — A concept that describes authoritarian regimes installed or tolerated by foreign democratic powers not because of ideological affinity, but because they guarantee stability for the plundering of resources and foreign investments.

Cold War — A period of geopolitical tension (approximately 1947–1991) between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the context of this article, it refers to the era in which the Global South was the chessboard where powerful nations installed and removed governments to gain influence.

Magnicide — The assassination of a person holding a high-ranking political office, such as a president or prime minister. The text cites it as an extreme tool for eliminating leaders who challenge the established order (cases of Lumumba, Sankara, or Allende).

Global South — A geopolitical term that groups together developing countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. It is used to highlight their shared position of economic and historical disadvantage vis-à-vis the industrialized powers of the "North."