In January, The Economist magazine said of Hugo Chavez and his allies in Latin America: “Today, the biggest threat to democracy in the region comes from leaders who, once elected, set about undermining it from within.”

Dictatorships are being established in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua by an alliance of self-avowed “21st-century socialist” leaders who utilize free elections to reach power and then set about destroying the very institutions of democracy that put them there.

This ALBA alliance, as it calls itself, has not only managed to survive as a retrograde movement in a modernizing hemisphere, but is now actively exporting its subversive model to neighboring countries.

This subversion has been possible, in part, because so little attention has been paid to its activities. In the U.S. House of Representatives on May 26, victims of the ALBA regimes will describe that pattern of oppression.

The conference, Legitimacy Lost: How 21st Century Socialism Subverts Democracy in Latin America, will examine how increasingly despotic regimes in the hemisphere have managed to cement themselves in power by systematically undermining any institution that could check or balance that power.

When challenged, the ALBA apologists cry that they were “democratically elected” — a mocking defense of the democracy that brought them to power only to be discarded once reached.

A free and fair election is an indispensable requirement for a viable democracy, but it is not its sole requirement. Any democratically elected leader who does not govern democratically forfeits the legitimacy conferred by elections.

Just as a priest is defrocked or a lawyer disbarred if he or she violates the standards of their office, in a true democracy a president triggers impeachment for equivalent violations. But among the leaders of the ALBA regimes, no such fear of impeachment exists as the oath of office has become merely the starting gun for changing the rules of the game.

As a former Supreme Court justice of Nicaragua lamented in this newspaper after Daniel Ortega became the latest ALBA ally to eliminate explicit constitutional barriers to his reelection, “This is the only country in the world where the court has declared the constitution unconstitutional.”

The objective of the Legitimacy Lost conference is to show that these incremental autocracies are not random repetitions of the historic cycles of upheaval that have defined Latin American politics in the past, but are part of a systematic plan of subversion being financed by Venezuelan oil money and directed by those, like the Castro brothers, who have long sought to destroy freedom if given the means and the opportunity.

The step-by-step subversion led by the Havana-Caracas axis and followed by the presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and others, includes the following measures:

• Stacking the judiciary and/or intimidation of independent jurists who might rule edicts unconstitutional or fail to properly “prosecute” political opponents.

• Gradual elimination of constitutional separation of powers, including removing any checks and balances to the executive branch and giving it effective control over the legislative and judicial branches.

• Harassment, intimidation and eventual neutralization or takeover of news media.

• Establishment of “official,” “national” or otherwise government-controlled civil institutions, such as labor unions or trade associations.

• Militarization of society, which includes indoctrination of students in the virtues of socialism, the creation of armed “people’s militias” to serve the ruling political party and the purging of the professional military to leave only loyalists within the ranks.

• Control of police forces by the ruling political party and the elimination of any independent citizen access to protection from abuse by government officials.

• Criminalization of peaceful dissent and of political differences.

This list, sad to say, is far from comprehensive. Nor are its internal control measures original, having all been used by 20th-century dictatorial regimes.

The question that will be addressed by speakers from Europe, the United States and Latin America on Capitol Hill on May 26 is whether 21st century democracy in Latin America can survive 21st-century socialism.

**Otto J. Reich is a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, assistant secretary of state for Latin America and senior staff of the National Security Council.