 Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, a popular resistance broadcast of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Black Alliance for Peace Haiti Americas team, Code Pink, Common Frontiers, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Friends of Latin America, Interreligious Task Force on Central America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast Thursdays at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, right here on YouTube Live, including channels for the Convo Couch, Popular Resistance, and Code Pink. Post-broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram, Rad Indy Media, and now under podcasts at popularresistance.org. Today's episode we have a special broadcast partner, our guest is from Venezuela Analysis and I'll introduce him to you in just a minute. The episode is Mexico, Expanding Democracy and Defending Sovereignty. Our guest is Jose Luis Granado-Seja. He is a journalist with Venezuela Analysis and the Mexico Solidarity Project. So welcome Jose Luis. So happy to have you with us. Finally, we've been talking about having you on as a guest for a while, but I'm so glad it worked out. I should tell the audience one of the reasons that I just want to share this because it's such a great accomplishment of Jose Luis is that one of the reasons we have not been able to get him on the program as a guest until now is that he's been working on a graduate degree in human rights. So he just finished his studies and so we have him as a guest tonight. So let me give all of you just a quick background as to what we're going to talk about. So here we go. The International Press is again bludgeoning Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, this time accusing him of attacking the country's democratic institutions. It's a baseless charge intended to undermine a government that refuses total obedience to U.S. hegemony. On February 23rd, an electoral reform bill received its final approval in the Mexican Senate en route to being signed into law. The National Electoral Institute, EME, as we call it here in Mexico, is widely recognized to be riddled with excess expenditure and a top heavy bureaucracy. The new law simply mandates similar cost-saving measures to those that the administration of President Andres Manuel López Obrador has applied to other governmental departments. It eliminates duplicated functions at the local and district level and fuses certain higher level job descriptions. It also rains in eye-catching top salaries. And that's just a start as to what it does. So with that, I'd like to have Jose Luis join our conversation. We're going to start out talking about exactly what this electoral reform bill does. It creates greater democracy, greater direct democracy, and we'll talk about exactly some of the points that have been changed. And then we'll talk about how this and other accomplishments of the Omlo government are being really made to look derogatory in the Western press and how we see that here in Mexico as a form of interventionism, among other forms of interventionism. So with that, Jose Luis, welcome to the program. Like I said, it's such a pleasure to have you with us. We've wanted to do this for so long. And I'm really, I'm really glad to be here. Well, and it's so and it's so wonderful. I just want to say again, it's just really congratulations on, you know, completing your advanced studies. It's really, really something to be proud of. So anyway, so, so let's talk about this electoral reform. Exactly what it's done in you and I have talked that it really fundamentally has created greater democratic participation in the electoral process. And of course, that is not something the West, particularly the global north is happy about. I think, you know, when we talk about Lopez Obrador and what he calls the fourth transformation of Mexico, what do we mean by that? So basically, Lopez Obrador tries to position his political project as a grand historical project. And it's the fourth transformation because it's the fourth one to happen historically in Mexico, the first one being the fight for independence, the second one being the reform, the third being the revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. And this one, the Mexico's fourth transformation, you know, and a lot of critics say, what does he mean by that? What is he what is he actually saying? Why is why would this be so significant? And actually think looking at it through the lens of democracy is actually a pretty good place to start, right? Lopez Obrador's election in 2018 wasn't an ordinary election. It was a breaking point. It was a watershed moment in the sense that we've talked a lot about Mexico previously on this program and in different spaces about being a country that was a young democracy in the sense that, well, yes, Mexico after the Mexican Revolution came to be ruled by the institutional revolutionary party basically for about 70 years, the details of which we we don't necessarily have to get into. But very much it did become a uniparty. Yes, we're experiencing like those of us in the United States are experiencing now. And I think that's that's important because that has been broken. Exactly. You know, it was it was decided with the alternative. And the pre the revolutionary institutional revolutionary party, it's a bit of a weird political beast in the sense that it was a big tent. You had socialist anarchists, communists involved with it, certainly in the early years. But then I'd like to kind of focus more on sort of the modern period. And let's say about, you know, from the from the seventies onwards. And it was very much a one party authoritarian state that did not tolerate dissent. We can go back a couple of years, notably 1968. There was this global moment of students mobilizing. And Mexico was no exception. And the way that the Mexican student movement was crushed was militarily through force, through a mass murder that happened in Tratelolco. And so that kind of gives you an idea of what Mexico was like under this one party authoritarian state. And Tratelolco is an Alcadilla or a section of Mexico City. Just yeah, it's this beautiful housing project that was kind of developed and back in the 20th century as a means of trying to, you know, facilitate urban growth in a very specific way. It's a very interesting neighborhood. I think a lot of people who come to Mexico don't don't get to visit. So if people are watching, I recommend to come check it out. But anyway, so so in the sense that kind of represents what Mexico was like. And obviously, there was a movement to democratize the country. But this movement was one that was always complex in the sense that it sought not just, oh, you know, one person, one vote, universal suffrage, multi-party elections, but saw just to sought to make Mexico a country democratic in a more complete sense, which is that this is a wealthy country. Mexico is incredibly resource rich. It shares a border with the largest economy in the world. And somehow we have pervasive poverty. Why is that? Because we were ruled by one party authoritarian state. And there are people who were fighting in the streets through advocacy organizations, through mobilizations, through popular pressure, international appeals, et cetera, et cetera, to see a change. Now, that change ultimately did come, but it was incomplete in 2000. So in 2000, we saw the first time the pre lose the presidency. And at the time the winner was Vicente Fox of the right wing National Action Party. Now, you should always kind of have an asterisk next to this because truth be told, if there wasn't fraud in 1988, it's very likely that we would have seen a change in the leadership of Mexico. But again, this was sort of the darkest days of Mexico's authoritarian past. And Vicente Fox kind of rode a wave of discontent and promised to consolidate Mexico's transition into a democracy. But ultimately, what ended up being installed in the country was kind of similar to the United States in that you had two ruling parties that kind of alternated in power, but ultimately were very similar to each other than actually deliver on those promises of the grassroots democratization movement in this country. And so, you know, there was a back and forth. Fox's election was followed 2006 by another fraud against López Obrador, the today president, where as a result of collusion between the elites and the then Federal Electoral Institute, the predecessor to the INA today, who facilitated this fraud, and ultimately Felipe Calderón was able to secure power, although a very, very unstable coalition to be able to actually rule over the country, I think in a lot of ways, the security situation that Mexico is living in is a result of that fraud. Just as an aside, Felipe Calderón is the one who launched this so-called war on drugs inside of Mexico, the war against the cartels, which has produced the security situation that we're living in to this date. But anyway, so like I said, so, you know, to fast forward a little bit, we get to 2018, López Obrador wins in a landslide, more than 50% of the vote. Mexico doesn't have two rounds of election. It's a first past the post, whoever wins a plurality of votes. But even in that case, López Obrador wins an impressive mandate, the strongest mandate in Mexico's modern history and also is accompanied by a strong majority in the Congress. And so he is basically given the opportunity to complete this force transformation, and we should think about it as a democratization because everything that didn't happen in 2000 with Vicente Fox did happen with López Obrador, which is to say that the great majorities of this country, which is to say the campesinos, the working class, the students like myself, who were excluded by the neoliberal system, finally had a representative in Palacio Nacional, finally had someone who was defending their experiences, who sought to improve the lives of the mass majority, as opposed to ruling on behalf of the wealthy, the urban elites, the economic elites, the oligarchy that very much exists inside of this country. And that I think is a great place to start when we think about democracy. And why I find it so curious that, you know, you see these attacks saying that he is undermining the country's democracy, I would say that this actually his election and everything that it represents and everything that's brought the democratization of our resources, the spreading of the wealth, the funneling of support to students, to seniors, all of that, that too needs to be understood as an act of democracy and how we should evaluate this government, just because he doesn't fall into the categories that the intelligentsia would like a so-called leftist leader to fall into doesn't mean that the project isn't something that is profoundly transforming the country. It's happening very much in the Latin American way, right? I think what's one of the things that I've been exploring in my studies is that I think a lot of analysts, a lot of pundits, they simply lack the framework to truly understand what's happening in this country. And so they decide because they're so wedded to their ideology to attack the government, saying it's not democratic. When the truth is, a lot of what's happening here is stuff to be excited about. But I would argue you and I have talked, it's more democratic. And that is one of the reasons that the United States and other Western nations have become so negative, particularly in the mainstream media press, so anti-Omlo. And of course, this is an election year. And there's a lot of external interests that do not want to see another Morena government next year. And part of the Morena philosophy is to dismantle neoliberalism. And that, in fact, is happening. I mean, you can't undo it all overnight and still have a viable economy. It's got to be dismantled and redistributed gradually, which is happening. And, you know, it's really fascinating to me and somewhat disappointing that there is not more focus on Mexico from the global north, from the US and Canada, particularly, which you and I are very familiar with both of those countries. It's like everyone just kind of looks right over, you know, the country immediately to the south of the United States and then goes further south for, you know, looking at Columbia, looking at Honduras, looking at Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, we just kind of look right over Mexico. And there is so much happening here. Maybe that's a good thing, you know, that that the advancements and the dismantling of neoliberalism are just happening without a lot of eyes, except except the ones we don't want. Well, that's that's exactly the point I was going to make. And in a sense, it is flying under the radar, right? But unfortunately, the people we should be worried about are paying attention. And, you know, you open this program talking about the electoral reform, right? That's probably one of the things people who keep up with the news in the US and Canada have probably heard about Mexico. Oh, he's an authoritarian. He's undermining the National Electoral Institute, the INE, right? And the reason that they choose these kinds of attacks, these lines of attacks is because they are pretty effective, right? There has been a concerted effort since the beginning of the first Pink Tide since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 and everything that followed to try to depict any government, any movement, any party that is counter hegemonic that resists US and Canadian imperialism as being one that is inherently authoritarian, inherently anti-democratic, right? So we're talking about these reforms and we should be clear. There was actually two reforms that were put forward. One was a constitutional reform, and that one actually was far more far reaching than the one that was ultimately approved. And what that one actually saw was to democratize our Electoral Institute. Now, the Electoral Institute, as I kind of give a really brief overview of Mexico's transition into democracy, you know, it was one of the conquests of that movement. But it became elite capture. It became a space that very much served the same interests that sustained that predictatorship for so many years. This is the Electoral Institute. That's right. Yeah. And so they're the ones who supervise the 2006 election, which is widely viewed as being fraudulent, as having one that actually produced a result that didn't reflect the will of Mexicans, right? That's the most basic definition of fraud that we that we can have. And so what did Lopez Obrador do? He said, let's democratize this and actually put forward the proposal to have them elected. So there would be a list of candidates that were preselected, making sure that they had the competencies necessary to be able to serve in this post, but ultimately leaving up to the citizenry. Why not? Right? Like if we elect our representatives to Congress, if we elect the president, if we elect our local representatives, why shouldn't the people who supervise our elections? Now, that one ultimately didn't get approved. You need a supermajority to do so. And Morena has a majority, but it's just a simple majority, not a supermajority. And so it didn't go forward. So what came around was Plan B. And this is the one that you mentioned, and it was pretty simple. It's it's it's actually kind of amusing to read the responses of the pundits because what did it say? It was basically a reorganization of the Institute. It sought to facilitate voting for marginalized groups. So people who are, you know, jailed, people who live abroad, right? People who experience different barriers to being able to participate. Disabled people, seniors and youth. Exactly. People have been, yeah. Yeah. And and and yet because this happened under the context of a very sharp political disagreement with the then head of the National Electoral Institute, Lorenzo Cordoba, they was billed as this idea of trying to weaken Mexico's independent institutions, right? But what was this institution really up to, right? Lorenzo Cordoba was very much a political actor. And I think this is one of the points that I really try to transmit to audiences, you know, when you see these kinds of kind of rallying around certain issues when sort of the same old political faces and the same voices you know, notably people like David Frum, you know, writing about Mexico, accusing López Obrador in the Romanian democracy because of this reform that he put, you know, it should raise alarm bells, right? And I call them conservative strongholds. The faces like the IMEI and the judicial branch of government here in Mexico become these spaces where the conservatives having lost political power run away and take refuge. So they take refuge in these strongholds and then use their ability inside to influence to then attack the democratically elected government. So if we look at it that way, who's actually the anti-democrat? Who is actually the ones who are undermining the country's democracy? Well, it's the people who are using unelected posts, who are using unaccountable institutions, institutions that are flagrantly violating the Constitution in order to attack the government, which was democratically elected and worth mentioning continues to enjoy wide spread popular support, kind of enviable numbers. He's often listed as the first or second most popular leader in the world. Maintaining sixty percent of the world. He certainly is on Twitter every morning. He's become an influencer. It's actually, I think there was a study that the broadcast. So López Obrador does a morning news conference, usually lasts around two hours, sometimes longer. Every day, Monday to Friday at six, seven in the morning. And it's so widely viewed on social media that he's now number seven in terms of global audience in the Spanish speaking world. Amazing. Right. And so that, too, is often used. Oh, look at this strongman, this Galvio, you know, lecturing from his bully pulpit when it's actually imagined that imagine if we had the ability as journalists to really interrogate the president every day, every issue you want. Right. That's that's also positive and negative. You know, but absolutely. And there are people who are the president to get out in front of the news cycle every day. Oh, yeah. And you know, and there are people who are very antagonistic, who show up and then grill him and he handles it. Right. One final thing about the reform, right? So this reform was put forward. It was approved. But again, I talked about these conservative strongholds. They the reform, the second one, the plan B, has been suspended at this point. So the Supreme Court officially ruled to suspend the implementation of this law for a lot of reasons. But for me, I think the key thing to take away is that, again, we're seeing pressure being put on the judicial branch in order to ensure the same privileges that always existed in this country remain in place. And these kinds of reforms are unchanged. There's been a change at the top as well at the INAI at the National Electoral Institute. Lorenzo Cordoba, this man, I said, who was openly hostile towards the president, was forced to step down at the end of his term. And now there's there's a there's a new there's a new leadership there, which is, you know, I think so far has shown itself to be more willing to accommodate itself to what essentially is the demands of the majority in this country, as expressed through its political system. You know, you mentioned earlier the capture of an institutional capture and how the ruling elites can stay in power, can control decisions made in the country in non-elective positions. And this, I would argue, this is exactly what has happened in Guatemala. And of course, they had presidential elections the 25th and, you know, Sunday. And we've seen what the. What can happen and how people are just kept off the ballot and for no reason just totally down. But even then we saw this dark horse candidate who wasn't even figuring in the polls. Turns out he's the runner up and he's going off to the runoff, right? The masses are smart. We should trust them, right? You they can try to put all these barriers that they want. You can have the elites hiding in their conservative strongholds, trying to influence policy, but that resistance bubbles up one way or another, right? Sometimes it takes longer. You know, we had Honduras neighboring Guatemala as well. Right now, it's actually the anniversary of the coup against Mel Celaya, right? Mel Celaya, the same thing. Nobody expected him to be the popular voice that he was. And he was, you know, ousted by a coup. But a few years later, a few election cycles later, the people were able to defeat those conservative forces that had installed themselves after the coup. And now we have a popular leftist leader and Chiomara Castro ruling Honduras, right? Same thing and having, you know, a lot of challenges, exercising power because of, you know, the the institution we've been interested. Yeah. Yeah. But the point is to have faith, right? And I think, you know, you said I really like that, that people should pay attention to Mexico. You know, you and I were together in in Washington, D.C. for the Latin American Caribbean Policy Forum, right? And I was invited to present and it was really encouraging to see how enthusiastic people are about what's happening in Mexico, right? Well, you just gave a great speech, too. Well, yeah, you're right. The audience was I can I'll share with the YouTube live audience that, you know, yeah, the audience was very enthusiastic to listen to Jose Luis's presentation. And because I don't think. Anyone is really heard in the north. All the changes that are happening, I think that's the exciting part. You know, I was just so excited. And you did such a great job with your presentation anyway. Yeah, you know, like they're fluid, right? They're advances to step forward, one step back, et cetera, et cetera. Right. But in Mexico, I think overwhelmingly, it's a project that continues to move forward, that continues to accumulate power, that sees a more mobilized base, whereas a population that every day, because a lot of people, for example, tune into that broadcast and hear a history lesson from the president and start to really kind of engage with these with these topics. And why can I say with confidence that that's advancing? Well, we just had gubernatorial elections in the single most important state in the country. That's so the state of Mexico is a part of the of the Republic and it surrounds Mexico City on three sides. It's very important economically. It's the second most important jurisdiction in the country followed by outpaced only by Mexico City. So it's a really key place. And actually, the pre there has rule had ruled for nearly a hundred years. Uninterrupted rule, right? And they just lost in the last election to who to Morena. And that's actually been the case in a dozen elections that we've had since 2018, right? That the territorial reach, the political reach of Morena, which is Lopez Obrador's party, is now grown immensely. Right? It is a political movement, which obviously has its contradictions. I'm not trying to say that it is the vanguard of the global revolution. But in a lot of ways, it's doing things correctly and it's clearly continuing to win the hearts and minds to the point that a lot of these attacks, as you said, are actually aimed at what's going to happen here in the country in 2024. What it's actually about is this fear that so Lopez Obrador can't run for reelection. He's prohibited by the Constitution. We're in the midst of the succession race. Who's going to be the candidate? But so far, looking at the polls, doesn't matter who the candidate wins. Morena wins the presidency, which means the fourth transformation will continue. And that makes a lot of people, particularly the imperialists, the ruling class very unhappy. Let's talk about some of the things that the US, particularly, but the Western international community is doing to negate the the progress of Morena and impinge the success of Morena winning the presidential election next year, because some of it is media-oriented and some of it is far, far more aggressive than that. But before we do that, I just want to see you talking about the success of this government. I just want to share with the audience. I came here in September of 2020. The exchange rate was 21 Mexican pesos to one US dollar. Today, it's hovering around 15.95 to 16 US dollars to one Mexican or pesos to one Mexican dollar. So throughout this, I was I want to bring this up with the audience because this is a post-pandemic recovery. And to show, I mean, that's a pretty big, you know, strengthening of the Mexican peso, especially coming out of the pandemic environment. And it also illustrates to the entire world, in my opinion, that public investment that state managed infrastructure, natural resources doesn't cause debt. It has strengthened the economy and the currency. I mean, it's phenomenal. And I don't I don't think we frame it that way enough and just share economics that this is not, you know, a government or economic philosophy to be afraid of. You should be embraced in the success that young. So so anyway, I just wanted to give that, you know, a little absolutely. I think, you know, Mexico is absolutely a success story in economic terms. I think a lot of these kind of counterhegemonic projects ultimately are as long as they're left to actually be able to exercise its sovereignty and pursues an independent course. I think about Bolivia as well. Bolivia, in terms of its economic indicators, is probably the strongest economy in all of South America. You know, Mexico is doing really well. And I think it's because there is a certain ideological component to neoliberalism, right, this idea that there is no alternative, that neoliberalism is the only thing that will be able to bring well being to the people. And obviously, you know, you can't fool us in Latin America. Like this is this was the testing ground for neoliberalism in a lot of ways, right, from from Chile all the way through through Mexico. You know, I talked about the pre's one party authoritarian dictatorship. Well, that meant that in the 80s, when the pre made that neoliberal turn, when it just started becoming a party of neoliberal technocrats of the Chicago boys style economic policy, you know, forced this kind of political program, economic program on the country and it delivered none of the promises that they said that they would, you know, people who are old enough to remember the debates around the free trade agreement in Mexico in the 90s. Well, remember that the pitch to the country was, we're going to become a first world country if we sign this deal. And what did we get instead? We had the countryside totally abandoned. We saw deliberate effort to privatize the vast majority of state-owned industries, key commanding heights of the economy like the oil sector were deliberately left to rust, basically to relegate it to a junior position. There was a bet on the maquiladoras, which is, you know, export oriented, cheap labor. And sure, OK, the unemployment numbers went down. But what kind of jobs were actually being, you know, delivered under this? And so, you know, we had over 30 years of this. And when Lopez Obrador came in and I think there's there's political lessons there as well, you know, it was a radical change. It's like, no, we're going to rescue the state-owned electricity company. We're going to rescue the state-owned oil company. We're going to invest in infrastructure projects in parts of the country that we're going to nationalize our lithium fields. Exactly. Right. Like and sort of these are big changes, right? And like these, these are things that the global north, neoliberals, you know, don't. Yeah. You know, that's that's why there's all this negative. Attack on the country. I mean, I think about like that support the project. You're your listeners in the U.S., right? Who who who went through a transition from Republicans to Democrats. And as Biden promised before, he actually entered the White House. Nothing fundamentally would change. Nothing fundamentally changed. But in Mexico, a lot of things fundamentally change, right? Massive expansion of social programs, more investment than ever before in terms of of people-centered programs, cash transfers, scholarships, new universities, right? Like I said, a reorientation of the national economy away from neoliberal orthodoxy to one that is state-led economic development using like BMX, the state oil company, as a motor of development to say, this is a place like where we can use the wealth of the nation to fund roads so that products can get to market to build hospitals to finish. There were over 100 hospitals that were left incomplete by previous governments. And the government said, we're going to we're going to finish these and we're going to try to improve our health care system. You know, I think a lot of times we can talk about sort of like the big picture. And one of the things I like to do is kind of talk about my personal experience because nobody can deny my lived experience, right? You know, I'm a 30 something year old, born here in Mexico. But as a basically as a result of neoliberalism, my family had no choice but to leave to try to find opportunity elsewhere. But I made the decision to come back in 2018 in order to, you know, really contribute to put in whatever I could to to the transformation happening in this country through my profession as a as a journalist. But I've also taken advantage of the opportunities, right? I, you know, did my master's program in human rights, right? The program focused on an anti-imperialist lens of human rights. No sort of not that liberal notion that you hear from people from the inter-American human rights system, right? In a public university that was open and founded by the people that are right. When he was when he was the governor of Mexico City. And then for the my generation, my my cohort was the first one to receive a generous scholarship from the state so that I could focus on my studies full time, right? Every day I board a cable bus that was built in the periphery of the city where I live that takes me. The Sao Paulo bus is like a tram system, Gondola, like the global north. It's pretty much what we use to go skiing. Yeah, in the global south, it's public transportation. The math of which is beautiful, actually, because it's really a nice little relaxing ride in the sky, right? You know, and then I board a subway that costs me less than 30 cents to board even with well, with the Nepezo now even less, right? And to make it to school, to again, to attend. It's like all of these things that are quality of life things. You know, one of the people asked me, like, you know, why did you make the decision to return to Mexico? Well, in Mexico City, it's also a city that's been governed by the left for a long time now. You know, it's a place where a working class person like myself, right? I don't have a lot of, you know, savings. I don't have any crude wealth. You know, I can thrive. I cannot just survive. I can't leave the stories about people who can't, who have good paying jobs and somehow can't make their ends meet. And here I am in Mexico thriving, you know, like I said, riding a robust public transportation system to go hang out in a beautiful public park, right? Where there's probably some kind of free activity going on, some play, some games for children, whatever it is. It's extraordinary to live in a very different context and a place where I sincerely feel like there's a lot of hope. But all of that to say, though, we do need to see a deepening of this transition, right? Like this is a very good start. I think only Lopez Obrador would have been capable of being able to secure that mandate that he did in the 2018 election to carry out the transformation, to resist all the pressures that were obviously put on the president to abandon his promises, to abandon his commitment to the country's poor majority and to actually engage in that transformation of the country. And now, you know, like I said, he's constitutionally limited. So let's see what happens next. Let's see what can happen in terms of deepening that process and also attending to some of those contradictions that do exist, right? Some of the things that we do need to see some changes from the government on. Let's talk about, I mean, those of us here in Mexico, it's pretty obvious Moreno is going to win next year and then the neoliberal, the people who support the neoliberal capitalist model really don't want to see that happen. They don't want any more nationalization of natural resources for one and many other things, the broadening of democracy. Let's talk about some of the tools that the US specifically, but the Western media in general, are using. And we should also talk about what the US Congress is considering doing to halt the advancement of the fourth transformation. So we talked a little bit about some of the attacks we've seen in the mainstream media and invite people to subscribe to the Mexico Solidarity Project, because that's actually one of the ways that we've really been focusing on it. This is kind of answering some of these, frankly, false criticisms that are happening from the likes of Ann Applebaum and David Frum and Bill Barr and all of these sort of old figures from the elite of US politics. And for example, you know, saying that he's undermining democracy and all these kinds of kinds of things, trying to change this picture. I think if you look at a lot of the coverage that happened around then, there was this notion that every single article kind of slipped this in there, saying Lopez Obrador basically wants to manipulate the country's electoral system in order to ensure that his successor wins in 2024. Again, politics is fluid. You know that morning is going to win. Exactly. That would be like a Richard Nixon thing, right? And Watergate, like you know, you're going to win and you do something stupid anyway. Yeah. And this president is not stupid. Exactly. And that I mean, we should we should hopefully we have some time to talk about he's he's a political animal, right? I think in a lot of ways, deserves a lot of respect in terms of just how astute he is in terms of making the right move at the right time. But anyway, so they mentioned these things saying, oh, he's he's trying to, you know, change the rules of the game in order to make sure his successor carries out his pet projects, things like that. Well, the reason they put lines like that is because they're trying to lay the foundations for the undermining of the legitimacy of the next president, right? Because that makes it easier. It's it's it's a tale as old as time, right? And they did it to Evo Morales right before the coup that ousted him. They did it to Hugo Chavez, right? And all the various regime change attempts against him. They're currently doing it now to Nicolás Maduro, right? You know, read any piece of Daniel Ortega Diaz Canal. I mean, it's just exactly or I mean, probably the most the most vicious ones around around Nicaragua, right? You know, this is just, you know, and then it just gets repeated. You know, tell a lie enough times and it becomes a truth. They don't even try to substantiate. Oh, 2018 was a it was a fraudulent election. So that's kind of what they're trying to do. They're basically trying to say post 2024, that election was not legitimate. Therefore, we can implement unilateral course of measures also known as sanctions or we can apply tariffs or or we can undermine their their place in the diplomatic community, et cetera, et cetera, right? It's it's a it's a political strategy to try to weaken the next government, which is most likely to be more than that. But the more worrisome one that I think that also demands a lot of attention and hasn't been getting a lot of attention is this threat of unilateral military action by the United States Armed Forces inside Mexico, which we should be clear. And I always say it's the beginning. Any time I touch on this, that's an act of war, right? You know, people talk about this as if it's just, oh, it's a simple drone strike, we're just going to take out the labs. No, you can't engage in unilateral military action on a sovereign country. It's a violation of their sovereignty. An act by the armed forces is an act of war. Let's be clear about that. Now, what's going on here? Why is this happening? Well, we can actually trace this back to the Trump presidency. And if we look at when this idea was kind of first came to light publicly, it was actually in Mark Esper's book. So he served as Secretary of Defense very briefly for Trump. And he wrote about it in his memoir about his time in the Trump cabinet. And when that came out, it's really curious. You know, he reported about how Trump was like, well, can't we just bomb the labs? They won't even know it's us, right? As if it wouldn't be obvious, clear as day who committed that. But anyway, the point is, is that he was actually said to have been left speechless at the proposal. And if you look at the coverage from any outlet, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, whatever you want, it was treated as a scandal, right? Trump is talking about bombing our neighbor and major trade ally, our partner, in the international community, right? Like, despite the differences that exist between today's Mexican president and the US government and the US state, you know, these countries are allies, right? They have a profound free trade agreement between them. They have billions of dollars in trade between between the two. It's an absurd proposal. But now, now it's a mainstream idea. Now you have almost every Republican candidate talking about it like it's a legitimate proposal, and this happened really quickly. When I first heard this proposal being floated once again by the Trump supporters, by Trump's, he's got a think tank, the Center for Renewing America, I believe it's called, that put out a policy paper basically calling for this, right? You know, we saw this article from Rolling Stone that talked about how he's basically asking for his advisors, if I win, I want to have battle plans ready to carry out this unilateral attack against Mexico. And it became part of the GOP, the Republican Party's program. Basically, there's very few who are pushing back on this. And I think it's also important to note that the Democrats, who are in the White House now, have not done enough to push back against this idea. It's the kind of thing that the Democrats, they don't want. And then there's a reason, right? That's exactly it. I mean, they're they're OK. I mean, basically, you know, the inaction is and is action approaching it. Absolutely. And so why? So why do we have this consensus? Why did this consensus get established so quickly? Well, because we have a counter hegemonic government. We have a government that is trying to exercise its sovereignty in order to develop its resources for the benefit of the Mexican people. You know, I cover Venezuela a lot as a writer for Venezuela analysis. And if you think about, you know, it's very easy to say, oh, Venezuela oil, that's why they're after it, all this kind of stuff. And yes, that is true, right? The the US wants to assure that has stable, secure energy supplies so that it can continue to be the empire that it is. But the actual supply of oil to the US from Venezuela was never interrupted. You know, that that whole industry, when oil was discovered in Venezuela, it was developed in partnership with US firms, right? There's a reason why Venezuela's most prized Chevron still there. Chevron is still there. Yeah, you know, the most prized asset is Citgo. Citgo has gas stations all over the US, right? Its refineries in Texas are really important to the thing, right? The extract oil from Venezuela, but have the refinery in the United States. That happened with Mexico, too. That's also you don't have control. You don't have the ability to create a finished product. Yeah, yeah, which is colonialism. Exactly. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, right? The point isn't it wasn't about oil in Venezuela. It was about the colonial mindset. And in the same with Mexico, right? It isn't Mexico is happy to continue exporting products that are assembled here, TVs, t-shirts, whatever it is, right? It's happy to sell its natural resources to those who are willing. But the problem is that when you have a government like the one by Sobrador, it's one that has an outlook towards meeting the well-being of the country first. So it's to say we want to establish energy sovereignty so that we meet our energy needs first, right? We want to make sure that lithium, if it is developed, is actually benefiting the populations that are going to be affected by its extraction and that the wealth that is generated is actually flows down to the people. That's what they can't tolerate. They can't tolerate that a country would exercise its sovereignty in a means that would actually favor the mass of the vast majority instead of these powerful elites, right? That's what it's actually about. And so when you see these kinds of threats, why you see why the Democrats don't push back is because we may eventually be in a situation where they're talking about, oh, those radical socialists down in Mexico doing this and that, you know, they're authoritarian. They have an out of control cartel organized crime problem. Therefore, we need to bring them democracy. And that's when you see the sanctions and that's when you see the support for the opposition and that's when you see these efforts to isolate them internationally. That's when you see for, you know, accusations of human rights violations, et cetera, et cetera. These are all tools. I mean, it's the same playbook since 1945. Exactly. That the whole world knows and has read and understands. And so like those military threats, right? Like if it does come to pass, God willing, it doesn't, right? Like we should be clear about this. I said, say about this, right? It would be an act of war, but it would also be it would reign violence on this country, right? Like it's the cartels aren't out there wearing uniforms saying, hey, I'm an element of the organized crime group. Here's my lab, right? Like if they do engage, let's say drone strikes, just build more labs, right? How many civilians are going to die because bombs are falling from drones? Let's talk about the cartels for a second for the audience, because this is really, really important, because there is desire in the US Congress to label the cartels here in Mexico as terrorist cells. Yeah. If that law passes, that opens up a whole new toolbox for the United States. Yeah. It's a vital first step. If they're going to carry out this, you can't even imagine what that would be. And what we're seeing in Mexico now in response to even just that talk coming out of DC in in labeling these cartels chairs. Now we're seeing this black market sale of US military grade weapons that are supposed to be going to Ukraine and are and that are coming right back to the Western Hemisphere and being sold to the cartels to defend themselves. I mean, it's just. Happens all the time, though. I mean, I mean, this is the this in this when the US starts spinning this this narrative, this is exactly how it starts unfolding. Exactly. And there is a lot of pressure. So the destination actually comes from the State Department. It could happen with the stroke of the pen. And there's a lot of pressure from people like Lindsey Graham. He's the first one that comes to mind. Dan Crenshaw to make this designation because this designation is a vital first step towards a future military action like we could we could conceivably see US boots invading Mexico almost almost right. I mean, it's it's an absurd notion. I mean, well, it's not really absurd. You know, those of us here have been following watching this unfold. It's not the first time it's happened. I mean, in the States, it just sounds like, wow, that's just completely wild. We're going to invade our neighbor. But but the rhetoric has been developing and unfolding. Yeah. You know, I would say since like fall of 2021 and most certainly spring of twenty two with the elect, you know, with the nationalization of the lithium and, you know, and there's there's a couple of things that I think are really great and all of that is just getting more and more. Yeah, is to kind of understand why one thing is is is certainly what about this foreign terrorist organization designation? Why is there so much noise around this? So why I think we got to take it back. Why is a lot of the fentanyl that is part of the very real opioid crisis that does very much exist in the United States coming from Mexico? Well, back in twenty eighteen, the State Department asked China to reclassify some of the chemicals used to make fentanyl in its precursors. So they did. They complied. They said, OK, these are now restricted items. But as long as there's a demand, as long as people want to consume synthetic opioids to continue to get high off of them, then organized crime elements will figure out a way to get there. So what happened? That same product, instead of going literally through the mail and shipping containers, as it did previously directly into the US, that goes into Mexico where it's smuggled in, right? And important point here, it's smuggled in by US citizens. You know, there's this notion there's a business is US based. Yeah, by the product outside of the business. Something like 60 percent of Republicans think that undocumented migrants are the ones bringing the fentanyl over when it's actually the vast majority are being brought over by US citizens to be consumed by US citizens, right? But so what does this FTO designation mean in this scenario? The truth is, and Lindsey Graham said it himself, he's like, if we had this designation, we could go after China. So the whole China US multipolar rivalry that is very much developing and emerging right now is also a factor. And so and the battleground will be Mexico. Exactly. And then the second thing, which is that I think is also really important is that, you know, it's a sad feature of US politics that of that racism often plays a role in elections, right? We can go back to the Southern strategy by the Republicans, right? The dog whistles and all these kind of stuff. But with the arrival of Trump in 2016, and I always like to remind people of this, literally launched his campaign the very first day. He's like, I want to be president by attacking Mexicans using racist rhetoric, right? If you remember, he said the rapists and they're not bad hombres, etc., etc. We remember that speech. Now that was very useful in that election. It rallied his base. I am willing to bet that he wouldn't have become the candidate had he not used racism to rally his base, to win that support and get the Republican nomination. Obviously, there was a lot of other factors, but I think that was a key thing. It was very effective. But it's only effective for a certain amount of time and to a point, right? And so he was able to drum up all this fear around immigration and migrants and Mexicans in particular and about the wall, etc., etc. But now this is kind of a logical and a kind of a twisted way extension of that same kind of thinking, which is to say, so now I can't sell you this idea of a boogeyman, Mexican, coming over to take your job and then kidnap your children or whatever and engage in violent acts. What they can do now is say, you know, your neighbor, you know, your son, your uncle, who overdosed on fentanyl, it's the fault of the Mexicans. Right. And then that becomes a very useful tool to mobilize. And it's something that Lopez Obrador has called out. He said himself, he's like, Mexico is going to become a piñata. And that's exactly what's happening. Right. It's useful to them. But obviously comes at a price. Right. And I do think that it's important for people to pay attention to this because it will probably be one of the leading issues, at least when it comes to international relations in this upcoming race. And my hope is that we'll actually see some pressure so that the Democrats, if they claim to be friends with Mexico, will actually start to resist. Unlikely given their record, but that's also the duty of all of the, you know, the Mexican and Mexican American population inside the U.S. as well, to try to raise these ideas. Yeah. And they are being mobilized. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a fabulous Institute of National Political Formation that exists now in Mexico. And it's really, I mean, this is what a really strong movement that has turned into a political party is capable of doing is the education and not just political formation, but educating the population about exactly what the bills are, what resources are available. I mean, it's it's not just about why you should support the fourth transformation, but it's like, you know, there's whole episodes on the social security system. There's whole episodes on, you know, educational scholarships just to let people know, you know, what the government has created and how to use those new programs and infrastructure and how to ride the cobbly booze, which has been a life changer for you. I think what, you know, I think that's one of the things for people in the states, the cobbly booze or the table bus is like, and I mentioned this earlier, it's like, you know, a gondola system, a tram system. But for someone like Jose Luis, who would have to like walk from your house to the nearest metro station or take a bicycle, grab a cab, whatever, which is additional expense to get to the metro station. Now you have this cable car system that it's right. I'm happy to say I wrote it a couple weeks ago. It connects right into the terminus of the of the metro station. And you just get off the train and you walk over and get on the cable. So I mean, it's like taking 20, 30 minutes off your commute one week. So you've regained an hour of personal time in your life. That's what I mean about my life. I mean, it literally has changed, you know, how you navigate your day. Yeah. Yeah. It's really phenomenal. Yeah. I mean, and the access to the advanced education. Yes, exactly. Right. Like the rescue electricity system means that we have we've just finished going through a really severe heat wave, right? We saw temperatures that we hadn't seen in a really long time in Mexico City. Yeah. The electricity system held out. Right. Yeah, that was the case everywhere in the world. No, right. No. Part of that is because there is now this kind of a different conception around that, around what kind of economy are we trying to build? Right. Who is it oriented towards? Are we building? Let's take the electricity system under Peña Nieto, the previous government, you know, there was an effort to privatize it using green technology, right? They gave these sweetheart deals to these transnational firms to build so called green energy plants that were onerous on the state, right? The state electricity company had to buy, had to give them preference and buy first the energy developed by these private wind farms, right? Before it could use the state owned generators, right? So we basically it was a subsidy to private companies. Now that's changed. The idea is, but the energy produced didn't even stay in Mexico. Yeah, and it was sent up north. So again, the whole colonial thing will extract and then for the benefit of the north and doesn't the finished product doesn't stay in the country. Yeah. And what's on the flip side? López Obrador a few months ago buys a bunch of generators from Iberdrola, a Spanish transnational firm, and says, and now more than a majority of the energy generated is now by state owned generating companies. So and the lights stayed on and keep the price subsidized and affordable, right? I pay seventy five pesos a month for electricity. What is that in dollars? Like five bucks, maybe six, five, six dollars, a hundred is about. There are people who are paying thousands in Texas for their energy bills, right? These are the kinds of things that just that that's unstable. Yeah. We should use the country's resources for the well being of its citizens. It's not that complicated of a concept that's. And now we talked about defending democracy, expanding democracy, defending sovereignty. That's also what sovereignty means, right? So I think being able to take those decisions, it means being able to have the democratic mandate to do it, right? And I'm I'm excited to see what happens next. Well, I am, too. And a whole lot of people living in Mexico, the Mexican citizens, really, really. It's it's a very, it's a very, very exciting moment in Mexico's history. And it's it's profound and you can feel it on the streets with people, regardless of politics. I mean, I know what people say in the media and how they, you know, act within their own political roles and stuff, but you can really feel it on the street. Yeah, especially if you go to a rally, I know you've been to a few. I always like to share the clip of the end of the March 18th rally. So López Obrador called a demo for a demonstration on March 18th. That's actually the anniversary of the expropriation of the oil industry by Lássaro Cardenas in 1938. And in a way, it was a response to his critics, right? We open the show talking about these and the week before were those really overt threats from the United States. Yeah, well, as well, as well. So he addressed that. Yeah, exactly. And so he was, you know, kind of under attack. He was being called an authoritarian. There was these calls for unilateral military action. You know, and the opposition was able to mobilize its supporters around this issue. And I think one of the key things that I would say it's not just been about the improvements, but actually sort of the political mobilizations to get people on the streets on the basis of the need to defend this project. And that's what we have been seeing. It's talking about this March 18th one that was very much a response to this. And I think it's important to always mention this, the ones that are pro government rallies have always been bigger and larger and louder and more enthusiastic than the opposition rallies. Right. If it's a question of the battle of the streets, the left has won. And we can say that with confidence. So at this demonstration, the Socalo, which is the bane, big public square at the center heart of Mexico City and all of the adjoining streets, just overflowing with people. And at the end of that demonstration, right, Lopez Obrador gives a fiery call out saying no to intervention, yes to sovereignty. Right. Imagine being in a crowd of half a million people. We're not anyone's colony. We are no one's colony. Right. That's important. That's that political consciousness. You know, it gives me goosebumps to be in that moment because. But this is what happens when you're threatening now, these threats are coming from the exterior and it's made people really, I think. Even more value, even more what has happened in Mexico since 2018 with more and empower, but also there's always backfires on the United States. It has created a stronger sense of national sovereignty, of nationality. You know, people are like, we are Mexican. You cannot tell us. We are our own people, our own history, our own culture, our own nation of people. Yeah. And it's made that even stronger for that reason. I hope that policymakers in Washington really reconsider what they're considering right now, this unilateral military action, because you will really wake up the tiger, as we say here in Mexico. That is if they do that. We also have memory, right? Like it's not like it would have been it will be the first time the US invades, right? And there is, you know, we've talked about the International Formation Institute, right? Just the other day, there was a webinar on the resistance by Venezuela to US imperialism and how we should take that as as a model to say that we must defend our sovereignty, we must defend our territory, we defend our political project. And if they do continue to interfere with that sovereignty in our political process, it's going to do exactly as you say, it's going to wake up. And if they decide to put boots on the ground here, watch out, right? It will produce a radicalization in the same way the 2002 coup against Lula Chavez in Venezuela did, right? The whip of the counter-revolution. But you're playing with fire. And, you know, things are not going to go back to before. And maybe we can close with something along those lines, right? The opposition here in the country hasn't quite figured things out, right? The opposition here is very opposition. So in Latin America, the opposition is whatever left or right is opposed to the current government in place. Yeah. So here opposition is right at this moment in time. Opposition means the right. Yeah. And we should note there is an extra an extra parliamentary left that is very critical of the government as well. It's not really the scope of this program to get into all of that. We should acknowledge that, that there is an extra parliamentary left that doesn't believe, that doesn't support, you know, Morena and that project. Maybe we can come back on a different time. We'll do another episode on that. But, you know, the right-wing opposition, the political opposition here, it hasn't been able to figure out a coherent response to everything that's going on, and they are the lackeys. I would argue right-wing oppositions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are they're all the same. They can't quite get together. They take their marching orders from Washington, right? They don't really are not interested. We'll save us. And so that's what we're seeing now. And I think they're going to get more desperate, right? They're going to continue to try to exploit these conservative strongholds. They're going to go to the OAS. They're going to go to Washington and ask for more and more interventions. They're going to have the pundits like from like Apomom to come into the country and write articles that don't correspond to the reality and try to paint this picture. All of this is going to continue to happen. But as we said previously, there is a conscious and increasingly mobilized population here that is willing to defend it. And I hope that that actually becomes the ingredient that leads to its radicalization, right? Yes, we are delivering a welfare state that probably hasn't existed in the country for decades, right? Really attending to the basic needs, allowing people to thrive. But, you know, there's also a long tradition of communal control over the means of production, the ahidos, communal control over territory, over land, right? These are things that go right up to and including to questioning the capitalist mode of production, right? No, because the other project is not a socialist project, right? But there are socialists inside of his party. There are socialists in his movement. Well, base is a very left wing base. And so they are the ones who are continuing to push, right? Like, you know, he's the president. He's the government. He's got to balance a lot of interest, including the whole country together. But that our job is to push, right? So that our pressure gives the next president or this president the room to operate to continue to affect the interests of the ruling class. I think we are in a position to do that. That's how transformations actually happen, right? Again, to go back to Venezuela, I love making this kind of comparison, right? When Hugo Chavez was elected, he wasn't elected as a proponent of the socialism of the 21st century. It was a process. It was something that he had to be kind of steered into by the mobilized masses, by his own leadership, of course, as well. I don't want to undermine that, right? But eventually he came to this position, right? Where, you know, we're talking about constructing communes and the building of cooperatives and, you know, challenging the the the fundamentals of a capitalist mode of production. We could get there here in Mexico. It's harder. We have the, you know, the U.S. as a neighbor. I wonder how much how willing they would be to buy parts, auto parts from, you know, the socialist auto parts maker of central Mexico. But why not, right? Like, you know, there's a mode, there's a working class here that is also increasingly democratic. There was a process to democratize Mexico's labor movement that is really kind of gaining a lot of steam and, you know, an increasingly conscious working class that says, why don't we take over the means of production? It's not just enough to get a good contract. You know, we could be running this, right? And so it's a very industrialized base here in this country, a very diverse in the sense that some of the ways that they can attack, that can undermine the country's economy are not available to them. As you mentioned, there's actually a pretty smooth economic handling of the country. Right. Like it's not going to turn into one day to the next. So I think there's a lot of potential here. But if there's a final message that I have for listeners is also, yeah, pay attention to Mexico. There's a lot of lessons here, a lot of good things about that it can be translated to understand how to make a political transformation happen in your countries. Right. You know, that one of the urgent tasks of I think of any socialist communists in the United States is to weaken US imperialism. Right. Help us out. Make it so that US imperialism can't harm us as much so that we can continue to flourish and continue to go to go through that example. And let's not forget there are how many? 12, 13, 14, 15 million Mexicans in the US right now, amongst other Latin Americans. Right. What if those kind of ideas is something that Tariq Ali used to talk about? What if via the Latin American population, together with our indigenous comrades, our black brothers and sisters, can we start to kind of really start to warm up the population to ideas that are different and we can be like and point to the successes that are happening elsewhere? I think that's the kind of stuff that makes me really excited. But in the meantime, please help us out and help us to reduce the power of imperialism, because right now that's also one of our major threats. Thank you so much, Jose Luis. What a great conversation. I just want to keep talking. Todd, we're going to have to have you come back. I've got notes for like three or four more episodes to do all these different themes. But you know, this thing about what you're alluding to, the change for Latin America and the Caribbean in large part is going to rest on change inside the United States. And I will just share with the audience because the audience knows and I have you've done some of this travel with me invariably when we are on an election observation delegation, human rights delegation, social justice delegation, about independent travel, somewhere along that trip itinerary. Someone is going to say to you, whether it's in a formal meeting at Taxi Cab, you know, buying your Sandina, Sandia on the street, I was going to say Sandino. Someone's going to say to those of us from the global north, go home and fix your own country first. The rest of us will benefit. And so what you're saying is, you know, there needs to be a transformation within the United States, you know, and end this imperialist domination of the world so that all of you in Mexico can breathe and continue with your sovereign project. So take take inspiration, right? Ten years ago, Morena, the political party that today rules 20 some odd states that has the in power of the federal government ten years ago didn't even exist. Right. And now it's impossible to have a third a successful third party could only have the duopoly. Well, guess what? And here we are watching back to the stage. Yes, third party is possible. Yeah, that maybe comes out of a large social labor movement where you have the, you know, a really large base of voters who can bring the movement into power. It is possible. It takes a lot of work and it doesn't happen overnight. It took 14 years for Morena to come to power. So it's not, you know, an overnight fix, it takes a lot, a lot of work, but it is possible. And we're seeing the fruits of all that labor today. It's really exciting. So before I let you go, Jose, I want to share. I had almost a little Freudian slip in saying Sandia, which is watermelon. You have watermelon on the street. I almost said Sandino. And the reason I almost said Sandino is because tomorrow I leave for Nicaragua. So so for our audience, I just want to share this with you that I will be in Nicaragua the entire month of July. I have organized a delegation to go celebrate the 44th anniversary of the San Anisa Revolution, which is formally July 19th. But we are also going to be traveling prior to the formal festivities to the Caribbean coast to study the success of state investment, particularly in infrastructure projects. And then in August, you were talking because I wish you were talking about the communal system, the communes in Venezuela. I will be spending August in Venezuela on a delegation to study the commune system and then we'll be doing some other journalism projects from Venezuela as well. And hopefully, Jose Luis will be there to work on those projects. So for the audience, you will see WTF live from Nicaragua and Venezuela this summer. I will do my best to broadcast regularly every Thursday for you. But if you see a few notices that, you know, on the road and gathering more stories, that's why. So Nicaragua in July, Venezuela in August. So so just to put that out there and hopefully Jose Luis will be part of one or both of those projects. So anyway, thank you so much, Jose Luis. What happened? We've got, you know, more episodes to do. Special shout out to our broadcast partner this evening, Venezuela analysis and all of our regular broadcast partners and for all of you in the audience, you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Thursday, 7 30 p.m. Eastern, 4 30 p.m. Pacific on YouTube live, including channels for the Convo Couch, Code Pink, Popular Resistance, post broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you find your podcast. So thank you, everyone. Thank you to our guest and we'll see all of you next week.