El Taller: The CIA in Chihuahua and the US Counterattack with Tania Arroyo Ramírez
In this episode of El Taller, the interview program from the Soberanía podcast, hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth talk with Dr. Tania Arroyo Ramírez, an academic and researcher specializing in U.S. interventionism, geopolitics, and destabilization processes in Latin America.
The conversation opens with an analysis of the scandal in Chihuahua, where two CIA agents died in an accident while taking part in an unauthorized operation alongside state authorities. Arroyo places the case within Trump’s National Security Strategy, which relies on coercion rather than consensus to reassert U.S. hegemony in the region.
The discussion traces a historical arc from the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny to today’s hegemonic crisis, explaining how the United States moves between “soft power” (such as USAID or the NED) and “hard power” (the CIA, the FBI, intelligence agencies) depending on who holds executive power. Arroyo warns that the violence the U.S. projects abroad today is a symptom of deep internal decay.
The conversation also addresses regional integration as the only way to contain interventionism, recalling experiences such as UNASUR, the Bank of the South, and Petrocaribe, as well as the challenges of cognitive warfare, the use of algorithms, and the depoliticization of young people in the digital age. The episode closes with an invitation to visit the National Museum of Interventions in the former Churubusco convent, a key space for understanding Mexico’s long history of resistance.
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