ANALYSIS

  • Trump’s Trade War as Political Blackmail

    For Trump, tariffs are far from a trade policy measure; they are desperate actions by a declining power, trying to halt the transition to a multipolar world where American hegemony will be a thing of the past.

  • Song of the Stubborn One Thousand

    An interview with Peter Shapiro on the Watsonville Canning Strike of 1985-87.

  • Day Labourers: Victims of Cruelty

    There are more than 5 million agricultural day labourers in Mexico, approximately half of whom lack employment contracts, benefits and health services; many are Indigenous, often children work in the fields. These workers produce untold wealth for Mexican and transnational agribusiness corporations, in conditions of extreme exploitation and abuse.

  • Mexico & The Uncomfortable Proximity

    Mexico can’t choose its neighbors, but Mexico can choose a new path of unity and strength with other Latin American and Global South countries that share our values to make us stronger.

  • Asymmetric Dependence, the New Economic Order

    Mexico ceased to be energy sovereign in 2014, but rebuilding state-owned enterprises gives it the flexibility and capacity to avoid Trump using energy as a weapon to extract concessions and halt the national development of strategic sectors. Europe is too far gone.

  • Alito in the US: Betrayal, Escape or Both?

    The President of PRI and former Campeche Governor appears to be hiding out in the US, facing accusations of embezzling over 83 million pesos during his governorship and potentially having his immunity from prosecution stripped.

  • Fidel, Chávez, AMLO and Petro

    Eliminating the luxury of a few and reducing the hunger of millions is not a simple slogan; it’s a social and cultural law that must be fulfilled to prevent the disappearance of life on Earth.

  • Mexico, Gaza & The Vampires

    Mexico doesn’t dare mention the word genocide, doesn’t demand international norms be applied, and doesn’t want to break off relations, preferring to remain silent or take refuge in an unattainable future: the creation of two states and accepting the deaths of children from starvation.

  • Let’s Talk About Migration

    The recent introduction of the Dignity Act makes clear the structural disdain of US Republicans and Democrats towards the migrant community.

  • Austerity & Humility

    Despite enormous social progress in the nearly seven years of the Fourth Transformation, the task of demolishing the sense of belonging and esprit de corps of the political class remains largely pending.

  • Trump Fake-out, or not: the Question of Non-Tariff Trade Barriers

    The deregulation sought by Trump would imply a setback in the defense of the national interest and openness to more U.S. investment, an acceptance of the dominance of colonizing neoliberalism.

  • Defending the Sovereignty of Venezuela

    With Mexico hawks in the White House salivating at the notion of a direct attack inside Mexican territory, Sheinbaum must prepare now for a possible direct confrontation with US imperialism. The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has shown time and time again the importance of understanding your enemy.

  • The US is Behind NGOs and Think Tanks That Oppose Mexico’s Fourth Transformation

    An extensive network of companies, think tanks and NGOs funded by the United States and foreign and domestic corporations systematically oppose energy reforms, judicial democratization and other social elements of Mexico’s Fourth Transformation.

  • The Mexicans Who Kneel Before Trump

    Mexico is facing open interference by Americans from both the DNC & GOP in Mexican affairs, supported by Mexicans endorsing a US military invasion of Mexico under the pretext of drug trafficking.

  • A Manicure with a Machete

    At Morena’s National Council’s sixth session in May, delegates passed ethical guidelines based on President Sheinbaum’s letter to the party, but for many attendees the question remained how these guidelines would be enforced.

  • Migrant Extortion

    Mexico’s new anti-extortion law will help merchants, but has little to offer to the countless migrants who are extorted in transit through Mexico.

  • Neither Equal nor Sovereign: The Politics of Fear

    One of the most persistent features of Mexican politics is its officials’ structural fear of contradicting, upsetting, or even misinterpreting the will of the United States. When it comes to the US, Mexico acts as if it has already been reprimanded, even before making a decision for itself.

  • Morena Disappoints: Teachers Get No Security

    An interview with Eligio Valdes, General Coordinator of CNTE Michoacan.

  • The July 26th Movement changed Cuba and Latin America

    Overthrowing a tyranny through insurrection and a professional army seemed feasible, and at that time, it was the only way to achieve it.

  • Change & The Future

    The longevity of Morena’s decision-making elite will depend on how it responds to the needs of its constituents, to whom it owes its existence, and establishing a viable alternative to North American integration.

  • Geopolitics & Mexico’s Power

    Current Mexican sovereignty has, from the Italian perspective, managed to differentiate itself from that of Europe and the United States, reclaiming autonomy, resources and the power of the state and national economy.

  • The Redemption Committee

    Morena’s mushy-headed, pseudo-Christian doctrine of pluralistic redemption has outlived whatever usefulness it had, offering salvation only to the crooked and opportunistic. It’s time to flip over some tables and cleanse the temple.

  • What to do with Criticism?

    Let the nepobabies dream of tasting the honey of power, let them be frivolous and equivocal as they usually are. The political process in Mexico is moving forward.

  • Difficulties and Challenges for Mexico’s Social Economy

    The main challenge facing Mexico’s social economy is to promote a democratic and participatory re-institutionalization process, to overcome the stagnation and neglect of the last six years; and the development of social economy as a political and ideological project.

  • The Emergence of the Urban Masses: Stifling Revolution in Latin America

    Throughout the Cold War and beyond, US imperialism used development plans, charitable foundations, NGOs and the funding of public and private universities to produce a pseudo-progressive, anti-communist reformist sociology capable of halting and diverting Latin America’s revolutionary impulse.

  • Effective Principles

    The continuation of Mexico’s Fourth Transformation depends on what AMLO refered to as the revolution of consciences, in which political education plays a key role.

  • Interventionists & Cynics

    Two Americans (one Democrat, one Republican) and a convicted rapist are launching the Mexico Republicano party to support Trump and US intervention in Mexico. Their opening political event with the US Ambassador last week included Morena members.

  • Dollar Fetishism

    The dollar operates as capitalism’s penal code, condemning people to empty shelves, underfunded hospitals, and indebted households; and it is legitimized by the complicity of elites who act as ventriloquists for imperialism.

  • Withering on the Vine

    The Mexican government decided to negotiate with the US from the moment Trump first announced his tariffs, and months later, the achievements are nothing to brag about.

  • Don Trump

    For Mexico, American society and its government are disastrous. Whether there is an agreement now or not, we don’t have to compromise with them forever. Even less so if many of the US’s furious gestures are an expression of its ongoing demise as a dominant power.

  • Sovereignty is not Decreed, It is Manufactured

    The narrative of integration is over. The old dream of lasting cooperation with the US has died. Mexico must stop waiting and start building sovereignty.

  • Lake Texcoco: Life’s Triumph

    The cancelation of the airport & survival of Lake Texcoco is to be welcomed, but environmental triumphs must be reinforced through education, awareness of rights, and mobilization against those who put private profit above the common good.

  • The Left’s Missing Strategic Horizon

    Figures like Zohran Mamdani and Jeanette Jara are merely fireworks intended to keep afloat a rickety left wing which has lost all strategic depth, incapable of advancing past fleeting tactical maneuvers that change nothing and are quickly forgotten.

  • Health Sovereignty: From Profit-Driven Disorganization to Public Reconstruction

    Healthcare can no longer be treated as a business. It’s time to rebuild what was dismantled.

  • The Fight for Water & Land

    Even after one revolution, and the two significant reforms of Cárdenas and of López Obrador, the struggle for water and land continues to divide the interests of peasant communities and the large monopolies who profit from them.

  • This House is not a Hotel

    Gentrification proceeds through every day developments, causing prices ito skyrocket, and what was once a territory of urban resistance becomes a tourist showcase and, ultimately, a territory of expulsion.

  • Solidarity, Greed & the State

    Social predators like Diego Fernández, Salinas Pliego, and Germán Larrea, who arose in the neoliberal period but continue to prosper under the Fourth Transformation, point towards a pressing need: to decommodify large sectors of Mexican society.

  • BRICS: A Positive Contrast

    Mexico’s current level of dependence on US imperialism is the product of decisions made more than three decades ago by the architects of neoliberalism. The BRICS Summit signals that Mexico needs to look south to build a sustainable economy and guarantee its long-term sovereignty.

  • Of Principled Pragmatism & Other Demons

    Given the unrestricted defense of pragmatism in Morena as a way to keep Mexico safe from the threat of the far right, one must question whether what is gradually strengthening the right is not a policy of unrestricted openness to figures from the “Old Regime” who insistently operate and construct their own stockpiles of power.

  • Supreme Court Will No Longer be Held Hostage

    Mexico’s incoming Supreme Court Chief Justice Hugo Aguilar Ortiz says power groups persist within the judiciary, and that monitoring and sanctions are urgently needed, otherwise, within five years, vices will be widespread.

  • What Pluralism?

    Morena must combat a pluralism that is little more than right wing scheming to weaken its popular political program.

  • The 4th Transformation & Rural Mexico

    The progress made in rural areas since the first administration of Mexico’s Fourth Transformation has been significant, but much remains to be resolved. In the paths yet to be taken, the voice of rural organizations is fundamental.

  • Let’s Talk About Migration

    This is a moment we cannot waste. Unity among migrants, citizens, workers, and organized communities is the key to defeating the threat posed by Trump.

  • The Temptation of Other People’s Applause

    Governing from the left doesn’t mean preserving what exists, but rather transforming it. It’s not enough to occupy the government: power must be used to break structures that sustain inequality. Sharing the path with those who have already derailed it is to derail the project.

  • Night & Fog

    The September 23rd Communist League’s struggle in Mexico was launched as “all avenues were exhausted, and the road narrowed, leaving only the only path that has historically achieved change: revolutionary violence.”

  • A Pact with Banking Oligarchies to Not Touch Pension Gold Mine

    4T administrations have opted for agendas replicating the crisis of progressive Latin American countries: prioritizing partisan hegemonies of agreement with right-wing parties; and encouraging the electoral mobilization of citizens as the only valid form of political participation.

  • The Right to Life, Against Profit

    Despite powerful forces aligned against them, community organizations can transform trade rules, defend territories, promote agroecology, seeds, and solidarity-based ways of life.

  • Against Cuba: A Fetid, Arbitrary and Despotic Obsession

    The oil Cuba requires to sustain its energy demands in the face of vicious US sanctions and financial attacks is truly minimal compared to Mexican production.

  • A Great American

    Paul M. Sweezy’s 1962 interview with the 51st President of Mexico, the socialist General Lázaro Cárdenas del Río.

  • Lázaro Cárdenas and the American Left

    Both Lázaro Cárdenas and Paul Sweezy of Monthly Review understood that politics of anti-imperialism and national liberation, to be effective, must foster alliances across borders.

  • Marked by Violence, Promoting Peace

    Migrant farmworker Maria Elena Valdivia is at the forefront of the fight against the US’ H-2A temporary visa program, a form of legalized human trafficking which provides the heavily exploited labor that creates American agribusiness profits.

  • Unpunished Destruction

    Canadian mining company Equinox Gold has been extracting gold from Guerrero for decades. Now it wants to close the Los Filos mine, leaving behind environmental degradation, exploitation and emiseration, while pocketing big profits.

  • Trump’s Attack on Los Angeles Meets the Resistance

    While the current situation is fraught with challenges, Trump’s racist campaign has also sparked a broad and diverse resistance movement.

  • Passing It Down

    An interview with Esmeralda Jazmín Alonso Guevara, coordinator of Casa Obrera del Bajío, where they organize to counter the historic attacks that capitalism has inflicted on Mexico.

  • The Offensive Against Migrants is Against All Workers

    Migrants are not new, but they are now a massive product of the enormous difficulties that countries in the South have faced in the face of the onslaught from the Global North, which has prevented countries from attempting to escape dependence and subordination.

  • Mexico’s Future Will be Small and Local

    Everything indicates that the current dominant model of globalization, created and perfected by corporations and banks, is already unsustainable.

  • The Migrants’ Anti-Establishment Role

    For those of us who believe that the fall of an empire occurs both from within and without, the uprisings in California and other states show us that we are facing an unprecedented possibility.

  • The Commitment to Human Dignity

    If Caribbean and Central American countries bow to Washington’s latest pressure to expel Cuban medical brigades, how many more deaths will the empire cause?

  • Teachers In the Streets

    All the teachers’ demands are justified, and repeal of the ISSSTE would not just benefit all public sector workers, but all workers, says teacher Ángel Custodio Guadarrama in this interview.

  • War and Rebellion in Los Angeles

    If the conflicts persists or escalates, political elites will attempt to solve the contradictions through political-electoral disputes between Democrats & Republicans and their allied NGOs, attempting to wage a domestic war that, like foreign wars, requires both the carrot and the discreet stick.

  • The Ideological Custodians of a Dying Neoliberalism

    A serious political movement that wants to transform working class conditions must face up to the obstacles placed in its path. Mexico’s old judiciary was such an obstacle, as are rearguard defenders of institutionalized corruption like the OAS and corporate pundits.

  • STAGNANT WATERS

    The Morena government is refusing to fulfill its campaign promise to repeal Calderón’s 2007 ISSSTE Law and is seeking to confine the issue of pensions, handed over to private banks under the predatory Afore model, to a weak and very provisional scheme.

  • MEXICO’S MOMENTOUS JUDICIAL ELECTION

    In Mexico, Morena-led reforms and the recent judicial election are a crucial step to overhauling a judiciary long plagued by corruption and nepotism, says Kurt Hackbarth on this apperance on Breakthrough News.

  • THE JUDICIAL ELECTION’S UNEVEN MEDIA COVERAGE

    Why did Mexican corporate media dismiss this election? Did they already sense a low turnout? Or did they want to dismiss and silence an uncharted voting process?

  • SIMULATED SOVEREIGNTY: NATIONAL KNOWLEDGE VS IMPORTED PRESTIGE

    Epistemic colonialism disguised as critical modernity: a persistent intellectual subordination conditions public policy formulation in Mexico.

  • A NEW DEMOCRACY

    As former Mexican Congressperson Alejandro Robles tells us, for far too long, judges at every level ruled for the rich and against the poor. That started to change in Mexico on June 1st when Mexicans began electing their entire judiciary.

  • CUT & RUN GARMENTS

    Trade unionist Jeffrey Hermanson says that conditions in the maquiladoras that flooded Mexico since NAFTA have somewhat improved, but in this “new” USMCA period, multinational corporations still receive favorable treatment from the government to continue their exploitation of workers and land.

  • MEXICO’S CORPORATE MEDIA

    Kurt Hackbarth talks to Latino Media Collective about the Mexican corporate media structure and proposed telecommunications reforms.

  • WILL MEXICAN GM WORKERS GET A FAIR UNION ELECTION?

    San Luis Potosí workers at a GM plant are looking to organize but a rival union, allegedly being assisted by GM management, is complicating the drive.

  • LET’S TALK ABOUT MIGRATION

    Let’s talk about migration, but with truth, with commitment, and with conscience, because defending the migrant is defending the future of humanity.

  • A POOR ELECTION, A BETTER PURGE

    As an election, 13% voter turnout in Mexico’s judicial elections was not ideal, but as a peaceful purge of an entrenched and corrupt judiciary? That’s mass participation in a potential advance for popular democracy.

  • UNCLE SAM’S STUDENTS

    Darrin Wood’s new book investigates the Mexican armed forces and their relationship with the US military, a reality considered taboo by much Mexican media, academia and the contemporary political environment.

  • MEXICO’S JUDICIAL ELECTION: JUSTICE DISTRIBUTED

    The current judiciary fails to deliver justice; it administers impunity, institutionalized sexism, racism, and cowardice. This election won’t magically solve all the structural problems, but it is a deep crack in the wall of opacity and abuse.

  • NOT AGAINST A PARTY, AGAINST A MODEL

    The national strike, initiated by the CNTE but joined by other public workers, is not a mobilization of workers against a political party, but against the neoliberal model that is still unfortunately in good health.

  • THE REMITTANCE TAX: A NEW BORDER AGAINST MIGRANTS

    We need a public debate to assess the true role of migration, its economic contribution to both rural and working-class families and to large profit margins for US businesses

  • SPINACH IN THE SPAGHETTI

    The multidisciplinary artist Einnar Dante Espinosa, known to many as Pinche Einnar, says his understanding of capitalism started with Batman.

  • ARE YOU WITH THE TEACHERS OR WITH THE BANKS?

    Teachers’ pensions provide private banks massive profits in the form of commissions, they fund the investments the banks make in their own businesses, and the profits the banks make from usurious activity with other people’s money. What public benefits would there be if the system was de-privatized?

  • MAGISTERIUM PLAINS RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX

    Mexican teachers face the enormous power of finance capital and a neoliberal retirement system, owned by major banks, the true right wing of this country, which the government refuses to touch with even a single tax.

  • MEDIA CRIMINALIZATION

    While AMLO repealed some of the worst elements of neoliberal teaching reform, underlying demands have not been fully addressed & worse, certain sectors close to Morena have replicated the narrative of the past, presenting the CNTE as an irrational and intransigent pressure group.

  • THE LAW IS NOT THE SAME AS JUSTICE

    An interview with Supreme Court candidate Federico Anaya Gallardo

  • TEACHERS’ RESISTANCE

    In the days of Porfirio Díaz, a soldier earned 90 pesos and a teacher barely 40: even today, such a disparity is clear, a new teacher earns 8,000 pesos and a new soldier 12,000.

  • DESPAIR & NOSTALGIA

    As the government’s social programs and security strategy produce results, organized crime groups must be feeling a potent (and dangerous) mixture of despair and nostalgia.

  • THE 1935 FORMULA FOR 2025?

    Why does a well-positioned President like Sheinbaum today want or need “operators” who emerged from the PRI or in equally reprehensible environments, and what lessons does Cárdenas’ experience in 1935 have here?

  • LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BARRICADES

    An interview with Rafael Barajas Durán, El Fisgón, the cartoonist on political humour and political education.

  • THE TRUMP DOCTRINE

    Given that Trump’s use of soft power has the threat of “hard power” behind it, Mexico should orient its foreign policy away from the unreliable US and look instead to the Global South.

  • LET’S GO FOR SOCIALISM!

    Marco Colussi writes that although capitalism appears triumphant today, we must continue to build the socialist alternative, which is the only one that can bring real improvement to all of humanity.

  • THE HOPEFUL WORK OF TEACHING

    It is in times of uncertainty that we most urgently need education that effectively trains citizens capable of transforming their context.

  • SOBERANÍA: HELPING YOU TAKE OUT THE MEDIA TRASH

    An interview with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth, the duo from Mexico that host the Mexican Politics podcast that rebuts US media trash.

  • FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MEXICO’S TEACHING PROFESSION

    In the face of trends toward control, discredit, and containment, it is time to move forward collectively. The CNTE’s call for a national strike is crucial because it opens the door to uniting the diverse forces of outraged and mobilized teachers across Mexico.

  • THE MEDIA’S ROLE IN THE POSSIBLE REVOLUTION

    There is an urgent need for the Latin American left to reflect on which programs we can join forces on, how we articulate different experiences, and how to communicate with social sectors that are not yet politicized to build a common emancipatory horizon.

  • CINCO DE MAYO AND THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE

    For Black America, Cinco de Mayo needs to be seen as a day to celebrate a war of resistance against a colonial power that was, de facto, allied with the Confederacy and a day to celebrate an abolitionist state which welcomed many of our ancestors and “blood.”

  • PLAN MEXICO: PRODUCTIVE SOVEREIGNTY OR MODERNIZING DEPENDENCY?

    What is promised in its rhetoric does not always coincide with the structural logic underlying Plan Mexico, which seeks to further integrate Mexico into a subordinate cog in the U.S. productive apparatus.

  • PECANS & PROTEST

    Filmmaker Anne Lewis speaks about her film “A Strike and an Uprising! (in Texas)” on a historic Texas strike and its leader Emma Tenayuca.

  • 4T REWARDS THE “OPAQUE KING”

    The new head of Mexico City’s Metro (one of the most important transportation systems in the world and the recipient of a historic increase in funding this year of 23 billion MXN) has a dark history in previous right wing governments, with many unanswered questions about his administration of finances and connections to organized criminal groups.

  • WHO’S IN CHARGE OF MORENA?

    Viri Ríos says Claudia Sheinbaum’s message is clear: Morena’s leaders have failed or have been unwilling to put the party back on track, and the President has grown tired of simply watching.

  • FROM WORDS TO DEEDS?

    Claudia Sheinbaum’s letter was full of compelling words and moral guidance, but will that be enough to tame excess, discipline internal factions and purge corporate interests?

  • MIGRANTS: THE TWO CRISES

    Parallel to the problem of adequate housing for migrants is a much more troubling issue: the crisis of lack of empathy, lack of solidarity, and covert xenophobia among certain sectors of Mexico City.

  • MAY DAY: AUTOWORKERS DIVIDED BY TARRIFS?

    This May Day, when workers around the world rise to demand rights, respect and their just share of the wealth, autoworker solidarity is on the line.

  • BANNING JUNK FOOD IN SCHOOLS

    Something big has happened for children in Mexico this year. On March 29th, guidelines went into effect that prohibit the sale of junk food in schools throughout the country.

  • ‘WORKERS OF AMERICA! HAVE WE MEXICANS NO MESSAGE FOR YOU?’

    Christina Heatherton’s book Arise! brings to light how activists worldwide gained inspiration from revolutionary México. In this interview, she discusses how international solidarity (then, as now) is less something we offer and more something we build together.