So, if you can talk, Professor Avina, about what this attack on Venezuela means for Latin America, what some are calling the re-hemisphering of Latin America.

Good morning, Amy.

Yeah, I think— This is, you know, contrary to what Trump was saying, the Monroe Doctrine has never quite been forgotten by the United States.

It's just the methods of enforcing it or implementing it in the region have varied across presidential administrations and across political parties.

I think it bears to keep in mind that the U.S. empire in Latin America is a bipartisan project that involves both Republican and Democratic parties.

Just thinking about how President Obama is the one who labeled Venezuela a threat to U.S. national security back in 2015 is one pertinent example.

So I think what we're witnessing now is just a quite visible and unabashed assertion of U.S. power over Latin America.

Talk about the Monroe Doctrine, what most people certainly don't understand going back to the early 1800s.

disconnected from the people that make the value they forget that there's some steps in between that they just they just know that it's always going to be there

yeah And it's also their horizon, right? Like you guys talked about this and I know Aaron talks about it.

Their notion of temporality, they're not farsighted, right? Like at this point, they're just balls to the wall.

Who cares? Like we are going for short term, massive extract and profit as much as possible in the short term and damned whatever follows.

And that's really dangerous.

I mean, and that's been a process we've seen probably in the last 20, 30 years that has just accelerated rapidly.

Or it feels like it's accelerating now, particularly when you're like Tom driving around, seeing in real time changing gas, changing gasoline prices, 30, 40 cents in the space of five seconds.

It's just strange.

And they're not in Yemen, right? Well, they're not being controlled from Yemen.

They're an internationally recognized government that's not actually in the country that they're supposedly governing over.

Oh, Malcolm.

Fresh off his time in Ukraine as a

That is the current status of the Interceptor stocks to the point where they're like, if Russia tries to do anything to like fucking estonia or one of these like smaller nato countries like we're not going to be able to defend them like we're not going to be able to do anything that was like apparently there was some like i don't know if you saw like the cia director was like in moscow um like trying to they treated him like shit too like they didn't even like high level meetings they just made him like met with

some like mid-level bureaucrats and they told him to fuck off it's like yeah no it's and then if you saw i think it was I don't know how accurate this reporting is, but on the Iranian attacks on the Jordanian bases, like, the amount of interceptor missiles that they launched at, like, 12 Iranian missiles was, like, between 80 and 100.

Like, that is, like, just not a sustainable ratio.

And that's been, like, a ratio throughout for more than a year at this point, right? Or even before, right, when they were defending Israel.

Yeah.

It's just on so many levels, this is not sustainable.

Yeah, Alex, you want to tell us about this latest U.S.-Venezuela oil deal that was inked?

Yeah.

It's just the methods of enforcing it or implementing it

itIn the region have varied across presidential administrations a- and across political parties.

I think it, it bears to keep in mind that, uh, US empire in Latin America is a bipartisan project that involved both Republican and Democratic parties.

Just thinking about how President Obama is the one who labeled Venezuela nat- a threat to US national security back in 2015 is, is one pertinent example.

So I think what we're witnessing now is just a, a quite visible and unabashed assertment, uh, uh, assertion of US power over Latin America.

Now, that's one way to read it.

The other way to read, uh, this move, and particularly in light of the national security strategy, it's also ...

Talk about the Monroe Doctrine, what most people, you know, certainly don't understand, going back to the early 1800s.

Can you put it into perspective for us, this pressure campaign to cripple the Cuban economy and unseat its government somehow? Is this the most pressure the US has ever put on Cuba since the revolution?

I think so.

I think that's what Cubans themselves are, are saying.

Perhaps in the 1990s during what they referred to as a special period after the fall of the Soviet Union was a- another extremely difficult time for Cubans, definitely during COVID.

But what we're witnessing right now and, and reading and listening to what Cubans are saying about the current situation that, let's say, really begins with Trump taking office for the second time at the beginning of 2025 is, is the most intense, the most violent, and we can define violent in a variety of different ways, effort by the United States to finally, what they would say would resolve the so-called Cuba question.

What we have witnessed for a year and a half is the slow strangulation of an island of nine and a half, 10 million people, where people do not have a- daily access to clean water, do not have access to transportation to work.

Uh, they don't have access to electricity, right? There's been four or five national electrical blackouts in the last couple of weeks.

[laughs]

But starting with Alex.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I guess I'm a combination of you, Kumars, and Adnan.

Look, to me, this game has brought a lot of joy in my life since I was a little kid, and I've played it for most of my life, and it's brought me a lot of joy, a lot of opportunity, and So it's been, but at the same time, everything that Adnan described is something that I'm feeling quite vividly, especially after we had the conversation with Abu Bakr.

So, I mean, I'm still watching the games.

It's taken nine World Cups for me to watch Mexico finally win a knockout match.

So, like, for me, it's a challenge not to be following that team or to especially be following what the Iranian national team was doing.

We also, when we saw that Mexico was going to be one of the co-hosts, we looked into getting tickets years ago.

you what do you make of this like that old

And before we get into how these issues are framed, could you share with us, you know, how these marches have been carried out and then Shanbaum's governments, you know, how have they responded to the social ferment in Mexico around the world?

So, the, there's, you had, we kind of talked about this a little bit last time, right? But there's a convergence of different popular movements that, you know, quite smartly are using the World Cup as a way to kind of project and platform their, their movements, their, their, their demands, right? And one of the, I mean, I think from, in my view, the most compelling social movement is this movement led by families of the disappeared, right? So since, since 2006, According to government statistics, more than 130,000 Mexicans have been disappeared.

Generally, it gets subsumed under the narco violence or the war on drugs.

And so the Mexican government for decades has played a, let's say, they've impeded the ability of the families of the disappeared to actually find their loved ones.

And this speaks to a longer history in Latin America, right? Like these families of the disappeared organizing and demanding that their governments provide information as to what happened to the disappeared loved ones.

Um, the, the shame bomb administration and similar to her predecessor, they, they, they, they, because they're on the, because they say they're on the left and they're progressive, they, they try to play a, an interesting dance with these movements where on the one hand they'll say, well, it's not over 130,000 disappeared.

They'll question, they'll like go at the numbers, um, or they will go, you know, they will attack the individual characters of certain leaders of these movements.

If you could just, like, you know, reflect on what the Azteca means and what it allows in terms of political expression.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, um, it's interesting because the last, the first two times Mexico hosted the World Cup, they're arguably the two best of all time, right? So the 1970 World Cup we saw most likely, I think arguably the best national team in the history of, of, of, of world soccer, which was the 1970 Brazilian national team, um, that had Pele playing his last World Cup.

And, um, they beat Italy, like, 4-0 in the final.

And there's one, the last goal is kinda crazy because every single person on the, on the Brazilian team touched the ball, and then it led to a goal.

So it's like the very, like...

And there's these really incredible images of, of Pele, you know, shirt off on top of people's shoulders and trying to put the charro hat on him, the sombrero on him.

Um, but yeah, just wanted your thoughts on that current situation, what's happening.

Um, what exactly, uh, is being reported by CNN, and why is it so, uh, startling?

So the report that CNN put out, I think a couple days ago now, alleges that there is an intense and expanded CIA operation on the ground inside Mexico that looks very much like war on terror operations in West Asia, where the CIA operatives or assets are assassinating mid-level-- In Mexico, they're alleging that they're assassinating mid-level cartel operators.

So like dr- so kinda like the middle management of, of narcotrafficking organizations, trying to go after finance guys, the guys who really make some of these organizations run, right? Not the, not the more famous kingpins and not necessarily the, the, the ground level soldiers or even, like, the, the smuggling mules, but going after middle management.

And this was sparked by, uh, an assassination that happened, I think, a couple months ago, where somebody who's alleged to have belonged to a, a narcotrafficking organization was car bombed in central Mexico.

And, and, and the CI- the CNN report alleges that it was a CIA, uh, ground team that was responsible for it, um, if I remember correctly.

Uh, the, the-- Yesterday, we got a New York Times report soon thereafter, who made the suggestion that it, that it was M- Mexican government security forces who actually did, who are actually conducting some of these operations, and that CIA folks are kinda hanging out in the background providing support and intelligence.

So we have two different reportings on, on, on this issue.

Mm.

Um, w- w- just give us that, uh, historical context.

Yeah, thanks for having me on again.

Uh, I think the immediate context, about three, four, maybe even five years of, uh, the GOP making threats about invading Mexico or doing u- unilateral military interventions in Mexico against the so-called cartels.

Uh, Trump, once Trump won, um, he made it...

He made the, those pressure tactics even more explicit.

He has this weird thing where he's, he likes President Claudia Sheinbaum, like, he speaks pretty well of her, but then he'll say things like, "Well, the cartels run Mexico, and she's too scared to confront them." Um, and then in the context of what just happened in Venezuela at the end of last year with the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, using the, the specter of narco-terrorism to justify that, that illegal action, I think all of these things, uh, are being taken into account by, by the current Mexican government, and that probably had some sort of influence or factor in the decision to go after, uh, the head of the Jalisco cartel on, on Sunday, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or al- also known as El Mencho.

The violence that we saw on Sunday, that's pretty much, uh, a narco script that we've seen in the last 15, 20 years.

If you could just explain, uh, how Morena, uh, AMLO's party, Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor, and then Sheinbaum herself, how that party maybe has embraced, uh, some more, uh, nationalism than maybe US leftist groups [chuckles] or, or, uh, movements would understand, and how, uh, showing this kind of force against the cartels is a way to, perhaps in Sheinbaum's mind, stave off calls for US intervention and show, "We can handle this ourselves, only with inter- i, uh, information sharing from the United States."

And in terms of the Trump administration's repeatedly threatening President Sheinbaum, claiming her government wasn't doing enough to combat drug cartels, what's your assessment of how the Mexican government has tried to deal with this issue in the past?

Yeah.

Trump is infamously said, you know, things like he personally likes President Shane Baum, but she says she's scared.

And the cartels are actually running the country, which is I mean, as we witnessed on Sunday, that's patently on fault.

It's patently false.

You know what? What happened on Sunday is just part of a longer, you know, decades long story.

approach to drug interdiction that is highly militarized, that focuses on punitive actions, and that in the end only ends up generating more violence and doesn't do anything to stem the flow of drugs.

No, I just wanted to ask Professor Avino what your sense is of how the U.S.-backed war on drugs has impacted this issue of corruption within the Mexican government.

Yeah, and, and in terms of the, uh, the Trump administration's repeatedly threatening, uh, President Sheinbaum, claiming her government wasn't doing enough to com- combat drug cartels, what's your assessment of how the Mexican government has tried to deal with this issue in the past?

[lips smack] Yeah, Trump has infamously said, you know, things like he personally likes President Sheinbaum, but she says she's scared and, and, and the cartels are actually running the country, which is...

I mean, as we witnessed on Sunday, that's patently unfalse, uh, it's patently false.

Um, you know what, the me- what happened on Sunday is just part of a longer, you know, decades-long, uh, approach to drug interdiction that is highly militarized, that focuses on punitive actions, and that, in the end, only ends up generating more violence and doesn't do anything to stem the flow of drugs.

So I think symbolically and politically, it represents a victory for President Sheinbaum.

It allows her to assert that, you know, she's doing, quote, unquote, "doing something about," uh, the most powerful drug organizat- drug trafficking organization in Mexico and likely the Americas.

It allows her to stave off some of the pressure from Trump, right? To, to assert Mexican military power against these criminal organizations.

No, I just wanted to ask, uh, Professor Aviña, what your sense is of how the US-backed war on drugs has impacted this issue of corruption within the Mexican government?

Yeah, and, and in terms of the, uh, the Trump administration's repeatedly threatening, uh, President Sheinbaum, claiming her government wasn't doing enough to com- combat drug cartels, what's your assessment of how the Mexican government has tried to deal with this issue in the past?

[lips smack] Yeah, Trump has infamously said, you know, things like he personally likes President Sheinbaum, but she says she's scared and, and, and the cartels are actually running the country.

Which is, I mean, as we witnessed on Sunday, that's patently unfalse, uh, is patently false.

Um, you know what the me- what happened on Sunday is just part of a longer, you know, decades-long, [lips smack] uh, approach to drug interdiction that is highly militarized, that focuses on punitive actions, and that in the end, only ends up generating more violence and doesn't do anything to stem the flow of drugs.

So I think symbolically and politically, it represents a victory for President Sheinbaum.

It allows her to assert that, you know, she's doing, quote, unquote, "doing something about," uh, the most powerful drug organizat- drug trafficking organization in Mexico and likely the Americas.

It allows her to stave off some of the pressure from Trump, right, to, to assert Mexican military power against these criminal organizations.

No, I just wanted to ask, uh, Professor Aviña, what your sense is of how the US-backed war on drugs has impacted this issue of corruption within the Mexican government?

So, if you can talk, Professor Avila, about what this attack on Venezuela means for Latin America, what some are calling the, um, re-hemisphering, um, of Latin, of Latin America.

America.Good morning, Amy.

Uh, yeah, I think this is, you know, uh, in- contrary to what, what Trump was saying, the Monroe Doctrine has never quite been forgotten by the United States.

It's just the methods of enforcing it or implementing it in the region have varied across presidential administrations, uh, and across political parties.

I think it, it bears to keep in mind that, uh, US empire in Latin America is a bipartisan project that involved both Republican and Democratic Parties.

Just thinking about how President Obama is the one who labeled Venezuela nash- a threat to US national security back in 2015 is, is one pertinent example.

So I think what we're witnessing now is just a, a quite visible and unabashed assertment, uh, uh, assertion of US power over Latin America.

Talk about the Monroe Doctrine, what most people, you know, certainly don't understand going back to the early 1800s.