Kurt Hackbarth is a journalist, writer, and playwright covering Mexico and Latin America. He is an analyst on Mexico’s Canal Once and the cohost of Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast.
US ambassadors to Mexico have long been a meddling presence. The latest to join the ranks is former interior minister Ken Salazar, who has already distinguished himself for trying to derail AMLO’s efforts to regain public control of the country’s energy sector.
As AMLO’s transformative social programs gather steam in Mexico, the country’s conservative opposition parties are making overtures to the far right.
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is attempting to transform the country’s overpriced energy industry by nationalizing lithium — a move essential to kicking out private mining and developing a robust and affordable public energy sector.
In a landmark ruling, Mexico’s Supreme Court declared anti-abortion laws unconstitutional. But it’ll take mass organizing and legislative victory to cement reproductive rights in the country.
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called for a union of Latin American countries. Drawing on the revolutionary vision of Simón Bolívar, it aims for regional integration as a bulwark against foreign interference. Could it work?
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s governing MORENA Party won the midterm elections last month. Now in its second term, it must deliver on the transformative agenda its voters expect.
Facing an alliance of right-wing parties, business associations, and US-backed institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA Party still managed to retain its majority in Congress. It’s a victory worth celebrating.
Mexico is set to hold crucial midterm elections early next month. Though far from perfect, the governing MORENA party remains the Left’s best bet to transform the unequal, corruption-addled country that AMLO’s administration inherited three years ago.
The Mexican right knows it’s set to lose the upcoming midterm elections — that’s why it’s desperately trying to use the courts and the National Electoral Institute to wage war on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA party.
Over the last thirty years, resource-rich Mexico has had its energy grid handed over to corporations and foreign multinationals — when it should be in the hands of the Mexican people. Andrés Manuel López Obrador is trying to reverse that trend by bringing back the nation’s long-debilitated public energy sector.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has wagered that he needs the support of the military in order to execute his progressive agenda. But the Mexican army is a conservative organization looking after its own interests, and it is no substitute for the mass base that AMLO must mobilize if he is to achieve true transformation.
In Mexico, the midterm election campaign has just kicked off and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s right-wing opponents have formed a coalition against his ruling party, MORENA. Their aim is to seize a majority in the lower house and stop AMLO’s progressive agenda in its tracks.
Julian Assange’s extradition to the US has been blocked thanks to a technicality, but he still faces the injustice of years in prison in the UK. While world leaders remain quiet, AMLO stands alone in speaking up for freedom of speech — and has offered Assange asylum in Mexico.
AMLO’s decision to hold off on congratulating Joe Biden on his presidential victory has ruffled feathers among establishment Democrats. But the United States stands to learn a lesson from remaining impartial in foreign elections.
Mexico’s former secretary of national defense was arrested last month for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering. His trial will be important, but justice for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the war on drugs means not only prosecuting involved Mexican officials, but also American officials who were complicit all along.
Since the 1990s, Mexico’s banks have been privatized, bailed out, and sold off, resulting in a massive upward transfer of wealth. The AMLO administration is introducing a public option for basic banking, but it must go further to rein in the untrammeled power of the banks.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have been friends to Latin America or to Latinos living in the US. Yet the Democrats seem to take the Latino vote for granted, as Joe Biden’s platform promises to extend the criminalization of immigrants.
The administration of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was beset by corruption scandals from the beginning. With a host of new, even more shocking revelations, he might finally be held to account for his abuses.
Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a caste of superrich lording over a mass of urban and rural poor barely surviving. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transfer programs have gone some way toward distributing wealth, but much more needs to be done.
When the US spearheaded the Mexican war on drugs in 2006, many suspected links between members of Felipe Calderón’s administration and the cartels they were charged with stamping out. Now, fresh evidence makes clear that not only were top government figures profiting personally from links to the cartels, but that the US knew about it all along.