What I'm listening to and what I think about it

 

One podcast that I have really been enjoying lately is “Soberania,” a Mexican news podcast. A friend of mine in DSA recommended it to me, and I find that the hosts offer a very sharp perspective on current events within Mexico that steers clear of all the misinformation and smears that abound in the U.S. corporate media. The two characters who receive the most coverage in the show are Mexico’s former president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), and Mexico’s recently elected president, Claudia Scheinbaum. Each of them are member’s of Mexico’s MORENA party, which is a very popular left-wing political party. I would highly recommend that individuals in the U.S. who are despairing over the possibility of left-wing electoral campaigns study MORENA and its two recent leaders. AMLO left office with something like a 60% approval rate, and MORENA supports policies such as transitioning to green energy, supporting a Free Palestine, and ending the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba. In Mexico, at least, left-wing politics are very popular, and Scheinbaum’s overwhelming victory in the recent elections show this clearly. Meanwhile, the corporate media in the U.S. hardly bothers to report on these left-wing electoral successes. When sources like the New York Times and The Atlantic do bother to cover political developments in Mexico, it is mainly to slander AMLO, Scheinbaum and MORENA as authoritarians. This is a classic US Foreign Policy — to label any opponents of U.S. hegemony as authoritarians, even though the arguments against Scheinbaum falls badly short of the filmsiest reason. 

One of AMLO’s controversial policies as he was on the way towards leaving office that has won him the ire of U.S. corporate media is his judicial reform. AMLO’s judicial reform, which Scheinbaum is continuing to pursue, would result in the popular election of more judges in the Mexican judicial system. This is an effort to combat corruption in the Mexican judicial system, and to leave Mexican voters with greater say over their country’s judiciary. Most importantly, this effort would erode Scheinbaum’s power — the popular election of judges would leave more power in the hands of voters, and less power in the hands of government and corporate interests. Mexican voters are likely to punish judges who regularly place the interests of multinational corporations over the interests of working-class Mexican citizens. But, this could threaten the bottom line of those corporations that authors at the Atlantic and NYTimes are addicted to protecting, hence the slanderous claims of Scheinbaum’s supposed authoritarian tendencies. If anyone can convince me that leaving more power in the hands of voters and less power in the hands of government bureaurcrats is authoritarian, I’ll give you $40 — and I’d be very sad to part with that $40, which I won in a bet with a friend when I predicted three months ago that Trump would beat Kamala. But anyway. These false claims of authoritarianism are just some of the mishigoss coming out of Mexico’s upsurge in leftist movements at the national level, and this podcast does a really good job of clarifying these things.

As an aside, I am very curious to see how these developments play out. Historically, when popular left-wing governments in Latin America have butted up against U.S. corporate interests, violence and coups have followed (see, Salvador Allende, and dozens of other examples). I am curious to see what plays out with Scheinbaum. It’s hard to imagine the U.S. having the appetite for the kind of coups and violence they instigated throughout Latin America in the 20th century, but who the hell knows. In the meantime, fingers crossed for Claudia.