The weekly newsletter of the Mexico Solidarity Project

Every issue archived online at mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/

May 14, 2025

Helping You Take Out the Media Trash

Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Is your mailbox — and I mean all of them, not just the one hanging outside your house — too damn full? I scramble to keep up, and I’m not always sure what to read or listen to or what to toss or tune out. As I think back, not only have I been scammed by phone or social media marketers, I’ve also bitten the bait thrown out by the mainstream news. It’s not easy to recognize stories that leave out key facts, that use words that slip attitudes into your subconscious, or just plain lie.

News stories about another country, such as Mexico, are especially hard to decipher. It’s easy for US readers to thoughtlessly accept the description of President López Obrador as a “swaggering populist,” as in a recent New Yorker article, or as a “narco-president,” as the US media insinuated in 2024.

These tropes fit neatly into the racist stereotypes already familiar to us from years of “news,” painting all Latin American leaders as tyrannical and corrupt. Journalists regurgitate these same stories over and over until they seem like facts. From conservative Mexican to US sources, the stories freely cross the border. Even trusted TV sources like “Democracy Now” and the journal NACLA often repeat these analyses. They both got AMLO wrong.

So, how do we sort our mail? Never fear, Kurt Hackbarth and José Luis Granados Ceja are at your service. By just listening to their podcast “Soberanía” for an hour a week, you’ll get the real deal from the point of view of Mexico’s poor and working class. The perspective of “Soberanía” isn’t filtered through the corporate and national interests of the US media or the elite posturing of those longing to return to the good old days when upper class interests prevailed.

You may not like to clean, but listening to “Soberanía” is an easy and fun way of clearing away the trash!

(And don’t forget the Mexico Solidarity Project’s “Mexico Solidarity Media” or the Spanish language “Sin Muros,” now with English subtitles.)

Duo From Mexico Rebuts US Media Rubbish

You are a dynamic media duo — you’ve got great on-air chemistry! José Luis, you lived in Mexico City, and Kurt, you lived far away in Oaxaca. How did you meet and decide to work together on your podcast “Soberanía,” which means “Sovereignty?”

So, in 2020, pulled together by the Mexico Solidarity Project, we formed a “Rapid Response/Media Outreach" group to plan how to counter the fake news and tear off the masks of the so-called journalists writing the trash. Pedro Gellert, the former editor of Morena’s international newsletter, was one initiator. I got to know José Luis from those media meetings — which resulted in a new English-language website —and from his reporting on Venezuelanalysis. We finally met in person, at Pedro Gellert’s, when I visited Mexico City. I had been thinking about a podcast and floated the idea to José Luis.

José Luis Granados Ceja: I had been a fan of Kurt’s from his Twitter posts and from his articles in Jacobin, which provide the only regular monthly analysis about Mexico you can find anywhere, let alone from a progressive viewpoint. I was reluctant to do a podcast at first, but Kurt pushed me — thank goodness!

AMLO made his press conferences into political theater; “Soberanía” is similarly entertaining. How did you decide on your presentation style?

Kurt Hackbarth and Jose Luis Granados Ceja

KH: We cover serious material, but if we covered it in a serious style, it could seem too heavy. I write and perform in plays — so I’m a ham! You won’t get a newscaster monotone from me. We decided to always open the same way, for consistency.

First our intros. Then a “couch gag,” something we learned from the Simpson’s cartoon TV show, which always opened with some configuration of the Simpson family on their couch. Our couch is the way we announce our title, “Soberanía!”

We have three news items every week. We hand off the lead back and forth and pepper our comments with sarcastic asides. Our final segment is “Losers and Haters,” a name we got from our friend Luisa Martinez. That’s where we have the difficult job of choosing the worst piece of journalism of the week. There is no lack of contenders!

JL: A mother told me that she and her 10-year-old son listen to “Soberanía” in the car on the way to school, and he loves “Losers and Haters.” His education starts before he gets to school. I love that segment too. It’s where I really blow off steam. The media malpractice we’re treated to in the mainstream press, like The New York Times, really offends me. This bilge is what passes for journalism??!

If Kurt brought theatrics, which rubbed off on me, what I brought was experience in editing and putting together a podcast. The format can make listeners feel like they’re overhearing a lively conversation, and it allows for diversions that you couldn’t do on a different platform.

Unlike most news shows, your episodes are full of historical facts and references. Why do you spend time looking backwards?

KH: Historical and cultural information is necessary to situate listeners in the Mexican context. Otherwise, the tendency is to interpret events from your own paradigm.

Who is he to lecture on democracy??! It’s important to know what these people did, where they come from, so you recognize the blatant posturing.

And Mexican journalists living abroad, the main sources for English-language media, are mostly wealthy ex-pats whose comfortable bubbles were burst by AMLO’s priority on the poor.

For us, that was the last straw! We traced the sources to show that the allegations had no factual basis, and that the authors were connected to right-wing think tanks. Not “reporting” — but a hit job.

A few months ago, the Mexican public TV station Canal Once, or Channel 11, offered you a show, "Sin Muros,” or “Without Walls.” Within a month, you had a phenomenal million viewers! Why do you think there was such an outpouring of interest, besides your charm, of course, haha!

KH: Our success? We’ve been at the right place at the right time. We launched “Soberanía” at a critical moment in Mexican history, at the end of AMLO’s term and the election season that followed. We launched “Sin Muros,” which focuses on US-Mexico relations, the day after Trump’s inauguration. Since that date, the relationship of the US and Mexico, Trump and Sheinbaum, has been the top attention-getter for the Mexican people, and we’re uniquely capable of explaining it.

JL: It’s a strange new feeling when someone in a grocery store or on the street recognizes us and says, “Hey, aren’t you on “Soberanía?” I love your show!” But we’re not looking to be famous. We're looking to provide the best English reporting on the 4T and to defend Mexico’s soberanía!

Press Propoganda: An Epic Fail in Mexico

In January 2024, Kurt Hackbarth said “Enough!” to the attempts of the
Western press to blacken AMLO’s reputation and to influence the Mexican presidential election. We excerpt here from Hackbarth’s April 5, 2025 Jacobin magazine article.

 There’s a cross-border elite linked by a dense web of think tanks and ostensibly nonpartisan academic institutes. In late January 2024, just as the Mexican presidential campaigns were heating up, ProPublica, InSight Crime, and Deutsche Welle came out on the same exact day with pieces on the same exact topic: the supposed relationship between organized crime and AMLO’s first presidential campaign in 2006.

The pieces, clearly based on the same batch of leaks from the DEA, consisted of little more than cobbled-together bits of hearsay. Even more substance-free was a New York Times piece in February making the same insinuations about López Obrador’s 2018 campaign. But that did not stop a well-financed deployment of bots and international troll farms from flooding social media and turning #NarcoAMLO and #NarcoPresidente into multiday trending topics.

What might have been devastating in other contexts here utterly backfired: AMLO’s popularity rose by eleven points and the polling gap between Sheinbaum and her right-wing opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, widened by ten.

On Monday, September 30, 2024, AMLO held his final mañanera. The following day, in his trademark workaday Volkswagen Jetta, he attended President Sheinbaum’s inauguration ceremony in Congress for the formal handing-off of the presidential sash. And then the man who had bestrode the Mexican political scene for a generation was gone.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador had had the last laugh: despite years of right-wing fearmongering that he was going to change the constitution to reelect himself indefinitely, he was off to his ranch in Chiapas to retire and write. His greatest legacy was what he left behind: a strengthened movement, a more politically engaged population, and a heightened sense of national pride. “AMLO taught us to respect ourselves again,” said a street bookseller on inauguration day. “And to hell with what they think of us abroad!”

Don’t miss an issue! Sign up for a free Mexico Solidarity Bulletin subscription.

For a deeper dive into current news and analysis in English,

check out our media website and the podcast ¡Soberanía! (Sovereignty) with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth. Sin Muros is a weekly program dedicated to analyzing the Mexico-US relationship, reporting news, analysis and research from both sides of the border.

And those of you with mad skills and/or interests we want to hear from you! Get in touch to find ways to plug in to the work. Drop a line to meizhului@gmail.com.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Compiled by Jay Watts.

Cuban President talks with Secretary General of Morena Radio Cadena Agramonte. An Agreement for Exchange and Cooperation between Morena and the PCC was signed, which was signed by general secretary Carolina Rangel Gracida of Morena and Roberto Morales Ojeda, secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the PCC.

Marco Hernández Cazares, Paco Ignacio Taibo II plantea "nacionalización" de TV Azteca; pide a Morena Consejo Consultivo para hablar del tema El Universal. Acotó que también se debía poner en pie el Consejo Consultivo, con el fin de discutir este tipo de temas.

Richard Connor, Mexico sues Google over Trump's renaming of Gulf of Mexico DW. A decree issued by Republican President Donald Trump sought to rename the whole gulf, including waters that border on Mexico and Cuba — an order with which Google has complied for US users of its Maps service.

Elia Castillo Jiménez, El nombramiento de Adrián Rubalcava como director del Metro desata el fuego cruzado en Morena El País. Sin experiencia, con su reputación empañada por alianzas oscuras, corrupción e incompetencia financiera, muchos miembros de Morena se preguntan por qué a este político de derecha no calificado se le entregaron las llaves de uno de los sistemas de tránsito más transitados e importantes del mundo.

Tony Wood, Stricken Leviathans New Left Review. The neoliberal project may be in ruins, but its broken contours continue to shape Latin America’s path, and the state form it left behind – its legitimacy eroded, its sovereign powers scattered – is still presiding over the interregnum.

Nancy Gómez, La hija del Bienestar Sin Embargo. La familia Monreal no deja de sumar menciones en el debate público. Las menciones no son favorables.

Steelworkers join Los Mineros in honouring fallen martyrs and advancing workers’ rights in Mexico United Steelworkers. This year’s march, which brought together nearly 5,000 members, families and guests, was a powerful tribute to the lives lost during the violent repression of the 2006 strike at the Sicartsa facilities, when government forces killed two workers standing up for fair conditions. It was also a celebration of the strength and progress of the Mexican labour movement in the face of immense adversity.

Sam Pitroda, Reforma de Telecomunicaciones: el momento decisivo para el México digital El Universal. ¿Una visión desde los elementos ilustrados del capital global?

Ioan Grillo, Sheinbaum Has A Red-Line On US Troops Crashout News. The question of how much the Pentagon can act in Mexico has come to center stage as President Donald Trump said he requested that U.S. troops launch full-on combat operations south of the border but Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has turned him down.

Luis Humberto Fernández, Morena: la política que queremos El Sol de México. Esta resolución del Consejo Nacional de Morena nos representa un hecho importante para la vida pública de México. Significa reforzar nuestras raíces como movimiento a través de todos estos lineamientos.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and Mexico’s national sovereignty.

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs, Pedro Gellert.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

Web page and application support for the Mexico Solidarity Project from NOVA Web Development, a democratically run, worker-owned and operated cooperative focused on developing free software tools for progressive organizations.