Upstream - Unlocked Venezuela Pt 5 Monroe Doctrine 20 W Jose Luis Granados Ceja

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

This is an unlocked version of the Patreon episode "Venezuela Pt. 5: Monroe Doctrine 2.0 w/ José Luis Granados Ceja." You can listen to our entire 5-part series on Venezuela by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. In Part 5 of our ongoing series on Venezuela, José Luis Granados Ceja joins us to discuss the context within which the US's aggression toward Venezuela is taking place—what we can think of as a Monroe Doctrine 2.0. José Luis Granados Ceja is a journalist with Drop Site News based in Mexico City who has been covering Venezuela for 20 years.  Our conversation begins with an update on the most recent situation in Venezuela. We then go on to discuss the regional implications of the United States' air and sea blockade of Venezuela and how it impacts its allies in the region and how the current blockade escalates the already existing sanctions regime. We discuss the regional layout of Latin America and how different countries in the region are responding to the escalating bifurcation of the region between the United States and China, taking a close look at Mexico and the Sheinbaum administration's approach to this new Cold War. We end the conversation with a look forward and with a call to solidarity with the people and government of Venezuela as it stares down the gunships of the United States. Further resources: Dropsite News José Luis Granados Ceja on Twitter "War of the entire people": Venezuela's Grassroots Rise to Resist Trump's Naval Blockade Mexico and the Fourth Transformation Edwin Ackerman Related episodes: Listen to our ongoing series on Venezuela Listen to our ongoing series on China Listen to our ongoing series on Mexico US Labor & Imperialism Pt. 1: the War Against Communism w/ Jeff Schuhrke Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hey everyone. So we recorded this episode with Jose Luis on Friday morning and very early on Saturday morning. As I am recording this, really it's the middle of the night. The U.S. launched an illegal bombing campaign on several locations in Venezuela, including the capital of Caracas. And so this is all happening in real time right now. I'm not going to try to provide any kind of like real time analysis of what's going on. Information is still coming in. And there are better places to get that kind of like breaking coverage news. But I just wanted to come in before the episode started and just say that obviously this is a horrific escalation and a nightmare for Venezuela. and really for all sane and decent people across the world.

And I honestly didn't think that they were going to do this. But I guess even as like a grizzled 40-year-old who came of age during the Afghanistan and Iraq war, even I thought an actual bombing campaign was just too far for this ghoulish administration. But I guess the thing about the United States is that it will never cease to amaze you with its depravity. It is important to note here, I think, that a clear majority of people in this country do not want us to go to war with Venezuela. This is really just a handful of oligarchs and ideologues.

And like we've talked about many, many times on this show, it's the dying gasps of an empire in free fall, wanting to drag down with it anyone and anything within arm's length. And this, of course, is not about drugs. It's not about narco-traffickers. We've covered that at length in our Venezuela series. It's really not about anything that those in power tell us it's about. It's quite simple. It's about punishing a state who has stood in defiance to the United States for decades. It's about maintaining hegemonic control over Latin America.

And yes, of course, that does include wanting easy and cheap access to its endless resources. And so our conversation with Jose Luis today is predominantly a momentary more zoomed-out exploration of the U.S.'s various machinations in Latin America, and it focuses on giving more of a geopolitical layout of the region in the context of the U.S.'s new Cold War with China, particularly what that looks like in Latin America and Venezuela. The conversation was recorded before the bombing campaign, so a couple of parts of the episode will require you to fill in the gaps a little bit. Podcasts are, of course, great for many reasons, but the format doesn't always lend itself to cutting-edge coverage necessarily.

As always, fuck the United States and the homicidal zombies who run it, and nothing but solidarity with the people of Venezuela and with the government of Maduro, long live the Bolivarian Revolution. The term I've been using is the strategic retreat. I think the United States seems to admit that they've lost the battle. for global hegemony. They understand that they do have a peer rival in China, and that is capable of matching, essentially, the extent of both soft and hard power

of the United States throughout the world. And so they now, by admitting this, realize that sort of the full spectrum dominance that they wanted to impose following the end of the Cold War is not feasible. But that doesn't mean they're giving up the fight. That doesn't mean that they're willing to tolerate another superpowers.

So they go into what I call a strategic retreat, back into their traditional spheres of influence. And by that I mean the so-called Western world. So Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada. And then Latin America. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. The days of the so-called pivot to Asia initiated in the early years of the Obama administration are over. The United States has realized that it cannot win a war against China in the east and that it needs to retreat to its original stomping grounds, particularly the region it has always viewed as its own backyard, Latin America.

But of course, there are still some thorns in its side here in the Western Hemisphere that it was never able to fully contend with. Venezuela is one of those thorns. In this episode, part five of our ongoing series on Venezuela, we're joined by Jose Luis Granado Seja to explore the context within which the U.S.'s aggression towards Venezuela is taking place, what we can think of ultimately as a Monroe Doctrine 2.0. Jose Luis is a journalist with drop-site news based in Mexico City

who has been covering Venezuela for 20 years. And now, here's my conversation with Jose Luis Granado Sea. Jose Luis, it is really great to have you on. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for the invite. Honestly, I'm a fan of the show, so it's really a pleasure for me to be here with you. Oh, that's great to hear. Yeah, well, I'd love to start with an introduction.

And, yeah, maybe if you could just give us a sense of the work that you do and how you came to be a journalist. Sure. The way I introduce myself, I always say that I'm an anti-imperialist journalist. And I say that because I'm an anti-imperialist, first and foremost, it's kind of the lens in which I try to interpret the world,

but I'm a journalist. I'm committed to bringing forward the truth about what's happening in our world through that lens. And I do it in a way that I think is very forthright about my own perspectives and the place I'm coming from. You know, I don't really subscribe to the notion that journalism can be free of bias and that there is such a thing as objective. But what I do is always try to stay close to the popular movements, to the working class, and try to do my reporting

from that. I started out as a journalist, like so many of us, at a community radio station. We decided to start a program focused on the Latin American community in Toronto, Ontario, shortly after visiting Venezuela in 2005 for the World Festival Youth and Students. It's wild to say this out loud, but that was 20 years ago at this point. And since then, I've been trying to put into practice all of this and working as a full-time journalist basically since 2013, writing and publishing, but also doing video form journalism and the rest of it. And I've been working on Venezuela for those 20 years. It's something that I'm very proud of because that was a transformative experience for me. I always say that I arrived to Venezuela as a social democrat and I left a communist.

So it tells you what kind of an effect it can have on people when you are in the midst of a revolution. And that's what is happening in Venezuela, of course. And I'm very proud of the fact that I've been able to keep up with the country. I always felt like I owe them a debt of gratitude for that role that it played, the conversations I had those 90 years ago now. And I continue to do that now. I'm now a contributor for DropSight News working with them to expand their coverage of Latin America and precisely along these lines of the resistance forces.

Because I think now that we're at the start of a new year, I think it's going to be a very long and complicated year with the ascent of reactionary, far-right forces. So it's going to require us paying a lot more attention to the people on the ground who are resisting that. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for that. You mentioned Toronto. I'm actually originally from Toronto, so that's an interesting connection there. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. But I live in work in Mexico. I was born here in Mexico, and I made a decision to come back here to my homeland to, as we say in Spanish, ponermi granito de arena, to put in my little bit of contribution to the popular struggle here from my homeland. And I've been here since 2018.

Very happy. I don't imagine going anywhere else at this point. Awesome. So, yeah, I mean, as you know, we may know, we also have a series on Mexico. So we might have to have you come back and talk a little bit about any topics that we might find fitting for Mexico that you might be able to share some of your wisdom with us for. And I'm sure we'll get to some issues regarding Mexico as well today as we're talking about kind of the broader Latin American region and the sort of Monroe Doctrine 2.0. But yeah, let's start with Venezuela. There's a lot going on right now. And I want to just kind of bring us all up to speed. You know, maybe a lot of folks weren't really paying too much attention to the news over the last couple of weeks. Maybe they were. But yeah, we published

our last episode on Venezuela maybe almost a month ago now. So I want to just bring everything up to speed first. So yeah, there's been more bombings of boats in the Caribbean. There's been even more saber rattling. They had moved a few aircraft carriers off the coast of Venezuela the last time we had our episode part four on Venezuela, but a lot more has happened since then. So maybe just bring us up to speed. Where exactly are we at now? Well, I would say that the most important thing that's happened probably in this last month has been the imposition of a de facto naval blockade on Venezuela. So I think really the way we can understand what's happening there is that we're seeing an escalation after escalation. But all of this is actually part of a much broader campaign,

which many of your listeners are obviously aware of of regime change in Venezuela. This is just the latest iteration of it. We know that under Biden, similarly, there was a lot of pressure for change of government in Venezuela. Under Trump 1, we obviously knew about the maximum pressure campaign. But even before then, with Obama and the Declaration of an unusual and extraordinary threat. And before Obama, there was Bush who openly backed the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez. So what's happening now is just the latest iteration. This is a regime change effort. This is a coup attempt by the United States to oust a government that is anti-imperialist, that is socialist, that is counter-hegemonic, that is seeking to build its own independent political

economic path. And that is very uncomfortable for the elites in Washington. It always has been, always will be. In fact, I've been thinking a lot about this video of Hugo Chavez back in the day where he was talking about imperialism, the oligarchy, they're never going to accept us unless we change or we submit to them. And this, at least here, is not part of the agenda. When we say homeland, socialism, or death, we mean it. And I think that's very much it. I mean, the only way that Venezuela is ever going to get U.S. imperialism off its back is if they change, if it loses its revolutionary character, or they submit to imperialism. And that's not going to happen.

It didn't happen with Chalas, and it's not going to happen with Maduro. So we see these continual pressures. But I want to go back to these naval blockade, because that's really serious. Obviously, much of what the United States has already been doing are acts of war, their acts of aggression. They should be understood as such. I know that, really, we can not place any faith in international law these days, given the genocide against the Palestinian people.

But even if we still kind of invoke them, we have to understand that. that these are acts of aggression and that in any other context would be clearly understood as acts of war against Venezuela. You know, positioning your ships to intimidate a country the way that the United States has done, a quarter of the U.S. Navy is in the Caribbean Sea right now, right off the coast of Venezuela, invading their airspace, flying into the air zone, using signal scramblers to affect the GPS. We've had two near mid-air collisions by planes as a result of this interference. But again, I think really this one, the naval blockade, is very serious. Because, of course, naval blockades are only legal in a very, very narrow set of circumstances.

You actually have to be in a declared state of conflict with a nation to be able to impose one, or the Security Council has to authorize one. That is not the case. Either of those is not the case here. And so what we're seeing, and it's a bit of an extension of that same logic that underpinned Obama's decree and Trump's maximum pressure campaign, which is to basically starve the population of resources to force them to submit. You know, the United States doesn't want to get its hands dirty.

It doesn't want to send troops onto the ground, not that they wouldn't do it if they felt the need to do it. And so this is the strategy to make things more and more difficult. And it's pretty serious. You know, as we know, Venezuela's number one export commodity is oil. It's still oil. They produce much less these days as a result of this unilateral course of measures campaign, which has really, really hit the oil industry, but just to give a round number, they produce around a million barrels a day. Those are the main sources of currency, a foreign currency for

Venezuela, which they need to import goods. So it's obvious that the point here is to, on the one hand, make it so that firms are no longer interested in working with Venezuela, and so they avoid it, making it very difficult for them to find new customers, or the existing customers ask for even more discounts. Venezuela oil is already sold at a discount because it has to be done through kind of these roundabout ways because they're not able to sell openly in the international market. And that's pretty serious. Fortunately, there's been many advances since then in terms of food sovereignty, for example. They've learned the lessons of previous regime change efforts that have tried to, you know, strangle the economy. But it's still a very big danger because what we're

seeing is a de facto blockade. We're already seeing firms asking for a no discount. We're already seeing some trying to avoid it. We've obviously seen some pushback as well from other important international actors. But this will have an effect on the population if they continue to go down this path of trying to starve the country of resources. That will have an effect. Most likely the media effect would be an inflationary crisis that would start to ramp up in these early months of the year. But also, of course, you know, limited medicines, limited access to food. I mean, it really is a quite difficult circumstance what Venezuelans are facing in this moment. Yeah, and that's building off of what we're already quite difficult circumstances.

So it's, you know, not difficult to imagine how much more this is going to escalate if this continues for much longer. And so the blockade on Venezuela is, of course, impacting Venezuelans, but it's also impacting the region to some extent. So we're actually going to be launching a new series, on Cuba next year, which I'm extremely excited about. Della, my co-host is going to be leading that one. So we'll get a little bit more into the geopolitics of Cuba and the issues with its own blockade and stuff, of course. But in terms of what the U.S.'s intentions are, we hear a lot that Cuba is the prize,

right? like in strangling, in the stranglehold that the United States has on Venezuela through this blockade, one of the intentions of that is to really impact Cuba negatively. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic there and like how this sea and air blockade could impact and maybe already is impacting Cuba? You know, I think it's important to obviously think about the structural elements that are in play here. there is very specific reasons that respond to the U.S. political economy for its interference throughout the Western Hemisphere, throughout Latin America. But there's also important actors that are at

work here. And by that I mean Marco Rubio. It has to be said. Marco Rubio is a pretty big part of what's happening here because he is dead set on trying to finish off the Cuban Revolution. This is a high priority for him. And he said as much. It's really interesting. I've made the citation on other programs before, but I think it's really telling. Why did he choose Christopher Landau, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, to be his undersecretary? And he, Landau himself, actually confessed it. In one of these events, he talks about how, when Rubio first approached him, he actually pushed back. He's like, really, do you want me? I'm an America's guy. You're an America's guy. You know, don't you want somebody who knows about another part of the world so that you can kind of diversify the expertise

in the State Department. And according to Landau, Rubio tells them, no, that's exactly why I want you. Because I know that I'm going to be distracted with other parts of the world, but I want to have someone who's going to be focused on the Americas because it's a priority. And so when we talk about Marco Rubio's priorities in Latin America, it's about finishing off the Cuban Revolution. It's about trying to end the Bolivarian Revolution. It's about pushing back against every left of center government in this region. And so when we think about what they're doing, yes, it's absolutely also about, in a way, targeting Cuba. Cuba is going through a very difficult moment. You know, the U.S. blockade of Cuba, the decades-long blockade, is very consequential to the country.

Cuban revolutionaries, members of the Communist Party, members of the government will tell you as much that the number one issue the country faces, the reason why we're seeing this emigration of in this moment is precisely because of the compounding costs of the blockade. And they were somewhat relieved of that, thanks to Venezuela, during the height of the Bolivarvian's ability to spread the wealth, the oil wealth of Venezuela throughout the Caribbean in particular. And so you would see things like Venezuela trading oil for doctors. But Cuba would use some of that oil to then sell an international market in order to have access to currency. So because Venezuela is not able to provide as much oil as it used to, that's a

really big hit to the bottom line of the government in Cuba. And it's also part of the reason why we're also seeing these effects on its energy infrastructure. It's very difficult to keep the power plants running because many of them operate on hydrocarbons, which they used to get. Fortunately, there has been some help from Mexico. But even then, that's where kind of the geopolitics of everything gets mixed in. Mexico has to dedicate a specific tanker to its trade and selling of discounted diesel to Cuba because if they use anything else, then that same tanker will then be subject to U.S. sanctions and they won't be able to use it for international sales and the rest of it. And so we've already seen certain lawmakers like Carlos Jimenez from Florida, the Guzzano

lobby, I call it, trying to pressure the Mexican government around this. We see these pundits from right-wing think tanks like Ryan Berg, who talks about how, oh, Cuba is not a winner for Mexico, they should stop doing this, or else they're also going to be subject to the same kinds of sanctions that the U.S. is applying to Venezuela, you know, to kind of address that argument for a moment, right? The U.S. has no business telling us what we want to do with our natural resources and who we sell it to and all the rest of it. So, you know, a lot of the policy is very much about trying to also strangle Cuba, but also to send a message, right? Which is that if you fall out of line, you know, if you don't respond to the dictates of Washington, then we're going to punish you

and punish you severely to the point that, again, it ends up really on the ground constituting, I would say, you know, mass civilian suffering, you know, it's tantamount to a war crime. This is the logic of U.S. imperialism in the region. And so to go back to your question, this is also very much about trying to, as the saying goes, kill two birds with one stone, going after Venezuela, but also as a consequence of that, also really weakening Cuba's ability to kind of endure a yet a year of this blockade. Give us a little bit more of a sense of exactly how Venezuela's oil ecosystem operates. I mean, we know that there are like multinational oil companies in Venezuela. Venezuela also, like you were mentioning, it gives oil to Cuba or sells oil to Cuba. So maybe just give us a sense of exactly what's going on there. What's at stake here? Yeah, so Venezuela's oil industry was nationalized long before Hugo Chavez. But it was always kind of a bit of a mixed system. It's probably more akin to Petrobras in Brazil than Pemex in Mexico. In Mexico, you know, in Mexico, BMX pretty much runs everything.

There was an attempt of privatization. It was mostly rolled back at this point now. But here, the state oil company explores, extracts, refines, and sells, almost up until the very point of sale to consumers as gasoline. Whereas Betrobats has always been mixed. So you have obviously a state-owned industry, but there are private interests as well, and there's cooperation with that. And BEDABESA is very similar to that,

in that even during the height of, of, you know, the Bolivarian Revolution and its expropriation drives, there was always room for private capital and private actors to work there. For example, the big one is Chevron. Chevron has always been active there and is still active there. It's one of the few U.S. oil firms that stayed. Other ones ended up leaving due to the expropriations or, you know, whatever, their board decided that these were not favorable climates to be working in, but Chevron's always been there. And really principally, the oil cells, these days are mostly to China. The oil sales from Venezuela, I think, constitute less than

5% of China's imports, but constitute almost 90% of Venezuela's exports. And those are done through intermediaries. It's done through, you know, small-scale refineries and all the rest of it inside of China. Because obviously, as much as we can talk about China as a peer rival for the United States, there's still lots of cooperation when it comes to. the world of international commerce, right? So China doesn't want to step on any toes that it's going to bring issues for them, be it at the WTO or directly in the bilateral relationship with the United States. So while they, yes, they are buying a lot of Venezuela's oil, they're not exactly willing to go to extreme lengths, you know, to confront U.S. imperialism

on Venezuela's behalf to be able to continue to buy that. And of course, like I said, it represents a small percentage of their actual oil imports. They, you know, if they lose Venezuela as a source of oil, you know, they can kind of make that up elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that the relationship isn't important. They have an all-weather relationship, which is the highest diplomatic relationship that a country can have with China. In fact, it's the only country in Latin America that has that high-level relationship. So I don't want to make it seem like they're not willing to go to bat, but I think it's important to take into consideration just how much of a role it plays in theirs. And there's also Russia. But with Russia, there's also a lot of

cooperation around gas. Now, the interesting thing around natural gas in Venezuela is that it's not subject to the same really strict rules that oil is. All oil projects have to be a majority stake by the Bedevesa. You know, they have to have control of the project and all of those rest of those details. When it comes to gas, there's more room to work. Those kind of restrictions aren't there. And so we've seen a lot of investment and a lot of support from state firms from Russia around gas. And so I can kind of give you an idea of kind of the actors that are here. But of course, there's still the United States. And in fact, you know, just the other day in this interview with Ignacio Ramonet, Maduro said, we're open to investment from U.S. oil companies in Venezuela,

as long as you play by the rules here, right? Stop seeking regime change so that you can impose a puppet president. But if you want to come in here and work with us and cooperate like you would with any other country, you're more than welcome. And right now, of course, as I mentioned just previously, the sanctions regime has affected their output. You know, I think at one point, they were probably around 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day of production. Today, they're slightly under 1 million barrels of a day of production in Venezuela. So it being the number one commodity for exports for them, that also represents a hit for them. And it's quite literally we're talking about half the revenue or less because of the discounts that they used to be able to get. And of course, the economy

does very much circulate around oil in Venezuela, you know, with all of things that have been happening and these discussions that we've seen happen around Venezuela's economy, you know, there's a lot of opposition activists who talk about how, well, the crisis started before the sanctions happened against Venezuela. And that's true. But that's because of the broader issues around the price of oil in certain critical moments in recent Venezuelan history that really affected their ability to be able to have access to currencies and imports. I don't want to get too much into the weeds here, but it's a fairly common feature of oil-based export economies that you end up importing almost everything. When you have access to dollars, you just import

because it's cheaper in the long run than to produce it domestically. There has to be a political conviction behind wanting to shift away from that. That has happened. And there is a lot of examples of this understanding that we can't rely on imports because we're in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism. But that obviously has effects to the stay in terms of the way that Venezuela's economy is based. There's basically one important sector and it's oil and there's a secondary sector that's related to it. And then there's all the rent that kind of trickles down from that one. And that's still the case today because it's just such an important commodity. But there are others.

You know, there's also gold. It's one of the largest gold reserves on the planet, but other resources, obviously, with the interest in sort of some of these rare earths, those can be found in Venezuela. And, of course, also, you know, the tourism. It's not a big industry today for the same reasons of the U.S. pressure campaign, but it's also, you know, a destination country. It is on the Caribbean. It has beautiful beaches and all those things that are attractive to international tourists. So give us a sense of how. this blockade is different from the previous sanctions. So, for example, at this point, or let's say

before the blockade, Venezuela was sending oil to China. Now is it literally that there's just a military blockade and they cannot physically do that in the past? How are the sanctions functioning in the past in terms of limiting the oil exports and stuff? You know what I'm trying to ask? I'm just trying to get a sense of how the stakes have escalated since this blockade and what the real on the ground difference is. Yeah, with Obama's sanctions, there was a regime of entities that were sanctioned. With Trump's maximum pressure campaign in his first government, that's where we saw sort of the real escalation of the sanctions campaign, where they basically made it impossible for Venezuela to sell its oil in the international market because of the dominance of the U.S. dollar. Oil is traded in

dollars. And if you're not allowed to deal in dollars because of sanctions regimes, then you have to find workarounds, right? So the term that the bourgeois media uses is like shadow fleets of tankers, right? Tankers that are flagged with one country, but really they belong to another one and all this. This is just Venezuela using creative methods to kind of get around an illegal sanctions regime, which I think is worth mentioning and highlighting here. Unilateral coercive measures, the more appropriate term, are not legal. Sanctions can only be imposed by the Security Council, by the United Nations. There have been conferences at the United Nations where experts have pretty much reached the

consensus that unilateral measures, like the ones that the United States is imposing, they're not legal. They're not keeping in accordance with international law. But obviously, might makes right in this world, and they're able to impose it. because of their control of the dollar. But this more recent escalation, this blockade, the reason this is more severe is because of the effect it has on the customers as well. So some of them will avoid Venezuela.

They will be like, this is not worth it. We can get oil from somewhere else. Or they'll ask for more discounts. They'll just be like, well, you know, we used to pay you 60 a barrel. Now we're going to pay you 30. And that is also really important because that's another pressure on, you know, the bottom line for oil revenues. That's why it's significant.

But it's also the intimidation factor, which is basically declaring to the world that the United States can do this. And there's nothing that we can do about it. And I think that's also really worrisome because it shows that they're willing to go to more and more extreme links. Now, there is still a lot of activity happening. And there was an important piece from Reuters, which kind of maps out all of the different tankers that are still coming and going. So it's not necessarily, you know, a total and complete blockade the way that Trump said it was going to be.

But it's still a blockade. It should be understood just because you're not trying to seize every vessel doesn't mean that it's not a blockade. And in fact, it's very curious because we're even seeing the introduction of terms that have literally no legal standing. So far we've seen, we can confirm that there have been two seizures. So the first one was a so-called sanctioned entity. This vessel that was being used is on a list that was produced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control that is part of the U.S. Treasury Department that apparently was involved in moving oil from Iran to Venezuela to Cuba and the rest of it. The second one was not on a list.

So it's important to mention this because you cannot sanction goods. Even according to U.S. law, you can only sanction entities. And we saw Christy Noam put up a tweet showing the video of them. you know, illegally seizing a vessel, piracy is what should be called, and saying it was carrying, and I'm quoting her here, carrying sanctioned oil. There is no such thing as sanctioned oil. That does not exist. But this is the term that they use. This is what they're putting out there. So even if we want to accept at face value U.S. attempts to exercise its authority beyond its territory, even then, it doesn't actually meet their own criteria. And then this third vessel that they've been basically

chasing across the ocean is also an example of, you know, the kind of creative methods that Venezuela has to engage in. This vessel has now been assumed as theirs by Russia. And Russia asked the U.S. Coast Guard to stop chasing it because they would interpret that as an active aggression. So these are all the kind of different things that, you know, that make it more complicated, more difficult for Venezuela to continue to be able to sell it. And that's, like I said, I think that's really the main thrust of what they're doing, and it does have a consequence. Tell us a little bit about what's kind of been called the Monroe Doctrine 2.0. And there was an interesting, I think, an important tweet that I saw from Greg Grandin recently

where somebody had mentioned Monroe Doctrine 2.0, and he was like, yeah, more like, you know, I forget the exact number he put, but it's, you know. It's more than two. It's not two. Yeah. But, you know, just for the sake of brevity, we'll call it the Monroe Doctrine 2.0. And, you know, I know at some point during the Obama administration, there was a pivot to Asia, but now things are really shifting globally into

geopolitical ecosystem of where the United States operates, what it's focusing on. I believe it was Pete Hegseth, maybe, that came out and really talked about this, like, reintroducing a focus on the Western Hemisphere and kind of making sure that the United States can maintain its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. So maybe could you just like tell us a little bit about that? What's going on with the United States is approach to Latin America right now and how is it shifting? The term I've been using is the strategic retreat. So I think the United States, and you can see it in its own document, the national security strategy, for example, that was published recently, seems to admit that they've lost the battle for global hegemony. They understand that they do have a

peer rival in China, and that is capable of matching, essentially, the extent of both soft and hard power of the United States throughout the world. And so they now, by admitting this, realize that sort of the full spectrum dominance that they wanted to impose following the end of the Cold War is not feasible. But that doesn't mean they're giving up the fight. That doesn't mean that they're willing to tolerate another superpower. So they go into what I call a strategic retreat, back into their traditional spheres of influence. And by that I mean sort of, you know, the so-called Western world. So Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada. And then Latin America. The thing about Latin America, even though it is a traditional sphere of

influence for the United States, is in dispute. It's not a place that is willing to submit to U.S. hegemony. We've seen that historically, and we're seeing it in these moments, and we've seen it through the first pink tide and the second pink tide and also the working class movements in this region that don't tolerate it. So it's going to have to be done by force. It has to be done through coercion, through the manipulation of electoral results. And they're doing it in order to secure access to the resources here. Latin America is a wealthy part of the world. But, you know, obviously that wealth is concentrated in certain hands and there's a value transfer that happens from south to north. Nonetheless, there are tons of

indispensable minerals, resources, and labor power here in Latin America so that the United States and the policymakers understand that in order to, in a future moment, be able to actually dispute with China this global hegemony, they need to have access to those resources. And they need to be cheap. And they need to be always at the ready, you know, kind of almost like the same logic of manufacturing just in time. And so that means a renewed interest in this region. And we're already seeing it.

I think it's really quite evident. It's especially clear with Trump because, for example, we see blatant interference. You know, I come from a human rights background, violations of civil and political rights, which are the ones that are generally accepted by the so-called world liberal consensus. This idea that people should be able to freely elect their own representatives, that's no longer the case in Latin America. We've seen two blatant interferences by Washington. First, with the legislative elections in Argentina, to see Javier Milet, the far-right libertarian president of Argentina,

have his party win more seats. And it worked, which is the terrifying thing. It worked. It looked like the Perrinist forces were going to win that election until the Treasury Department and Trump and Bessent and all the rest of them interfered and produced a result that actually favored Malay. And then we saw it very recently in Honduras. I was actually in Honduras for that election.

And days before the vote in the so-called period where there is no campaigning, Trump intervenes, openly calls for the population to vote for Nasrida, the candidate of the right-wing national party. And it upends the election. Whereas it kind of looked like it was a race between the Liberal Party candidate, Salvador Nasrallah, and the Liber Party candidate, Riximokada. That interference made it so that people who were thinking about voting for either one of those shifted their votes. There was lots of reporting. I heard it too from people saying,

well, if we upset Trump, he's going to cut off the repentancees or we're going to ruin our relationship with a key trading partner here. So the fear worked and it changed the result. So there's a lot of also internal issues and undudas and the total failure of their electoral authority to actually do something about this interference. Basically, it has been achieved, Nasri Asfura has been declared the winner. That is Trump's man. And we also saw the release of convicted narco-trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez, who, according to court testimony, said he was going to stuff cocaine up the noses of all of the gringos. And so he is now free, and he's going to also be another key political actor in Honduras, and he owes one to Trump.

So you can see how this is the kind of logic. And there are places where they don't necessarily directly intervene because they don't have to, for example, in Bolivia. You know, that result led to a runoff between a right wing and a further right wing candidate. And so obviously there, it's a echo, it's a consequence of U.S. interference since the first election of M. Morales, but we can see that that's going to be the future of the region. It's going to have to confront not just attempts at interference in the elections and trying to change the results, but also naval blockades and extrajudicial executions off the coast. You know, we haven't really talked too much about those, but the last one that actually happened

in the Caribbean, which is, you know, supposedly where this whole campaign is meant to be taking place, was in November. All the ones since have been in the Eastern Pacific. That's off the coast of Colombia. Venezuela doesn't have access to the Pacific Ocean. So it gives you an idea of just how far they're to go, and I think they're absolutely willing to go even further. They will support a right-wing general rising up and ousting via kind of an old-school coup d'etatat in order to put in governments that are willing to play this game of providing resources to the United States. This is really what we're facing it. And that's why I call it a strategic retreat, because it's back to the sphere of influence, but all of it is projecting towards a future moment where they're

going to be able to dispute hegemony with other global players. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to go back too far to just see how far the United States was willing to go in terms of regime change and just really chaos and brutality that it inflicted on so many countries in Latin America. We just did an episode on specifically how the State Department and the CIA utilized unions and the AFL-CIO slash AFL-CIA, as we like to call it sometimes was utilized in these ways to influence through soft power. But that era really seems like it's changing, right? Like USAID has been completely dismantled. And now, like you say, it's this like really blatant retreat back to these old methods of just completely hard power

and taking off the mask. I mean, Trump is literally telling countries if you don't vote for the candidate that I prefer, we're going to basically fuck you up somehow and look at Venice. Look at what we're doing in Venezuela. So yeah, dark times for sure. You talked a little bit about Argentina and Bolivia and Honduras. Yes, sorry. So waking up, I guess. And I want to get to Mexico in just a second.

But before we do, just give us a little bit more of a lay of the land of like what administrations, what countries in Latin America are, how they're interfacing with Venezuela, like who are allied with the U.S. more blatantly. You talked a little bit about that. Who are more sympathetic to the Venezuelan cause? And how is that all shaking out in terms of where Venezuela is getting, if it is getting and where it's getting its support from in Latin America? So Venezuela has also been subject to a deliberate diplomatic isolation campaign. I mean, that's what the so-called interim government led by Juan Wai Doe.

was all about, is about trying to get countries, especially those in the region, to no longer recognize Maduro as, you know, the legitimate president. And I think there's still some of that attitude, even though the interim government doesn't really exist anymore. And Juan Maido isn't called the interim president or anything of the sort anymore, you know, there's still right-wing governments in the region who openly say that Maduro is not a legitimate president. You know, they are now talking about the results of the 2024 election, you know, as a quick and aside, because I think it's important to talk about this. You know, I believe in the sovereignty of Venezuela and its institutions.

Those institutions made a declaration. That declaration was, Maduro won the election. Especially when you contrast that with the Venezuelan opposition that has cried fraud in literally every single election it didn't win. You know, there's been, I think, 20 electoral processes since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998. And of all of those, they won two. Those are the only ones that they didn't cry fraud. The only ones, right?

It was around the change to the Constitution in the early 2000s and then the 2015 National Assembly vote. So there they were happy to accept the results. But here, once again, they lost, and now they went and cried to the world. I don't believe them. I will never believe them. You know, it's the classic fable of the boy who cried wolf.

If they're telling the truth now, they've cried fraud so many times that they're just not credible. And I will never believe somebody like Maria Corina Machado. She's not a believable person. She's a fascist. She's an open fascist. And I know that people love to portray her as some kind of democracy activist and a champion of all this. She's not.

She's a fascist. There's a reason why she wrote a letter to Netanyahu asking him to help her oust Maduro from power. I mean, that's the kind of person we're talking about here. And we're supposed to believe her. We're supposed to believe that somehow her candidate won the race. I don't think so. But anyway, I'm getting a little bit off. track there to go back to your question. Right. So, you know, we have, remind me,

remind me again, I kind of loss of a trade of thought there talking about Maria Konaugna. No, yeah. No, I mean, I just want to agree with you completely on that. And I think it may be a little bit of a side path, but an important one. I was just asking about the different, the layout in terms of who's in support and not. And you were talking about how essentially the United States is diplomatically isolated in Israel. Yeah. So, you know, we first saw that with Wai Doe in the interim and then all of these, you know, figures who are not recognizing the result. But that doesn't mean that that's true of everybody. And I think, for example, Cuba, obviously, Nicaragua as well, Bolivia before the change of government, but also important

regional players like Mexico. So Mexico is different from other countries than that it doesn't ever recognize a government. You know, the Constitution does not allow the executive to make a determination in that sense, unless there's a direct aggression by one state against another, and then you can break relations, as happened with Ecuador, which invaded the Mexican embassy in Quito. So Mexico doesn't play that game, but it also does project its voice in critical moments. I remember, actually, watching the morning of the declaration by Juan Wai Do in that Public Plaza and Caracas, where he called himself president, it was clearly a coordinated strategy. They very quickly saw other governments issue statement saying, we recognize Wido as the

legitimate president of Venezuela. For me, it was obvious that there was an attempt to kind of show that this was unstoppable, you know, that it had so much momentum that there was no choice but for the whole world, starting with Latin America, but obviously for the entire world to no longer recognize Maduro. In that moment, Mexico makes a declaration saying, we are not changing who we recognize as president because of the reason I just explained, but also kind of making a statement that this is clearly a regime change effort. This does not, you know, make sense for us.

And I think that actually was really important in slowing that momentum. So you had a very important regional actor, global even, right? If Mexico, I think in a lot of ways, punches above its weight in terms of its importance in global politics and really stop that momentum. And I think that really helped to kind of freeze that effort at trying to make it seem like Guaidao as president was inevitable. And similarly, with this most recent one, right? recognizing Venezuelan sovereignty and Venezuela's institutions and having relations with the elected

government of Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro. Brazil is also an important actor, and Brazil under Lula was also very close to Maduro, except they did cast doubt over the 2024 result. But since then, there was a kind of a long period of no communication between the governments. So very recently, last month in December, Lula once again reached out to Maduro. So we're seeing at least a little bit of a break in terms of this effort at diplomatic isolation. Obviously, you know, Noboa in Ecuador, Mille, in Argentina cast one of the first things he said after winning the second round of the elections in Chile, said, I'm going to break relations with Venezuela and Icaro and Cuba. So they're never going to find themselves close with Venezuela once again.

but regional actors like Mexico and Brazil, we see that, I think that's important, and probably the most important in well is Colombia. And I think that also is a bit of a geographical question. Venezuela is at the top of South America. On the one side has Guyana, but it's actually the border with Guyana is that disputed territory, you know, the Essequivo. And Venezuela actually has a claim to two-thirds of Guyana, and it's actually a really kind of underpopulated area. To the south is the Amazon. But to the west is Colombia. And in Colombia, you know, you have, you know, a very kind of fluid border.

These are obviously countries that were once formed the same country together. There's a lot of talk of Bolivarianism. And so the relationship with Colombia is really important. And Betro has been good. President of Colombia has been good and not so good in some instances. I always say that he spends too much time on his telephone. And I think that's why he ends up saying things that are not particularly the best intervention. But the fact that he's not going to allow his territory, the Colombian territory, his country's territory, to be used as a staging ground for an invasion of Venezuela is really important.

And I think that also is something to keep in mind when we think about Venezuela's place on the continent. As long as Colombia does not allow for that kind of activity in order to further intimidate the Venezuelan government, I think that's really positive news for, Venezuela plus the commercial relationships. You know, there's a lot of trade that happens between Venezuela and Colombia. And so having that border open is really important. And that wasn't the case when you had Ivan Duket, for example, in power who made every effort to try to assist the United States in its regime change efforts against Venezuela. Thank you. Yeah, that's a really helpful lay of the land. Let's get a little bit more into Mexico specifically. So I think I mentioned we just started this series on Mexico. It's been really interesting because our first guest was not a very

big fan of Morena, let's say. And our second guest from the Tri-Continental Institute, not actually not from the Tri-Continental, but she helped put together a piece for the Tri-Continental. Stephanie, right? Stephanie Weatherby. Yeah. Stephanie. Very, very much a different angle in a different perspective on Morena, really thinking that there's a lot of potential positivity and that they're doing a lot of positive things. I really recommend the report she wrote for the Tri-Continental, especially for those of us on the left who want to understand Mexico. I highly recommend that.

And anything written by Edwin Ackerman. He's got three pieces for sidecar, two during Amlowe's government and one with Shyamums that I think are great starting points for people on the left who want to understand Mexico. Awesome. Thank you. I'll throw those in the show notes. And our third episode is going to be with actually a more of a grassroots organizer with the 40H 40 hours movement and like anti-gentrification movement like a younger activist who's also very critical of Morena. So anyways, I'm learning a lot in that series and I'm not trying to put a stake in the ground anywhere because I by no means have enough information to do that.

But anyways, just wanted to kind of like present my own where I'm at right now in terms of. of Mexican politics and my understanding of it. So I do know that Claudia Shinebaum has been trying to navigate Mexico's relationship with the U.S. and with China. One thing that we saw recently was an imposition of trade tariffs on China, I believe, at 50% by Mexico, which is a bit of an indication as to which direction Mexico is navigating in this split in Latin America that is like deepening right now between those allying with the United States and those trying to take a different path. Of course, we understand that the United

States and the Mexico's economies are quite intertwined. Mexico is very reliant on the United States and any kind of break with the United States could potentially in the short term be disastrous. With all of that sort of being said, what is Morena's position when it comes to Venezuela, more specifically in terms of like material support? I know that words and sentiments are also extremely important, but just in terms of more like materially and how you see them aligning themselves in this new era of like Monroe Doctrine 2.0 or 200.0 or whatever we want to call it. I think the best way to start to answer this question would be thinking about the fact that U.S. imperialism does not respect sovereignty. Just flat out doesn't. And, you know,

sometimes even I've made the mistake about talking about defending sovereignty. But sovereignty isn't really defended. It's exercised. You either have it and use it or you allow U.S. imperialism to trample you. And I think one of the best things about Mexico has been its exercise of sovereignty and the defense of sovereignty of other nations. And that has always kind of been the logic used by Lop Sovrador and also Claudio Scheimbaum today of saying that we don't agree with attacks on the sovereignty of other countries. but, you know, maybe to a fault. There's also a lot of faith and expectations placed by the Mexican leadership in regional or global bodies like the United Nations. Cloudy Shainbaum has actually been critical of the United Nations for not stepping up in this moment, right? Like we talked about at the very beginning of this show.

It's been nothing but acts of aggression for months now. Where is the Security Council on this? You know, we all know the flaws of the Security Council. I don't expect a resolution criticizing the U.S. to ever be approved there because they'll just veto it, being a permanent member. But still, the putting pressure on this global body, which is meant to be the guarantor of peace in the world, to actually do something. We've also seen, for example, the efforts to rehabilitate other regional bodies. The OES is a joke. The OES is not a useful institutional body.

It is the ministry of colonies, as Fidel Castro used to call it. But under Lopez Obrador, Salak, the community of Latin American and Caribbean states, was basically rescued from irrelevance and brought back to life. It still has a long way to go. And I think, unfortunately, these are the kinds of moments where we need these regional bodies that actually act outside of the influence of Washington. It hasn't done it. There hasn't been a firm enough declaration. I've always said that I think part of the problem is that it was created under a consensus model, and it's impossible in 2026. to achieve consensus between figures like Maduro and Millay or Scheinbaum and Cast.

It's just, it's too much to ask. There's just maybe inches of commonality and miles of differences. And so that's the issue with these regional bodies. But there is a faith in it, of multilateralism, of Latin Americans solving the issues of Latin America for ourselves. That's probably why we saw deliberate attempt during kind of the right-wing backlash against the first pink tide to destroy unassou. destroy Salak, to negatively impact Caracom, which is what we're seeing right now, efforts to kind of, you know, divide Caracom, the community of Caribbean states.

And so, concretely, Mexico doesn't have much of a relationship outside of diplomacy with Venezuela. You know, there isn't that, you know, a lot to point to. And I think a lot of it is precisely because Mexico's trading relationships, above all, is with its northern neighbor and very, very, little with its southern neighbors. And that's, you know, a consequence of this very deep integration that Mexico does indeed have with the United States. But they don't allow, President Scheinbaum does not allow that economic relationship with the United States to dictate its foreign policy. And I think that's also really important. And that there's always been a really, really firm insistence that they will not be pushed around, that the Mexican government

will have its own independent foreign policy. And I think it's important because I've always made the case that the sovereignty of Mexico passes through the sovereignty of the rest of the region. And I say that because everything that they're trying and they're trying to do and are doing right now to Venezuela, they would like to do to Mexico. Now, this isn't a conspiracy. And in fact, Stephen Miller first wanted to attack foreign territory using U.S. military assets in Mexico first. they pivoted and started attacking these alleged drug smuggling votes in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela because it aligned with some other domestic interests around trying to secure support from the Gusano lobby,

the Florida politicians during the debates around the big beautiful bill to kind of show because Trump didn't want to break the U.S. relationship in the oil industry via Chevron. You know, the pressure was cancel Chevron's license, you know? and he's like said no and instead did this. But what they did there, they always wanted to do here first. And in fact, Trump said that he basically regretted not striking, quote unquote, you know, drug labs in Mexico during his first term. He hasn't done it. He wants to.

There are other people in his cabinet who want to. And he hasn't done it precisely because Mexico, under Gladys Scheinbaum, is exercising its sovereignty. And it has made it clear that if you cross that line, there's no coming back. and there will be major consequences that would absolutely impact people in the United States. One of the more interesting strategies of Shinebaum, she calls it her cool head strategy, Gabesafria. Just kind of very calmly,

don't make a lot of noise about every time Trump opens his mouth and says something offensive about Mexico or about the free trade agreement. It's always interesting, for example, to contrast the Mexican government's response to things to the Canadian governments. And we've seen that when you make too much noise, it just provokes Trump further. So, Ghalier's been talking about kind of keeping a cool head. But a secondary effect of that is that the consequences of his policies start to be felt by

the U.S. population. That's why you have Trump talking about an affordability crisis when he was trying to avoid it in the early first months of his term. That's now something unavoidable. If the U.S. government attacks Mexico by engaging in unilateral military action without the government's position, that's going to affect the economic relationship. And as much as Mexico relies on commerce with the United States, the United States also relies on us. Mexico is the number one trading partner of the United States. And that is no small thing and gives us leverage and allows us to exercise our sovereignty.

I would wish, though, that not just Mexico, but most of the, like, you know, everyone who we think can come on board, come out more firmly against this. These are illegal acts of war, extraditional executions, illegal blockades. There shouldn't be any wiggle room there. It should be plain as day. And yes, make an appeal to the United Nations, but the United Nations has clearly shown that it's not going to act. If it didn't act to stop a genocide, do you think it's going to act here? Probably not. And so I think that leaves it to the region.

If you have to make an ad hoc group of countries that is willing to make a collective statement because you can't reach consensus to lack and the OES is never actually going to say anything of value here, then do it. And Mexico can play a leading role in that to actually bring the countries together to be able to make a common declaration. And one with teeth, one that says, if you keep doing this, these are the consequences. And that's something we haven't seen and that I hope to see. Yeah, yeah, no, it does seem in a sense like, because you had mentioned how through insistence and through words, Claudia Shinebaum, insisted that if the United States were to escalate its war in Mexico on the cartels, there would be consequences. Do you think that part of the strategy there was also to demonstrate to the United States that, hey, like, we're still interested in and you remaining our primary trading partner, we're not going to, I guess to use the term in a different way, pivot to Asia. But do you see that as sort of, is that exercising sovereignty or is that like giving in a little bit to the United States?

I mean, I understand that there are huge stakes here and that if Mexico was really to demonstrate even the, you know, a few inches of a break with the United States, what those consequences could be. And yet, is Mexico not further intertwining themselves and integrating themselves into their relationship with the United States in a way that could be not only harmful to them in the future, but also allowing the United States to have this primary trading partner and in a sense demonstrating that in this, at least when it comes to the economic realm, in this bifurcation of the world between China and the United States, we're siding with the United States.

I think when you put it that way, it's unavoidable to come to the conclusion that Mexico is aligning with the United States on this for sure. That's the strategy. The strategy of the Mexican government is precisely to convince Trump that if you want to compete with China, you can't go it alone. You need a manufacturing hub, and it could be Mexico, which is on your doorstep,

if you think that you can actually, you know, be able to keep up with China in terms of its productive capacity and the rest of it. That's the case that's being made in these negotiations around the free trade agreement and, you know, the revision that's meant to happen this year. And so far, it looks like it's working. You know, there is an understanding that Mexico can play a particularly unique role in the future of the U.S. political economy, especially when you think about it as the block of North America versus China and its spheres of influence in Asia. And so that is the strategy. It's playing with the cards that you have in your hand. You know, obviously a left-wing government would have never signed the free trade agreement in the

first place. But it was. And it's been since the cornerstone of the Mexican economy since 1994 when it came into effect. And so there's just not. enough room, I think, to be able to kind of break away from that. The trouble is around this, around the tariffs, for example, that Mexico applied. So it's important to note that these aren't like Trump tariffs. They're not across the board and they're not applied against countries. They're applied against industries and goods. And so the argument, and I'm not sure if I buy it yet, but the argument made by the economy ministry here is that if we didn't intervene, China's capacity to produce more and cheaper is going to affect local jobs.

That's actually what tariffs are supposed to be used. They're not supposed to be used the way that Trump has. And so, you know, I understand the logic of it of, you know, trying to protect Mexican industry and Mexican jobs. For example, around footwear, around metalworks, all of these kind of really kind of key industries for the Mexican economy, a lot of things that are export oriented, clothing, the rest of it. And so I get the logic. The trouble is that, as you will say, it links you to the United States. It further deepens that connection. And that's troublesome because I was at a conference that was held here in Mexico City called delinking.

And in that conference, they tried to argue about the fact that one of the great advantages of the fact that there is now a hugely advanced productive capacity outside of the United States and Western Europe is that you don't have to necessarily turn to them constantly. and that it doesn't come conditioned the way that it does when you cooperate or trade, engage in commerce with firms in the United States and Western Europe, which in Japan as well, arguably. Whereas with China, there's China and its capacities, there's a lot more room to work with there. But this decision to double down on the North American relationship makes it so they end up making decisions like this, which is to impose tariffs on certain industries, which can affect it. You know, the Mexican government is implementing something called Plan Mexico, the Mexico Plan. And it's basically kind of a 21st century industrialization effort.

The idea is to shift Mexican economy from primary goods to more value-added, export, and also manufacturing capacity. The best way to understand it and the way I heard an economist describe it is machines that make other machines. We don't have that in Mexico. Really, only a handful of states actually have that kind of capacity. And if you want to get there, you have to be able to secure at least the know-how about how to make them. And so if you're putting all your cards or your eggs in one basket, if you're betting everything on the United States, they've shown historically that they're not willing to share that kind of knowledge. They're not willing to cooperate.

There is not that value transfer. And you've kind of closed the door to your alternative. It makes it very hard to be able to realize that goal of value-added products being produced by Mexico in order to move from a middle-income country to a high-income country. I have to understand to Mexico, sure, its cities are incredibly developed and industrialized and modern and the rest of it, but Mexico, especially the countryside, is still very poor, it's still very agricultural, it's still, we're talking about people who live on two, three dollars a day. All of those people want to also be lifted out of poverty. And I do think that if you put too much emphasis

on the U.S. relationship, you're going to tie your hands down the road to be able to do something further. And that's the conundrum that Mexico is facing right now because, well, what's the alternative? To provoke the United States, to rip up the free trade agreement, that'll cause a massive, massive economic crisis in this country. That would obviously put on the shoulders of the party in power. And of course, like every other political party in the world, they want to stay in power. And so they want to try to be able to maintain the status quo, but also, you know, attend to the situation, which of course should be mentioned, right? You know, the Sabao, the Economic Commission for Latin America, a U.N. body recently published a report around poverty reduction here in the region. And in 2024, for every five people who left poverty, three of them were Mexican because of the Mexican government's policies.

From 2018, over 13 million people have been lifted out of poverty by the government. government policies, which is not just social programs. It's also a different understanding of the role of Mexico in the global economy, whereas during the neoliberal period, the emphasis was almost exclusively on cheap labor, cheap exports. We've seen a over 200% increase of the minimum wage from 2018 to date. And that's actually been the single most important policy decision that has led to people exiting poverty here in this country, but also the social programs, the cash transfers, all of the ones that the Mexican government is known for here. And so, you know, there's a lot happening in terms of the relationship with the United States.

And I think 2026 is going to be the critical year. It's going to be what's actually going to happen in these negotiations. Because if the free trade agreement doesn't survive this review, well, then that actually, it's not really Mexico making that decision and we'll have to really reevaluate if it still makes sense to put all your eggs in one basket with the United States. I'm getting a sense that Mexico might need its own President Xi to come in and kind of take things from this sort of, I mean, I'm seeing, you know, in this conversation, a lot of similarities between how China itself was really the sort of factory of the United States for decades. And in playing that role was able to massively reduce its poverty and increase living conditions. the quality of life for the vast majority of people in China, doing so in a way that did not hinder their own development and was not like a one-sided sort of thing.

And then we're able to, under G, begin to make that break with the United States and as you say, exercise their own sovereignty in a way that they perhaps weren't fully able to when they were the factory of the United States. It sounds like Mexico at this point is, is looking at how, like, their orientation is very much towards poverty reduction. And in order to do that, probably one of the most simple short-term paths would be to remain a primary trading partner with the United States and, you know, even allow a little bit of the, you know,

the boot of the United States to exist on top of its neck, find a balance, the right balance there maybe. But that's what I mean when I say, President G, like someone who might be able to come in and begin the process of like breaking with the United States at some point in the future. Maybe a simplistic analysis. No, I don't think that's a simplistic analysis at all. I think you're spot on. And actually, you know, the Mexican government, I think, has successfully convinced a lot of important people in Washington that it doesn't make sense to provoke anything with Mexico right now because they actually do need Mexico. You know, I know you say it a bit of a tongue-in-cheek about having a she-like figure here.

But the thing about Mexico is that we don't have re-election. And there will never be re-election in this country. We fought an entire revolution to oust the dictatorship. And so it's deeply ingrained in the population's political mind that people shouldn't be in power forever. And in some ways, it's helpful, right? I think one of the major challenges of the whole pink tide has been the transition.

You know, the failed transition in Ecuador led to restoration of right-wing rule. The failed transition in Bolivia led to right-wing rule. Here in Mexico, you don't have a choice. You have to plan ahead who's going to be the successor. And, you know, there was a moment there, especially thinking about Lopez-Orador, you know, he was the biggest political figure in Mexican politics for decades. And then finally is able to secure the presidency in 2018. You know, there was a lot of question of what's going to follow next. Will his successor be able to kind of move forward with the same kind of authority that he had here. And I think not only has Claudia Scheinbaum been able to do that, but she's also managed to kind of establish her own

authority without having to break with Loposurado. There was a lot of pressure to kind of make her, you know, mark some distance between you and your predecessor, right, show that you're different, even during the height of the pre-dictatorship. That's what we saw. The new president would kind of clean house and get rid of everybody who was associated with the previous president. this didn't happen here. There was a transition, and she's always talked about it. She's like, I'm a representative of a movement. I am here because I'm the current leader.

There will be another one down the road. And so there will probably never be a she-like figure, but I think Mexico absolutely has a lot to learn from how China has been able to do, as you precisely said, yes, continue to have a very close economic relationship with the United States, but not let that actually serve as a kind of hindrance down the road when they're kind of charting their own thing. And yeah, I mean, the heart of

Morena's project is the poor. You know, there's a campaign slogan, For the good of all, the poor come first. And it's become a maxim. Like, it's not just a slogan. It really is kind of the heart of policy here. There's even a term here in Mexico, and I know it's scary for English language audiences. It's called Republican austerity, but it's not like neoliberal austerity in the sense of like cutting back. It's a reorganization of the state. So away from these kinds of evaluation exercises to more universal programs that are enshrined in the Constitution as rights, but also cutting back on some of the largesse of the state that did exist here in Mexico. We had these gilded bureaucracies and some of these autonomous institutions of the state,

like the electoral authority, for example, where, you know, they've just had lavish salaries. It's a small council, but each one had like 15 advisors. Everybody had a chef and a driver, all these kinds of things. So there have been cuts to the state, but even in other spaces, right? You know, I have a program on Channel 11, which is a public station here nationwide. Even there, you know, this year we saw some cuts to staffing there. So there's a reorganization of the state and there is some, as we call it here, Republican austerity because all of the focus is on delivering more directly into the hands of the poorest in this country. Yeah, that's really interesting.

So I'm thinking here at this point, do I call this episode Venezuela Part 5 slash Mexico part 3? I'm really glad we got to get so deeply into Mexico and some of the politics and what's going on there in terms of this whole Monroe Doctrine 2.0 conversation. Super interesting things. I guess to sort of like begin to conclude the conversation, I would like to go back explicitly more to Venezuela and give us a sense of like, you know, I know it's hard to kind of do this and make predictions or whatever. I'm not exactly asking you to do that.

But moving forward, what do you think is going to be the outcome here? I know that it has to be very difficult for Maduro to continue to stay in the position that he is with all of this pressure. Do we think that there's going to be a change in leadership? Do we think that the United States is going to continue to escalate? Or they're kind of at a point where they've shown their guns, so to speak, and like they may not need to take it further? or yeah, I mean, it almost feels like it could go in any direction at this point, especially with the Trump administration being so unpredictable. So give us a sense of what you think the future holds of the next weeks, the next months

for Venezuela, and maybe if you could contextualize it in this Monroe Doctrine 2.0 and the geopolitical makeup of Latin America moving forward. You know, I think it's important to think about the stakes. What are we actually talking about when we talk about what? could happen. You know, the U.S. unilateral course of measures, the sanctions, that already was a neo-colonial instrument, this idea that the United States decides if you can or you cannot sell oil in the international market. This is an escalation and extension of that same kind of neo-colonial logic. It's far, far more obvious. You know, I always think about this interview

I did with Chris Gilbert, and he always says, you know, in the early days of Uwah Chavez's government, they used to have to run ads saying, this is what imperialism is, and this is how it affects us. You don't have to run those ads anymore. It's clear as day. We know what their aim is. It's to undermine, not just undermine, but quite literally put into question the viability of independent republics. You know, we're talking about an attitude, actions by U.S. imperialism that want to convey this message, that you actually aren't allowed to be independent and sovereign.

those are the stakes. And that's why we can't take not even a single step back. And I'm talking about Venezuela, but I'm also talking about Mexico on this one, and why Mexico I think should be louder. And other countries should be louder about how serious U.S. actions have been and why we have to do more about it. Because if they get away with it in Venezuela, I don't think they will. But if they did, they just do it somewhere else. I think that's what the whole Wai-Joe experience was, too. President Maduro said to himself, this was an experiment. And if it worked, they would have done it elsewhere. They would have just picked another figure that's more convenient and decided that that was the president.

And thanks to the determination and the fight by the Venezuelan people and its government, it didn't work. And so that strategy has been discarded. And now, once again, the entire world is depending on the Venezuelan people to resist. And they're doing an incredible job of it. You know, we are seeing the kind of language that I think really conveys the attitude of the Venezuelan grassroots above all, which is they talk about a war of all the people. So yes, if there is an invasion, you will see that armed forces defend their territory. But their entire military doctrine is based around the notion that all of the population would be involved. And it makes me think about, for example, the FMLN.

You know, they used to have this propaganda campaign where they would. say behind every guerrilla is the people of El Salvador, you know, that there's a person who sewed his uniform, there's a person who got the ammunition, there's a person who smuggled the guns, right? All of this. This is a similar logic that is being used in Venezuela, obviously, with also the state playing a key role here, but of the militia, so the non-regular elements of the armed forces. And yeah, there you see senior citizens who are signing up and wearing the uniform because they're going to defend their territory. We have the communards, you know, the members of the Venezuelan communes. For example, I have contacts and friends with El Panal, which is in Caracas,

and the Fuerza Patriotica Alexis Vive is a very active, militant self-defense, and by that I mean armed, organization that has been very clear that they are going to defend their territory by any means necessary. And even you see some of this finally, it took a long time. It took a long time, but you see this even leaking in to coverage by bourgeois corporate media, where they acknowledge that it's not just the armed forces. You're going to be, if you do invade Venezuela, you're going to be fighting a guerrilla war for decades. And that is what would happen.

And it cannot be allowed to pass. These are the stakes. And that's why it's so important, because if they succeed, if they get away with changing the government, then they're going to do it again. And very soon, because as we talked about on this program, what they're seeking is to be able to build their capacity up again to dispute global hegemony. So it's not really a question if they can or they cannot. They're going to keep trying to do it. That's why it's important for Mexico as well to understand that these are the stakes,

that we have to do everything we can to stop the United States from these neo-colonial exercise, to get them to withdraw their ships from the Caribbean immediately. As of yesterday, You know, that has to be the demand to stop attacking. But what do I think is going to happen? So I think Trump is going to try to avoid, at all costs, a kind of direct military engagement with Venezuela. I think there are too many domestic considerations that play there for them to be entertaining that notion now.

That could change. But for the moment, they don't want to invade Venezuela. We have seen, and it's not clear yet, you know, we're recording this on January 2nd, what happened with this alleged attack inside of Venezuelan territory? It appears that it was a hellfire missile based on some investigations being done by the open intelligence community, fired by a drone on a site. There were no casualties. So does this constitute the first attack on Venezuelan territory?

Apparently, this was done by the CIA, which also helped. helps us understand why there wasn't an effort to advise Congress. Because we also have been watching as certain political leaders, like Thomas Massey from the Republican Party, Rand Paul, but also some Democrats, McGovern, for example, pushing the war powers resolution. And in order to keep that resolution from passing, and it's by a major thin margin that it hasn't,

we're talking about two votes here, is that the State Department and the Department of the Department of defense have gone and talked to legislators, promising them, we're not interested in a war with Venezuela. We're not going. We don't have, our legal opinion says we only have authorization to strike in international water. So what does this most recent attack represent?

It's not super clear. That same interview with Ramonet Maduro refused to comment on it. He said, maybe in the future I can tell you what happened there. But there seems to be kind of a lot of gray area around here. This was the attack on the port facility supposedly. Yeah. In the Aldoahira, yeah. Which actually might even be Colombian territory because it's actually kind of a disputed area.

It's not clear exactly where the maritime border is. And apparently this was a strike on a facility right on the water. So it's not clear. But even with all of that kind of fog around this, it's another escalation. Whatever happened, it's an escalation. And I think they're testing the waters to see if they can get away with a strike on Venezuelan territory. So I think the next escalation is that eventually getting a legal opinion, so it's not being done by intelligence, instead it's actually being done by the Department of Defense, of a strike inside of Venezuelan territory. And it's likely they will hit a drug lab, right, an alleged drug lab.

And at least that'll be the claim. But then the next one won't be, right? The next one will be something that has civilian casualties or, you know, a hit possibly even on political leadership of Venezuela. under the argument that they are representatives of a transnational criminal organization, a transnational terrorist organization, in fact, because they have been declared as such, right? And so I think it's this. It's about inching a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And that's why, again, the emphasis has to be on putting an end to it, because they feel like they can keep getting away with things.

And so that's why they keep escalating. That's why it started with a relatively small deployment of ships, and now the world's largest aircraft carrier is there. and started with the Caribbean and now they're in the Eastern Pacific. In fact, they're actually kind of flirting with the coast of Mexico because one of those strikes, apparently there was a survivor and the only country that had the capacity to look for that survivor was Mexico. And Mexico sent out a helicopter or a plane and a ship. They never found the survivor, apparently.

But it tells you, how close were they to Mexico? That Mexico was the only country that was able to deploy the equipment necessary to try to search for a survivor. So they're just going to keep escalating until we put a stop to it. There has to be another way for us to say no. And I think also this is also a space for the trade unions, for working class movements,

for social movements, to really time to get ourselves activated and make it clear. You know, we've had a handful of demonstrations here in front of the U.S. Embassy, but they're small, they're tiny. You know, we have to see the kinds of mobilizations that we saw, for example, against the Zionist entity's campaign in Palestine. I mean, this is the kinds of level of mobilization that we're not seeing that we have to build towards, right? And I assume my responsibility in that as well, of talking to people, of convincing people about how important this is.

That's why I'm so glad to be on this program, because these are the conversations we have to have. If we don't stop them, you're just going to keep going, and who knows where that ends. And that's the really tricky part. Is Maduro going to walk away? I don't think so. I've seen a handful of reports that apparently there was this offer of a two-year window and then somebody else would run for the presidency instead of Maduro. I find that hard to believe.

I think if that was floated, it was kind of as a desperate gesture to see if they could get the U.S. to back off. Because I think the role being played by Maduro in particular has been really important. to fill Hugo Chavez's shoes was an impossible task. I mean, I don't, you know, he's those kinds of people that are born once in a generation and have that kind of leadership and charisma that is almost impossible to find. And nonetheless, Maluro, I think, has done an exemplary job of keeping the revolution marching forward. And that's something that I think is entirely to his credit. I'm not sure if other potential leaderships, even within the Socialist Party of Venezuela,

would have been able to resist as long as he has. And he has because of everything he learned from Hugo Chavez, of understanding that there is a population here that is willing to resist and endure, and that if they are, then so should we, right? Just because he's in the palace and they're in the streets doesn't mean that this isn't a struggle that goes hand in hand. And I think that's also been, I think, really important. And why I don't think that he's going to back down anytime soon.

And so that means that we kind of have two unstoppable forces that are eventually going to run into each other. Because I don't, I think Trump has also painted himself into a corner. How do you get out of this? You've talked about Maduro being the head of a criminal organization. You said that he's sent, you know, thousands of Venezuela. to flood the country, that he emptied out the prisons, you know, that he's tied to Hezbollah and Hamas and all of the bad guys in the U.S. imagination. And you've stationed a quarter of your Navy off his shore and that he is still there.

Is he willing to just walk away? It's really tough for them as well, not to mention the other stuff we talked about on this program, which is the Florida lobby and Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller and all these people who want to keep doing it. So it's really, really tough to imagine a scenario where either side backs down. And that means that we're just going to see more escalations and greater conflict that could lead us to a horrible place. A U.S. invasion.

It could happen. It's not off the table. And that part, I think, is really worrisome. And if it does happen, and I think maybe this is a good way to close, we have to mobilize quickly. If there is an attack by U.S. forces, we have to mobilize quickly. If there is potentially an invasion, we have to be the way that we were when they tried to, when they did invade Iraq. In the lead up to that, I remember the millions of people who take it to the streets.

That's what we're talking about now. It's even the same argument. You're trying to claim that it's weapons of mass destruction. We also, as the left, have to really take stock about what we need to do to be able to resist if this comes up. And what work we have to do today to do it. Because there's a lot of stuff that I think just isn't in place. and the demonization campaign has been incredibly effective, especially in countries that are subject to so much propaganda.

They believe the worst things. Even some of our comrades on the left believe some of the worst things about Venezuela. And there's a time and a place for criticisms, but this isn't it. This isn't it. And so I think there's a challenge to us in terms of what we need to do to really shift things because otherwise there will be yet another accumulation in faith. of really far-right reactionary forces on this planet, who will feel more emboldened than they already do.

So I think that's really the challenge. And then also, if there is an invasion, and I say this as a Latin American, and as an internationalist, I know that much of the rank and file of the United States is made up of ordinary working class folks. But if they invade our territories, we have every right to kill you and send you back in coffins. And that's going to happen if there is a U.S. invasion of Venezuela.

And those images need to be catalysts for an end as opposed to an escalation. Because that's our right. If you put your boots on our soil, we have the right to defend it by any and all means. Powerful ending. Thank you so much, Jose Luis. This has been a really awesome conversation. And I know I learned a lot. And I'm sure our listeners are going to go forward from this feeling super inspired.

and hopefully get involved in some way, shape, or form to help make sure that no invasion or escalation comes and that things are in fact escalated. So, yeah, thank you again for coming on and taking the time to do this. And like I said, love to have you back. Maybe we can focus on Mexico even more next time. Yeah, for sure. And if there's anybody listening who has a group, I'm based in Mexico City, but I have an internet connection.

And if you want to do like a Zoom workshop about Venezuela, about Mexico, about Latin America, get in touch, right? You can find me on social media. My handle is Granado Seja, my last names. Write to me, maybe we can find a time that works, and I'll be happy to do a presentation. We can answer questions, all the rest of it. That's my way of contributing, and hopefully that helps build this capacity that I think we need, but also, you know, I think there's plenty of very talented organizers in the United States can also handle it as well. You know, there's a lot, I have a lot of friends there, nothing but love for the American people, nothing but hate for the U.S. government.

You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Jose Luis Granados Seam, a journalist with drop-site news based in Mexico City, who has been covering Venezuela for 20 years. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. The cover art for today's episode is an old U.S. propaganda poster. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and to provide most of our content for free so that we can continue to offer political education podcasts to the public and help to build our movement.

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