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Leaked audio recordings between powerful right-wing figures in Latin America have revealed a massive and shocking conspiracy—involving the United States and Israel—to forge an international political network with the expressed purpose of undermining leftist leaders in the region. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Latin-America-based journalist and TRNN correspondent Michael Fox about “HondurasGate,” what the scandal tells us about the machinations of the international far right today, and how those machinations fit into the long, violent history of US imperialism in Latin America. Editor’s Note: This episode was recorded before the 2026 presidential elections in Colombia, which resulted in right-wing candidate and Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella becoming the country’s next president. Additional links/info: Michael Fox, Under the Shadow / TRNN, “HondurasGate: Leaks reveal the far-right plan to undermine Latin America’s left” José Luis Granados Ceja, DropSite, “Hondurasgate: Key leaked audio files, revealing U.S. intervention in Honduras, found authentic ‘with moderate confidence’” Michael Fox, Under the Shadow / TRNN, “U.S.S. Honduras | Under the Shadow S1E6” Michael Fox, Under the Shadow / TRNN, “Honduras, 2009. La Resistencia. | Under the Shadow S1E7 Part 1” Michael Fox, Under the Shadow / TRNN, “Honduras, 2009. Legacy of a coup. | Under the Shadow S1E7 Part 2” Credits: Producer: Rosette Sewali Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: David Hebden, Stephen Frank Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible. Marc Steiner: Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you all with us as usual. My guest today is Miguel Zoro, otherwise known as Mike Fox, who is just … I had to do it. I’m sorry. It’s awesome. Who just in his latest Under the Shadow roped this piece Honduras cape, weeks reveal the far right plan to undermine Latin America’s left. And it’s a very chilling, chilling piece that we’re going to talk about, he’s going to talk about in terms of the threat of the Trump administration and the right wing leaders of Latin America and where it’s taking us. So Mike, always good to see you. Michael Fox: Welcome. Good to see you. Thank you so much, Marc. It’s a pleasure. Marc Steiner: I’ve been thinking, I read this piece twice, taking my notes. And one of the things that just struck me is as long as I’ve been in this movement since the ’60s, Nakla, which you’re a part of, which has been around since the ’60s. We keep seeing Latin America being taken over by US imperialism and dictators, right-wing dictators who do America’s bidding and it never seems to change. So here you are writing this piece about Honduras, not taken over by the far right and the dangers of America still attacking the left in South America and popular governments in South America. It’s a very vague way to start this conversation, but I really want to hear your take on that historical reality and what Latin America has suffered under in terms of the United States. We can go back to Teddy Roosevelt for God’s sake in the early 1900s. It never ends. Michael Fox: Exactly. Well, and that’s exactly what Trump is pushing to do or has been doing is returning to a moment of Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, it’s so great that you mentioned that, Mark, and because I think this is so important for people to understand that Teddy Roosevelt was the man who created the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, who basically put the Monroe doctrine on steroids and opened up an entire new campaign, a new campus for the United States to use its military, to use its Marines as a police force to push its agenda across Central America, across the Caribbean, as it felt it was necessary. And that’s essentially what Teddy Roosevelt’s corollary said. It said, “Look, if you’re not doing what we want you to be doing, then we’re allowed to move in because that’s our job.” And then the last seven or 80 years, gunboat diplomacy. And then you had the last seven or eight years that were slowly kind of pulling back to there. You still have the United States doing tons of interventions, observersive things and CIAs, everything you can imagine, but it was trying to portray an image that it wasn’t. And then what Trump did in particular last year with his national security strategy, which he released on December 4th of last year, which actually says, now we’re going to implant a Trump corollary. It’s the Dunro doctrine. So it was literally thinking back to Teddy Roosevelt and saying, “That’s where we want to go. We’re going to forget everything else. Now the United States is going to push its agenda. It’s going to push its agenda militarily.” And this is the utmost, this is the top priority. And we saw that, of course, with the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro, President Nicholas Maduro. We’ve seen it with Cuba and just the complete cutting off of oil, the starving, the strangulation of that country. And what we’re seeing in Honduras is just a piece of that strategy attempting and actually succeeding to return to the far right in Honduras, which you had under Juan Orlando Hernandez, fraudulent elections backed by the United States who was then detained, brought to the United States to stand charges on drug trafficking, convicted of drug trafficking, was convicted of 45 years in prison for his drug trafficking into the United States. And then he was pardoned just last year, just I think three days before that same national security strategy was actually published in Washington. And so you have this return where it’s very clear that the United States and Israel are very, very excited to have Juan Orlando Hernandez be back or return. Not necessarily is he in office, but that’s one of the things he talks about in these leagues is his hopeful return to power. His ally his in power supposedly won the elections last year, although there were many, many claims of fraud and that’s what’s kind of broiling under the surface here. People don’t understand how important Honduras is for the United States and is for Israel and has been over the last 10 or 15 years in Latin America. One of the most important countries. It’s a tiny country in Central America. Why Honduras? Marc Steiner: Yeah, let’s talk about that for a minute. I mean, A, I think why would Israel be involved in Latin America A, why Honduras? I mean, why not Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, countries that have hugeness and substance, but so why Honduras? Michael Fox: Right. So the very first thing is Honduras is home to the largest contingent of US military officers in all of Central America. Marc Steiner: What does Michael Fox: That mean? So it is basically, it’s not an official US base, but the soldiers and the officers in the military, the Air Force have their people there. It’s the former US military bears, Palmerola, which is where they stationed all this stuff out of in Central America. It’s now called Sotokano, and it’s officially a Honduran base because Honduras can’t allow foreign bases there, but that’s where US Soldiers Air Force is based. And so this is basically the staging ground for the United States and Central America. And one of the things that came out of these leaks, and I’ll get into Marc Steiner: Israel second. Michael Fox: One thing at a time. Marc Steiner: Yeah. Michael Fox: One of the things that came out of this leagues is that they’re actually negotiating the current far right government in Honduras is negotiating with the Trump administration to create a new US military base in the island of Roatan, just off the coast in the Caribbean. And in fact, when Juan Orlando Hernandez in one of these leagues, when he was speaking with the vice president, the current vice president, Marian Juaneta Mejia, she told him that the president had just visited, this was in February. So the president, the current president of Honduras, Nasrias Fura, who won the election last year, had just visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago. And she said one of the things that they were negotiating is this new US military base in Roatan to be able to combat Mexico to combat potentially Venezuela and to combat Cuba, anything that’s happening. Now what’s important about Ruatan, and we can get into this as well, Mark, is the fact that it’s on Roatan that you have on the most important places for libertarian, Bitcoin bros, the free market activists, Silicon Valley in perhaps the entire world. It’s a place called Prospera and it’s what’s known as a ce. So if we go back to 2013, Honduran Congress, the Honduras Congress passed the law in which they allowed for the creation of these private corporate owned cities, independent autonomous cities within Honduras. At that point, the former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, that was just a year before he came to power and he was actually the head of Congress at that point. So this law was passed and they proceeded to then create these seties or at least the image of them around the country. When the leftist government came to power four or five years ago, they then rolled back the cities. They said, “You can’t do this. This isn’t a violation of our law.” The Supreme Court said this is a violation of our territory. These are illegal, but Prospera, which is this one that’s actually financed by Peter Thiel, they said, “No, we’re going to fight this. ” And they took Honduras to international arbitration for almost $11 billion. So they have been continuing to fight this whole time. One of the things that Maria Antoinette Mejia, the current vice president of Honduras, said to Juan Orlando Hernandez in these messages is she said, “We’re going to get the Setes back. We’re renegotiating the Settes. We’re going to bring those back. We’re going to actually fuel prosper essentially that’s out there in Rotans.” So what they’re talking about is an increase bringing the Set is back, backing prospera, which is, like I said, this is this autonomous region, extremely important for the libertarian free market thinkers of the world. It’s this place that they’ve kind of lifted up. You often see these kind of international conferences where they talk about, they say, “Prospera, it’s our own thing. We’re going to use Bitcoin. We’ll use our own currency. It’s our free state.” Out in the Caribbean, it’s beautiful. And I went there, Mark. I visited it three years ago to do reporting about the situation there and the battle that they’re having with the local black community, the traditional local black community just next door who are saying, “Look, they’re trying to gobble us up. They want us to join them.” But they basically have a couple of buildings there and one high rise apartment block. And that’s it. It’s not really a thing. It’s not even a city, but they’ve been trying to propel this and push this idea as the top of the iceberg of what they could potentially do to build these corporate cities. It’s very similar to what Trump wants to do in the United States. This is like freedom cities. So anyway, so this is one of the things that has come out of these leagues is that they’re on board with the current Honduran, her current far right Honduran administration is on board with these, that we’re bringing back the Settes on board with increasing the amount of troops, US potential troops in Honduras and building a US military base, or at least a Honduran military base to house US military troops. And then that brings us to Israel. And this is absolutely interesting. In these leaks, Look, the leaks are mainly communications between Juan Orlando Hernandez who is now freed. He’s living in the United States after he was freed from jail in early December. He’s been in the US ever since and leaders of the government, the president, vice president, or top members of Congress and in specific, and we’ll get to this, I’m sure, one member of the National Electoral Council, these are all right-wing conservative, far right members of the Honduran kind of elite. And so they’re communications between Juan Orlando Hernandez in the United States and these other folks in Honduras. One of the things he makes clear in these messages is that he doesn’t feel like they’re doing enough for him. He’s like, “You got to prepare the groundwork. I’m here lobbying. I’m talking with Republicans.” And one of the things he makes clear is that his release from prison came basically at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that the people who paid for his part, and this is one of his quotes that he says in the messages, “The people who paid for his part and weren’t you all. ” He says they were a group of rabbis tied to Israel. And the reason why this is important is because Juan Orlando Hernandez has a long history with Israel. He was one of the few countries to support, almost always support Israel at the UN in 2017 when there was a big vote to denounce Israel’s attempts to move the capital to Jerusalem. Only nine countries voted with Israel. Honduras was one of them. He actually went and studied at a professional training, diplomatic training with the foreign affairs ministry in Israel and he traveled there several times. He met with Netanyahu. He actually opened up a commercial office, a Honduran Kirsch commercial office in 2019 in Jerusalem after he had already recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capitol. And so they’ve had these really tight ties and it’s clear that Israel sees Honduras as one of the few countries, especially and more than Honduras, but Juan Orlando Hernandez as a tremendous, tremendous ally who was going to support them regardless. So getting Juan Orlando Hernandez out of jail was such a top priority that basically what comes clear through these messages is that Netanyahu was lobbying Trump on his behalf and that rabbis in the United States, and it’s unclear exactly who or what that means or what the innuendo is, but people tied to Israel were extremely important in Juan Orlando Hernandez’s release or at least convincing Trump that he needed to be released. In this one message, Mark, when Juan Orlando Hernandez mentions, “You all didn’t pay for my pardon money. You didn’t pay the part of him,” which is a strange comment because you’re like, “What money did…” So does that mean they’re either paying Trump off or they’re paying people to lobby Trump? We don’t know those are things that we’re not privy to, but we know that people put together money to at least lobby in the very least Trump to convince him that Juan Orlando Hernandez had to be released from prison. And now he of course is going to become, he is now kind of pushing his agenda as I’m sure we’ll get into across the region, not just Honduras. Marc Steiner: Maybe we unpack a piece of this though. Honduras is a relatively small country and unimportant in the scheme of things when most people think of international politics, think of even Latin American politics. It’s not Brazil, it’s not Argentina, it’s not Mexico, it’s not even Panama, it’s Honduras. And so the question is why and what is the political power that emanates from that and what does it mean for the rest of Latin America and why is it so significant? How did it become so significant? Well, Michael Fox: I think we have to go back and we can go back far in time, but it’s at least important to go back to the 1980s because Honduras, they actually called it at the time in the 1980s USS Honduras because this was basically the staging ground for the United States wars in Central America. That’s where they were doing training, that’s where they were training the Contras who were then pushing in to try and take out the Sandenistas in the paramilitary forces that were murdering people in the countryside of Nicaragua. It’s where they were training people who were then going to El Salvador to fight against the leftist gorilla movement. Honduras was basically the focus and the main staging ground for the United States and Central America. And that’s what it’s been pretty much traditionally. I mean, I got in onto a lot of this stuff in Under the Shadow Season one and anyone who’s interested, they can go back and check it out. It’s great. There’s a lot of historical stuff where I visited places. That was the whole idea. That is the whole idea of Under the Shadow, my podcast. So what’s interesting now is of course you then had, I mean, many, many, many things happened during that time and between now. Manuel Salaya came to power in the mid 2000s. Manuel Salaya was a president who was voted along the pink tide of the mid 2000s, allied with Hugo Chavez and all these other important kind of leftists and progressive leaders in the region. And the whole idea was, look, we’re going to move Honduras back toward the left and we’re going to create a constitution assembly. That was his goal. And it was right around that time that he was talking about actually just having a consultation vote to see if people would be interested in having a constitutional assembly, that’s when they took him out of power. And it was a US bat coup in 2009 that removed him from power. It was then a coup government that came to power. There was on election and then Juan Orlando Hernandez came to power. And then you had a fraudulent reelection because reelections are actually prohibited by the Honduran Constitution, but Juan Orlando Hernandez pushed another reelection and that’s how come you had kind of the far right came back into power during these times. Well, Manuel Celaya’s wife, Ciomara Castro, she won the election this last, well, not this last one, but very end of 2021 going into 2022, she won that election and many people saw it as kind of the return of the left to power for the first time democracy was restored after the 2009 coup against Mongo Cellaya and her whole goal was kind of rolling things back. So again, this is the push and pull of Latin America, what we’ve seen in recent decades, particularly with the left h. But what you have in Honduras traditionally, and this is, I think getting to your point, Mark, is they have been very, very linked, very tied to the United States going back decades, going back centuries. Like you’ve had all across Central America, the United States pushing mining interests, United States pushing banana interests, United fruit. I mean, it’s the same story that we know of all these different countries. But what’s important about Honduras is that this was the staging ground for US military, for US power in Central America and the United States does not want to lose that. Marc Steiner: What struck me in terms of what you just said and what you’ve written in this piece for real news in Under the Shadow is that we’re seeing a right wing push from this country with its ally, Israel, for its own reasons to undermine the left in Latin America and the people’s movements of Latin America so the right wing seizes power by stealing elections or by overthrowing governments. And it’s the same cycle we saw in the 1950s and ’60s and early ’70s. It’s happening again when they killed the Yende in Chile. Which really I would like to explore for a moment here with you is the importance of this in terms of American power in Latin America, what it means to install these right wing dictators, what America gets out of it and the power to control all of Latin America. That’s what we’re actually seeing here. We’re seeing a pushback to all the liberation movements that freed itself from American imperialism now being taken back under Trump and the right wing in America and it’s insidious. Michael Fox: Yeah, absolutely. Mark, there’s two things I think are really important for a US audience to understand. The first off is that Trump sees his enemies abroad in the same way as he sees them inside the United States. So if you look at the people where the locations that he has sent ice to, that the locations he has deployed the National Guard within the United States, these are all either cities or regions that are either controlled by the Democrats or they’re controlled by enemies of Trump in states that probably voted against him in most cases. So he’s saying, “Look, I’m going to unleash terror on anyone who has my enemy.” That is part of his structure. That’s what he does is he attack his enemies. Marc Steiner: By the digression here, which he’s always done even before he was in politics to anybody who he wanted to take out, was in his way to make him wealthier and more powerful. There’s nothing new. Michael Fox: Exactly. Marc Steiner: I’m sorry. Exactly. Go ahead. Jump. Yeah. Yeah. That’s Michael Fox: Great. So this is his MO. So that’s what he does locally. That’s what you’re seeing national politics, but internationally, it’s the exact same thing. So if you look at who are the most vocal presidents, leftist presidents in the region against Trump’s politics? Well, of course you have Lula, Lulu de Silva. So then Trump, what’d he do last year? He levied 50% tariffs on everything, on all Brazilian products, out of nothing. And that actually helped Lula to lift him in the polls because he said, “I’m not going to forget you until finally Trump had to … ” But he’s going to come out and verbally attack or threaten every country. So you’ve got Brazil with Lula, clearly Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. We saw the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro. You have the same thing against Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico who Trump has continually attacked saying, “Let me send in the troops,” et cetera, et cetera. And then of course, Gustavo Petro in Colombia. And now we have the elections that are happening right now. Trump has had a laser focus on attacking his enemies in the region. At the same time, what has he done on the side? He created this whole strategic plan. It’s called Shield of the Americas. I don’t know if you remember this, Mark. It was back in March. He had all of the far right, the conservative and anybody who wasn’t his enemy, essentially, he invited them all to Florida, to Doral, Florida, which is where his golf course is located. And he said, “Look, we’re going to have this crew to come together. It’s called Shield of the Americas. We’re creating a countercartel coalition. And it’s essentially these countries signing a blank check and allowing US military forces to come into their countries to battle drug traffickers within their countries.” So he’s either saying, “Either you’re with us, literally you’re with us and you’re allowing us to come in and collaborate with you to attack your enemies or you’re against us and I’m going to come out full throttle.” Venezuela, I don’t think Venezuela was actually the top priority for Trump, but Trump had to get Venezuela out of the way and he had to make an example of some country in Latin America and Venezuela was it. I think he and clearly Marco Ruby are more interested in Cuba and that’s why he said, “Well, I’m just going to keep tightening, strangulating this country, doing everything I can and trying to force them to their knees, but always with the threat of another military invasion is on the horizon. Hey, I can always do this. ” Now, I think he would’ve pushed even further in Latin America right now if he hadn’t gotten bottlenecked with Iran and kind of this never-ending thing with Iran. Otherwise, I think he would’ve pushed even further in Latin America But it is. What you said, Mark, is absolutely right. It’s the same story again and again and again. It just has kind of different forms. The Venezuelan invasion, I’ve said this so many times over the last couple months, it’s exactly like the Panamanian invasion in 1989 where they went in to get Manuel Noriega, took him out and brough him to the United States to face drug trafficking charges. The exact same thing. It’s just coffee and model. The only difference is that back in Panama in 1989, the United States was able to occupy land troops on the ground and keep them there. And Venezuela, if they had done that, it would’ve been a bloodbath and they would’ve unleashed a civil war that wouldn’t end for decades. And they knew that. That’s why they came in with their drones and their planes. They kidnapped Nicholas Malduro and got out as quickly as they could. But that’s the difference. You still had, and people don’t talk about this. The US invasion of Venezuela, there was over a hundred people that died. It wasn’t a surgical mission. And so it’s the same story market is the exact same story. The difference is that Trump is looking back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt to see how they did things and he’s being inspired by gunboat diplomacy and the Marines on the ground, boots on the ground. That’s what Trump is looking back to. He’s not worried about what happened between then and now. Marc Steiner: And one of the things that isn’t taken into account as well, well, it is and it isn’t, is Marco Rubio and the power of the right-wing Cuban political movement in our country. And they are part of the process of the power that’s pushing this takeover of Latin America, pushing the right Latin America and pushing the left out. I mean, it’s not an accident that Rubio is who he is in the Trump administration and this is happening under his reign as the head of foreign policy. Michael Fox: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, Nasri Asfuda, who is the current president, he won the last election. He won the last election in December, although despite claims of fraud and it took roughly three weeks of a manual vote count for him to finally beat out the closest challenger by 0.5%, less than a percentage point. But even before he took office, Nasrias Furda met with two people, Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Those were the two people that he met even before he took office. This was between … Literally, he just had a month before he was declared Victor and before he took office and he met with those two individuals. And then within 10 days of taking office, he was already in Mar-a-Lago meeting with Donald Trump. So it shows where the allegiances lie. It shows where his interests are. And in fact, this is interesting. So we haven’t even gotten into the biggest bombshell or one of the two biggest bombshells in these leagues. So the biggest thing for Latin America around these leaks is this thing that Juan Orlando Hernandez tells people roughly maybe a week or two into Nasrias Fura’s government. And in fact, I’m going to read it in his own words. He calls them up and so he’s talking to, this is Guarolando Hernandez in the United States and he’s talking to the current president of Honduras, Nasrias Fuda. He says, “We’re setting up an information office president from here, from the United States, so they can’t link it back to us there in Honduras.” It’s going to be like a Latin American news site. I was on call with Argentine President Javier Mile and it was very successful, very, very good. And I think with this, we can do some big things for all of Latin America. There are some files coming out against Mexico. There are some files coming out against Columbia and most importantly, against Honduras and the Zelaya family. He then calls because the reason why he’s doing this is he’s asking for money. He’s asked them for $150,000 to set up this office based with the support of someone in the White House, is what he says. Some Republican in the White House. He doesn’t name names, but he says, “We’re going to set up this office.” And the idea is to take down the left. Any leftist government, we’re going to take them down. So then from there, he calls up Vice President Mejia because she’s the one who’s going to manage the money. And he says, “Okay, I need this cash because we’re going to set up an office here with the support of some Republicans in order to attack and uproot the cancer of the left in Honduras and all of Latin America.” I mentioned to President Asfura that we could talk with Javier Mele and he’s supporting with $350,000. Also, another good friend of ours is in Mexico is supporting in order to push the focus on the issue of Mexico. We’re pretty ready and hoping this can really move forward. So he’s requesting money. Someone in Mexico is throwing down Javier Mile. I don’t know how Miley has money because Mila has been … The government is basically under default, but Miley has offered $350,000 to support this basically fake news site and he requests 150,000. And in fact, they approved in these messages, they said, “Okay, we’re going to give you 150,000 for this office and then another 150,000 for you to live on because you need a Marc Steiner: Little Michael Fox: Money there while you’re up there.” So basically we’re talking about Honduras transferring $300,000 Argentina $350,000. All this to take down to create a disinformation news site with the support and actually guided and led by somebody in the White House. This is crazy town, Mark. Marc Steiner: And it is. You have lived in Latin America for a long time. You know it intimately more than anybody I know almost. What is going on at this moment that the powers to be in the West, industrial powers, political powers on the right here in America can think they can undermine and overthrow governments all through Latin America and bring it totally back into the American sphere. I mean, the last market they’ll have probably is Cuba, probably the hardest one to take over. But if they do this, that’s one of their next targets, clearly. So talk about that. I mean, what is going on here? And it’s almost as if it’s unseen by everybody in our country here. Nobody’s paying attention to what we’re doing in Latin America. Absolutely. And reasserting American power. So I mean, just talk about, do you think the politics of this is what are the economic forces behind it and why it’s happening now? Michael Fox: Well, A, there’s numerous things at play. I mean, first in the United States, people are just blindsided by everything. There’s a different news. And look, this is Trump’s strategy, right? I’m just going to hit you with something new every single day and distract the press and distract the press. So Latin America, I mean, look, there was a lot of interest. In fact, people responded to when the United States invaded Venezuela. That was clearly like, look, you can’t do this. You saw marches and protests in Mexico and in many countries all around Latin America. Even in the United States, people were protesting. It wasn’t a global like, oh my God. But within a week or two weeks, then Trump is talking about Greenland and people are like, “Oh.” So his whole thing is to knock people off guard and to distract the media. And of course it works. There’s a reason why Trump has done most of his onslaughts, most of attacks late on Friday night, Mark. It’s because he doesn’t want whatever he’s doing A, to be on a news cycle. He doesn’t want it to be on a news day. He wants it to be in the weekend where people aren’t paying attention. And then the other reason is that he doesn’t want it to affect the markets. Oh, the market’s closed. Well, I’ve got two days for things to kind of calm down. I mean, if you saw the first attacks in Iran, that was on a Friday night, the invasion of Venezuela, Friday night. So The reason why that happens is because he doesn’t want all that attention. He wants this to go under the radar. So people are just blindsided. So that’s one thing. In Latin America, the reason why he’s been able to do this is because people are scared. At the Shield of the America Summit, in the Countercartel Coalition, you had a bunch of countries that are clearly on the right or the far right. But then you had some countries that are my kind of more centrist that are there who just saying, “I don’t want him to come after us next.” And so I just want to walk the straight line and say, “I’ll do what I need to do to make sure he’s not going to come attack me later on. ” And that’s why you have a few presidents who have already mentioned in the region who have really pushed back to try and respond. But this is not the time of the 2000s where Latin America had this kind of unity and support and a progressive movement and international solidarity. You’ve gotten after, for instance, the invadion of Venezuela, you had other countries that came out denouncing what Trump just did. But there’s nobody who’s going to stand up and say, “Trump, if you do that, we’re going to come back at you. ” And for instance, it’s very clear, very clear that what we’re seeing, the alignment, the geopolitical alignment in the world right now has aligned so that it’s like we’ve reverted back to the 19th century where Trump is basically saying, “Okay, China, look, you got Asia, do what you need to do over there. That’s your sphere of influence. In Russia, you take care of Ukraine. I’m not going to say much over there and you take care of whatever’s going over there. Europe, whatever, I don’t really care. Just give me the Americas.” And it’s very clear that this kind of realignment, again, we’re looking back at Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, it’s insane that this is where we’ve returned to where people are afraid, nobody’s willing to stand up. And of course, Greenland’s kind of a different situation. You actually saw the EU and NATO going, “Look, Trump, you can’t do that. ” But most of that was blustered. Trust Marc Steiner: Was trying Michael Fox: To stop Marc Steiner: Working. Reno was a distraction. Was it a planned distraction? So other things could take place is what you’re describing. Exactly. Exactly what that was. Michael Fox: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. And the rest of the region is either scared or they’re trying to push back. And when they are trying to push back, then you see the United States leaning in. This year, I mean, look, we just saw elections in Columbia where it was the first round, but the far right candidate kind of came from nowhere over the last month. And he essentially won with 43%, although there’s been many claims of fraud. So we’ll see. And of course there’s a second round coming up in a couple months. So there’s a big election in Columbia. There’s big elections here in Brazil in a few months in October of this year. So these are some of the last bastions of the left in the entire region. And Trump is going to be playing his game to try and shore everybody up and get everybody on his side. This is the game he plays. So it is an extremely terrifying moment, Mark, because there are very, very few internet … The UN isn’t going to do anything for us. There are very few international institutions or countries that are willing to stand up and say, “No, no, no, sorry, Trump. You can’t do that. You’ve gone too far.” People will say it, they’ll make these declarations. That’s nice, but Trump doesn’t care about that, right? Marc Steiner: No. And I think that there are two things here while we have time. A, is the clear danger this represents. We haven’t seen anything like this, I think, in this mass scale since things like the overthrow of Yendi and Chile and other places in Latin America, the United States got to come in to take back its economic interest to control the hemisphere in the way it wants to. But that’s what we’re seeing. It’s happening again in some ways even more dangerous because we’re seeing these far right governments taking over throughout Latin America, all over the place and at the behest of America. And so I think that’s A, I’m not sure politically where the response is to that and where it comes from. It seems like it’s asleep defeated in Latin America, imprisoned in Latin America, but also people in the United States are yawning. It’s not even on the radar that this danger we face and what it portends. Michael Fox: People in Latin America definitely know and they understand what’s happening in Latin America. And many people have been out in the streets, they’ve been protesting. I mean, we are seeing kind of a response in Bolivia where indigenous organizers and movements are fighting to topple the new right-wing government that’s only been in power for six months and they are pushing back hard because that government tried to pass reforms and undo gas subsidies, et cetera. And so Bolivia is one example where people are pushing back. There’s elections happening in Peru, which we don’t really know what’s going to happen there. It’s another crazy, crazy situation, but it is blindsiding because there’s something that’s really important here, Mark, is the image, the example, the role that Trump shows to the other countries and to other far right leaders in the region. In his first administration, Trump did. He came to power. Within two years, you had Bolsonaro winning. Why? Because he saw Trump. H said, “If Trump can do it, we’re going to follow those same tactics.” So they do the same thing with Twitter and social media denouncing the elections and whatever. And suddenly you have bullshit. Everybody’s just following that tactic. And what’s happened is there’s actually a situation where in some cases, like for instance, Buquele, Naibukele and El Salvador, El Salvador, he calls himself, was it the coolest dictator is His own words for himself. And he’s a friend of Trump’s. They’ve met. Trump in fact said, “Boy, you’re just doing a great job. I thought you were young when I first met you, but you’re doing a great job.” So Buquele is like for the right and for the far right, he is the idol across Latin America. I was covering the election, his reelection, Bukele’s reelection in 2024. And I met a politician from Chile, a member of the civil police forces, a politician, far right politician in Bolivia and they were all there to see Buquele’s model of policing because of course Buquele has passed all of these draconian laws gutting any sorts of civil rights and basically locked up 70,000, 80,000 people over the last supposed drug traffickers, but thousands, tens of thousands of them are innocent and he’s locked them all up in these jails and been holding them there ever since. We’re talking about years in jail without any habeas corpus and many of them without any ability to even speak with a lawyer. So it’s shocking, it’s terrifying. And these are jails where Trump has been sending people to. But they were there to see, wow, if Buchele can do it, so can we. And when I was driving through Peru last year, Mark, on the sides of buildings, what you saw in spray paint was buquele on the sides of buildings in Peru. It was clearly kind of like a presidential candidacy for some far right candidates that were trying to attract people’s attention, but basically using their own colors to say, “Bouquet, buckley.” But the idea is that’s the image that we want. And in El Salvador, since they were able to clean up the streets that’s sold across the rest of the region in that it works. And so if we’re having problems with drug trafficking, then all we have to do is crack down and gut habeas corpus in the rule of law. And for instance, in El Salvador, that’s what they’ve done. And now El Salvador is one of the most dangerous countries in the region. So I say all that to say this is that you have this situation where the far right is riding this wave, this Trump wave, this Buchele wave across the region and pushback is extremely, extremely difficult. But there is. People are responding. People are pushing back. Latin America has always been extremely elastic and people have risen from below and grassroots and everything else like that. But people are really scared about what Trump can do and what the United States can do. Marc Steiner: I think what you’re covering and what you bring to us here at Thrill News and under the shadow in your work is the danger we face in the United States and the world because of what Trump and the right wing in America are doing in Latin America. But before we go, we only have much time here. You’ve brought up a couple of times in our conversation Israel. What does Israel have to do with Latin America? Yeah, let me just stop there. I mean, I always fear this in some ways because antisemitism is so deep that also pushes this, but what is it about Israel and the right in Latin America and what’s that connection? Well, Michael Fox: I mean, we’ve looked at what Israel means now and most recently, I mean, there’s two different things, is what Israel has meant in recent years. Israel has really been courting many countries in Latin America. In recent years around the question, these are countries that might be more pro- Palestine. Don’t forget that 500,000, the Palestinian refugee descendancy in Chile is one of the largest in the entire world. Marc Steiner: It’s Michael Fox: Huge. Half a million people. They have their own soccer team, right? Palestina. So you have a lot of support for Palestine that are there. And what Israel has been trying to do in particular in Latin America is finding ways of shoring up support from different countries and particularly from the right and the far right. So support at the UN, international support, Marc Steiner: Support Michael Fox: To back them. So we’re talking, that’s in recent years, but Israel has played a huge role in Latin America going back decades. I mean, Israel was supporting authoritarian governments throughout the 1980s, supporting the dictatorships of South America, training weapons. It was kind of like the United States’ right-hand man throughout the Cold War in Latin America, it’s not known or it’s forgotten. I mean, I promise I will be doing an episode about this on Under the Shadow at some point over the next year, because it’s so important and people need to understand this history. But you do have these two different things, but definitely Latin America has been extremely important for Israel going back decades. Marc Steiner: Well, that’s a conversation we can have later. It made me think of its total personal digression, but my family, I have family in Manta Vadeo, I have family in Mexico City. And the interesting part is that both of those families or the Jewis side of the family are on the left and my family in Origuai were part of the two Pomaros gorillas. Michael Fox: Wow, Mark. We do have to have a conversation. I should be interviewing you for Under the Shadow. Marc Steiner: This is amazing. But I think that it’s insidious about how this is happening in Latin America. It’s always happened. It is part of the history of this country to control this hemisphere and not let anyone control it but American capital. And that’s exactly what’s underlying all of this. And it gets lost in these conversations.That’s exactly what we’re doing. And Mike, I think that your reporting here, Real News, is really critically important. It’s on the cutting edge of what we face in terms of fighting the neofascist tide in this world coming out of Latin America. And I really appreciate all the stuff you’re doing. I really do. Michael Fox: Thank you so much, Mark. Well, I appreciate it and I appreciate you. There were many other things in these leaks that were just shocking, jaw dropping, shocking. We didn’t even get into members of the Honduran government on the far right talking about imprisoning or even killing members of the left in Honduras. But one of the things that sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end was a message that Juan Orlando Hernandez sent to Thomas Sanbrano. Thomas Sombrano is the head of National Congress in Honduras, far right national party, same as Juan Orlando Hernandez. Most of these people are members of the right wing, far right national party. We have to remember that under Juan Orlando Hernandez’s government, particularly during his fraudulent 2017 electoral campaign, he was pushing human rights violations left and right. People were disappeared, people were killed, arrested for years, a ton of violence. And it’s within this context that he sends this message to Thomas Ambrano, who he’s kind of elected as his right-hand man to try and get him back to Honduras. In fact, at one point, Juan Orlando Hernandez says, “Don’t listen to the current president. He’s old. He’s senile. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. You got to listen to me. I will guide you. ” And in this message, he leaves to Thomas Ambrano. He says this, and this is the quote from the message, “You have to kill people, ” he says. For us to be calm, you just have to do it. If you have to return to repression to control the country, it has to be done. You have to do everything you have at your disposal to not let go of power and you have to make it seem that everything that will happen, the deaths, the killings, the kidnappings, they’re all being done by the communists. This is the man who was convicted two years ago for drug trafficking, hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the United States, convicted to 45 years in prison and who was pardoned by President Donald Trump last December. And this is a man who’s been trying to return to Honduras to in his eyes, hopefully take control of the country, but definitely guide the country for the next four, eight, who knows how many years, man who’s backed by Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who man who’s very, very close ties to the White House because he talked about them a lot during these messages and he’s talking about killing people in order to suppress them and in order to maintain control on the country. And this is a windowmark and this is why I wanted to kind of close in essence this conversation because this is in a window into the right wing and far right elites in Latin America in one country. This is Honduras, but they feel so empowered and emboldened by President Trump in office that they believe they have a green card and the green light to do whatever they want. And if that means inflicting violence on people in their own country, they’re going to do it. Honduras is just one example, but it’s on example that is the reality in most of the countries in Latin America and for most of the leaders on the far right who have been taking power. And that’s just terrifying for me, but really important that we understand the extent to which certain individuals are pushing this agenda and how terrifying that is, that should be for all of us. Marc Steiner: Well, Mike Fox, again, I appreciate the stuff you’re doing and thank you for doing this today. And what you just finished talking about, I think deserves a deeper dive in our next conversation together about the ties between the right wing in America, United States, I mean to say, and the right wing throughout Latin America and what this regime and this country means in terms of fomenting the right there that helps strengthen the right here. And I think that it’s a really important dynamic that it’s not explored. So that’s our next conversation. Michael Fox: All right. I look forward to it. Thanks so much, Mark. Marc Steiner: Thank you so much. Once again, let me thank Mike Fox for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, audio editor Stephen Frank for working his magic. Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner Show and the tireless Kayla Rivera for making it all work behind the scenes and everyone here through News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at [email protected] and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Mike Fox for joining us today and for the important work he does here at The Real News. Check out Under the Shadow. So for the Crew G at the Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening and take care. From The Real News Network via This RSS Feed.
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On June 4, Jacobin published a review of Chris Smalls’s memoir, When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class. The review, titled “The Rise and Fall of Chris Smalls,” by Annie Levin, is less concerned with fostering discussion about rank-and-file organizing, workers’ democracy, or the actual state of organizing at Amazon than with fitting the Amazon JFK8 organizing experience into Jane McAlevey’s organizing framework. This framework’s tactics and strategy are part of a broader political approach that seeks to make unions the social base for reinvigorating the Democratic Party rather than agents of working-class destiny. Back in 2020, Amazon workers on Staten Island made national headlines when Chris Smalls and a group of fellow Amazon workers — many of whom continue organizing in the union today — organized a walkout to protest the JFK8 facility’s handling of the pandemic. This occurred at a time when more than 6,000 workers and their families were being exposed to a deadly virus. For many, the organizing effort was a life-and-death issue. The workers’ outspoken denunciation of Amazon policies during the pandemic and their labor action stood out amid the passivity and complicity of many union leaderships, which allowed business to continue as usual while the most precarious workers risked their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Amazon workers joined nurses’ protests demanding adequate PPE and safer working conditions. They even organized a May Day action — at a time when May Day organizing was far from popular in New York City — to unite Amazon workers and healthcare workers. Together, they argued that the front lines of the pandemic were not only in hospitals but also in workplaces like Amazon warehouses, to which thousands of workers commuted daily from every corner of New York City and New Jersey, spreading and being exposed to the virus. While Smalls was undoubtedly a central leader, the organizing campaign relied on many rank-and-file workers who took the struggle into their own hands. The movement was never simply about Smalls himself. He and his coworkers expressed a broader shift in consciousness among precarious sections of the working class — workers who did not want to die on the job and who believed that, after being deemed “essential,” they deserved respect, compensation, and safe working conditions. Smalls’s contribution to the labor movement helped articulate a narrative that resonated with some of the most oppressed sectors of the working class. He seized the momentum created by the pandemic, connected the Amazon struggle to broader social movements — especially Black Lives Matter — and challenged many of the conventions that dominate union-organizing orthodoxy. Unfortunately, Levin’s book review repeatedly centers Smalls’s background and personality — a common experience for many Black organizers — rather than the extensive organizing work behind the Amazon campaign or the significance of his political positions. It emphasizes his image — describing him as “flashy,” “charismatic,” and “a rapper,” highlighting his gold grilles and chains, and mentioning his previous work as a party entertainer — as though these traits constitute his primary contribution to the labor movement. In doing so, the article minimizes his more radical political perspective and the collective organizing that made the union campaign at JFK8 successful. Chris Smalls and ALU From the 2020 walkout to the union victory in 2022, a small group of Amazon workers, with few resources, organized a worker-led grassroots campaign to unionize JFK8. Big unions rejected their initiative, and the Democrats ignored them. They made enormous efforts to connect with the rank and file — from distributing food outside the warehouse and setting up a table to talk with workers almost every day to translating their flyers into multiple languages. They didn’t wait for a “supermajority”; instead, they relied on their organizing efforts, their organic connection to the workplace, and the momentum of a political moment shaped by both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. The key was not Smalls’s background as a “party promoter,” as Levin writes, but the fact that he and the ALU organizers were tireless workplace organizers who forged organic trust and solidarity with their coworkers in a moment of unprecedented societal upheaval. This momentum helped propel the ALU’s historic victory. Of course, history is made by people, and in this Chris Smalls, along with many other Amazon workers, played a leading role in organizing the first unionized Amazon warehouse in U.S. history — something that established business unions and pro-Democratic Party organizations had failed to accomplish even to this day, six years later. Those who could only imagine working-class organizing through a narrow manual struggled to understand how it happened. At the same time, the process contained contradictions from the beginning. Although it was rooted in widespread opposition to Amazon’s exploitation and was based on broad rank-and-file participation, it never developed sufficiently democratic structures for self-organization and collective decision-making. It makes a huge difference when the rank and file is organized through assemblies in which workers can share their grievances, ideas, and demands. Even if the rank and file’s decisions differ from those of the leadership, the labor movement is only strengthened when workers take ownership of the process, assume responsibility for making decisions, and take the reins of the struggle into their own hands. This stands in stark contrast to strategies in which workers are treated as a mass to be manipulated in support of the Democratic Party’s agenda. At the time, however, Jacobin appeared less concerned with those shortcomings. There was no problem as long as Smalls and the ALU were sharing stages with Bernie Sanders and appearing at Labor Notes conferences. In the years since the pandemic, no additional Amazon warehouses have been successfully unionized. Why is this? We might consider the difficulties of the contract fight at JFK8, which still grapples with high turnover, union busting, and worker firings, among other attacks. We might also think about the relationship between the ALU’s struggle and other organizing drives. Yet Levin’s review focuses on one single factor: Chris Smalls. Sure, he made tactical mistakes and offered little space to discuss the overall strategy, but the author, throughout her lengthy critique, doesn’t seriously discuss the many other organizing attempts against the giant Amazon that also suffered setbacks: RWDSU’s defeat in Bessemer, Alabama; the limitations of the Teamsters Amazon Division in establishing a strong presence inside Amazon warehouses; the Teamsters’ relationship with Donald Trump and Sean O’Brien; the inability of the UPS contract fight to inspire Amazon workers on a broader scale; or the role of progressives whose focus remains centered on legislative strategies rather than organizing from below. Amazon Organizing and Class Independence Levin’s review criticizes Smalls for not aligning himself more closely with Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Zohran Mamdani. This reflects a broader political orientation within Jacobin and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA): tying the labor movement to the party’s left wing. Ultimately, the goal seems to be less about building labor as an independent force for social transformation and more about using unions as sources of pressure, resources, infrastructure, and electoral support for a political realignment within the Democratic Party. Progressive Democrats such as AOC and Jamaal Bowman voted to impose a contract on rail workers that those workers had explicitly rejected. Mamdani endorsed Governor Kathy Hochul while she was calling for replacement workers (scabs) to undermine the largest nurses’ strike in New York City history. Sanders and union leaders such as Shawn Fain rallied labor support behind “genocide Joe” Biden and later Kamala Harris, despite policies that many workers viewed as contributing to political disillusionment and creating opportunities for the Right to strengthen. And yet Jacobin’s answer is to criticize Smalls for not thanking AOC for getting him out of jail after he was arrested at the Met. Do we really imagine that asking someone who sailed in solidarity with Gaza and was imprisoned and tortured by the Israeli military should be grateful to politicians who supported funding for the Iron Dome and continue to defend Israel’s right to exist and defend itself? Why not use a platform like Jacobin that reaches more than 1 million readers to demand that O’Brien, Fain, progressive unions, and organizations such as TDU take direct action in solidarity with Gaza? Smalls has been organizing in solidarity with Palestine. He joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, which attempted to break the siege and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. He also traveled to Italy to bring greater visibility among U.S. audiences to the historic strike by Italian dockworkers in solidarity with Gaza. It is no coincidence that Jacobin recently published an article by leaders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) outlining their strategy. In discussing the future of the labor movement and the role of a prominent figure such as O’Brien — who spoke at the Republican National Convention, praised anti-immigrant politicians, and has not taken any action against the genocide in Gaza — TDU leaders argue that union activity and politics should be treated as separate spheres. As TDU leader Antonio Rosario explains, “If you’re against Trump, I am personally 100 percent with you. But TDU is not for that.” TDU endorsed and campaigned for O’Brien without criticizing any of his reactionary actions. According to this view, one can fight for a militant union while supporting a pro-Trump union leader, and union organizers shouldn’t challenge the political positions of their leadership. This creates a false division between union organizing and politics, as though politics begins and ends with elections and as though workers are limited to choosing between Democrats and Republicans. It ignores the possibility of building a working-class political alternative that is independent of both parties and the possibility of using working-class power to fight for the rights of the immigrant, Black, queer, and feminized working class. On the one hand, Jacobin appears to believe that Smalls deserves an entire article criticizing him for not supporting progressive Democrats. On the other hand, it seems acceptable for TDU not to challenge O’Brien and his support for the Trump administration. The lack of compass is striking. Teamsters and Amazon It’s true that Smalls eventually lost much of his connection to the rank and file. After stepping away from day-to-day Amazon organizing, the slate associated with him was defeated in the union’s leadership election, and the new slate, ALU Democratic Reform Caucus, gained the leadership of the union. One contradiction of the ALU’s strategy under Smalls was that it relied on a combination of factors: widespread hatred of Jeff Bezos, the symbolic impact of the JFK8 union victory, Smalls’s public profile, and support from progressive Democrats. There were rallies featuring Sanders and other Democratic politicians held outside JFK8, and the relationship between Smalls and Sanders was particularly close. All that gave the illusion that more warehouses could be taken, starting a domino effect. Without sustained rank-and-file organizing, workers’ democracy, and political independence, however, it is impossible to defeat a trillion-dollar corporation. But the wrong lesson would be to reduce the obstacles facing Amazon unionization to Smalls’s leadership, an alleged lack of “structure tests,” or the need for a closer relationship with the Democratic Party. For the new leadership of ALU-IBT, the central challenge is to deepen rank-and-file organizing, empower workers involved in the union, and create democratic spaces for discussion, debate, and collective decision-making. The pressure, instead, is often to orient the union toward elected officials and electoral priorities, compounded by the top-down Teamsters union bureaucratic structure and leadership — a pressure that will continue to grow under Mamdani and the new layer of DSA elected officials. If there is one aspect of Smalls’s leadership that TDU and Jacobin are unlikely to criticize, it was his final major action as union president. As he prepared to leave office and became increasingly disconnected from organizing efforts at JFK8, he initiated the process of merging with the Teamsters before any meaningful discussion or debate had taken place among the membership. By the time members voted on the proposal, the machinery driving the merger was already well underway. At a moment when workers should be drawing lessons from both the strengths and weaknesses of the early organizing efforts at JFK8 and throughout Amazon, the conclusion cannot be to place the labor movement in a Democratic Party straitjacket or force organizing into the rigid schemas favored by McAlevey’s followers. Far from that, the labor movement is entering a new period. In that sense, Levin’s article contradicts all the lessons we should be taking from advanced examples like the Minneapolis labor and community struggle against ICE, Trump, and the complicity of their Democratic mayor and governor. The Workers’ Movement and the Democratic Party Levin mentions that Smalls “blames the two-party system for the state of the American labor movement,” but she does not offer her own analysis or counterarguments. Yet Smalls goes beyond merely criticizing the bipartisan system — the two parties of the billionaires. He also advocates for a Labor Party that breaks with the capitalist class and builds an organization of our own. On that point, I could not agree more: we need a new party of the working class, for the working class. The Democratic Party — often described as the graveyard of social movements — and its close relationship with the union bureaucracy have a long history of attacking working-class interests. Large sections of the working class see it as simply the other party of the status quo. Recent research conducted by Leopold found that, among more than 3,000 workers in the Rust Belt, 57 percent supported the creation of a new political organization independent of the two traditional parties. There is growing dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, to the point that even some Jacobin writers have begun engaging with the possibility of a third-party alternative. The key questions are not only “bread-and-butter” issues but also struggles around immigrant rights, Palestine, and other major social questions affecting working people. This runs counter to the dominant sentiment among Jacobin’s class reductionists, who focus on an affordability agenda and argue that taking up issues such as race, gender, and imperialism divides the working class, rather than recognizing and fighting for the strong connections between these struggles. The recent electoral successes of DSA candidates express opposition to the genocide in Gaza and a broader discontent with a system that allows the rich to get richer while working-class people struggle to make ends meet. Yet working-class organizations should not be appendages of the Democratic Party. If anything, the challenge for the labor movement is to connect the struggle on the shop floor with the need to build our own political alternative to the Democrats. What is needed is a political project that fights to democratize unions, relies on the self-organization of the working class, maintains class independence, promotes international solidarity, and addresses the major issues affecting working people as a whole from an anti-capitalist and socialist perspective. The post Jacobin’s Piece on Chris Smalls: An Attack on Class Independence in the Labor Movement appeared first on Left Voice. From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.