Geopolitics and Empire is joined by Kurt Hackbarth, who's a writer, playwright, freelance, journalist.

He writes on Mexico and Latin America for Jacobin Magazine.

Welcome to Geopolitics and Empire, Kurt.

Thanks for having me.

Pleasure to be here.

I've been enjoying your work for quite a while and find most of the time I'm agreeing with your analysis and, you know,

listeners have been asking sort of to get a, you know, big picture take on Mexico. A number of

listeners, you know, have come down to live, to have immigrated like myself to Mexico. And maybe to

start to get your sort of broad lay of the land

on Mexico, the political parties, you know, we don't have to go into too much detail, but my view

has been that for the longest time, the American Empire and transnational corporate interests have

sort of managed Mexico to an extent from behind the scenes.

I did the interview a couple years back with Jefferson Morley, who declassified the documents on how now it's four Mexican presidents.

Four.

Yeah, have literally been CIA agents probably more.

And often when Mexican presidents finish their term, they go off to teach at the Ivy League,

like Calderon, which again tells you their agents of empire.

And as a conservative, I recognize that a lot of the conservative Mexican parties basically sell out their country to the highest foreign bidder and work hand in hand with U.S. interests.

But, you know, Man Amlo, from the people that I've talked to here in Mexico,

from across the political spectrum, the answer that I get is that many feel that Amlo has been the

least worst president in the longest time. And I do see in his rhetoric and actions, he has

been attempting to protect Mexican sovereignty and call out American empire. So maybe if you could

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