Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast
José and Kurt – I like these two. Despite the fun, they run a very solid political podcast.
Amarynth on the Soapbox!
From this end of the world there are a number of important issues re Brazil. Brazil cannot be looked at outside of the region as a whole. The sequence goes, 1) Brazil and its people, 2) region, 3) world. We have had a lot of conversation re Brazil, but what I have not seen, is representation of the people of Brazil. If we have the people with us, we have the region and the world. So, start there. What was LULA busy with? What was he doing lately? From a local perspective we can tell you that one major initiative was implementation of a 40-day workweek, despite many other people oriented initiatives.
We talk about Brazil in relation to the world, yet, I have not seen even one comment on the people of Brazil. This is a stark misjudgement from most commentators. José and Kurt are planning a ‘taller’ (workshop) on just this issue and I hope they will do it quickly. Again from a local and regional perspective, nobody says that LULA did not make mistakes.
From José and Kurt, and hearing what the US is doing in the region feet on the ground, walking in as if they own the joint, I want to stress again that ‘sitting on two chairs’ will not bring about a fairer world. This is the criticism that Soberanía brings to LULA and this is the only criticism that has relevance today. The rest can wait.
LULA was too kind to the one who wants to own this region. (He even helped him out with coffee and beef). And in this podcast, the two intrepids make that clear. As I explained the attack on Sovereignista.com, the Soberanía podcast was caught in the cutting off of social media as well, as of course they would comment on Brazil. I cannot even tell you in detail how big the technological interference is in the region.
José and Kurt are not really positive on LULA winning the Presidential election, because they understand what is happening in terms of US Meddling in Mexico. Brazil is a few steps ahead of Mexico. José and Kurt understand the devastation of the regional action. The imperial sequence is now to take Brazil, then quickly Nicaragua with Cuba in the mix somewhere. Let me say now: I am not positive either. Oh, that won’t make me stop working or sit around crying, because life goes on after elections and it is there that I have my eyes. Brazil is in travail already. Should Bolsonaro win, they will not be able to govern. Should LULA win, his party will not be able to govern effectively. But at least he will care for the Brazilian people. I said from the very beginning that despite mistakes that LULA made, we need him now. And the commentators get stuck in the mistakes and not in the fact that the Brazilian people are at stake first.
(Very interesting but again there is an Epsteinish sexual component to Bolsonaro’s actions. It is a cesspit and is by design. The imperial wants to own these lands for tribute (and soldiers) and as we saw from the other elections over the past two years or so, they do it by drugs, crime and sex, with religion as a seasoning. In this way, they own whoever they install as leader from the get-go!)
It is a fast podcast, it is dense and you may have to listen to pieces of it more than once. Any Spanish words that you cannot pick up, put a note in the comments and I will translate. AMLO is back, talking up his new book on the surface of it. He presented a complete Mañanera, the early morning briefing that he instituted when he was President. AMLO was asked in the past whether he would ever return to politics. He said, if and when there are problems. In this region, we are going to have to fight the previous fights all over again.
/end Soapbox
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In episode 127 of Soberanía, hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth open with another case of U.S. interference — this time in Querétaro, where Governor Mauricio Kuri and Ambassador Ron Johnson broke ground on a police training academy without federal authorization. The hosts explain how this violates Mexico’s National Security Law, which explicitly requires high-level federal approval for any security cooperation with foreign governments. They note the pattern: Chihuahua and now Querétaro, PAN-governed states where the U.S. is pursuing a “subnational strategy” to work around the federal government that defends Mexican sovereignty.
Next, they discuss AMLO’s return via a video promoting his new book, “Pueblo.” In a wide-ranging 90-minute address, he criticized Ron Johnson as “a meddling policeman,” denounced U.S. hypocrisy on drug trafficking, and dedicated the book to Claudia Sheinbaum, calling her “the best president in the world” — definitively debunking the opposition’s fantasy of a rift between them.
The conversation then turns to Brazil’s presidential election, where Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are separated by just two points heading into a runoff. The hosts analyze the structural challenges facing the Latin American left: late capitalism, low growth, and a far-right that promises to “get the state off your back” while offering nothing but nihilism. They note that Brazil’s high abstention rate (over 30 million voters) could be decisive, but warn that convincing non-voters to turn out is an uphill battle.
Losers and Haters takes aim at Instagram and Meta for removing their video reporting on Bolsonaro’s sex parties and suspicious gifts, claiming it violated community standards on sexual violence — even though it was journalistic reporting on a public scandal. The hosts note the irony: the same platform that briefly suspended Lula’s ads is now censoring critical journalism while allowing fake election-day ads to flourish.
When Pernambuco Fed. University students held Bolsonaro protests this week many received death threats. It’s just suffered its 3rd case of probable arson in a week. Jair Bolsonaro bankrupted public universities. Brazil’s far right has an ongoing hate campaign against uni students https://t.co/uPoNVqJ6e1
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) October 8, 2026
Brian will have an article out on this tomorrow.