Under the Shadow

A bonus drop for Under the Shadow listeners: we're introducing The Battle for Free Speech, a new multipart narrative series from The Real News, hosted by Michael Fox and Marc Steiner. In this first episode, "Fired and Jailed," we look at how hundreds of people have been fired, suspended, investigated, or detained for speaking out under the Trump administration — and why it's just the tip of the ic...

On the morning of April 30, the Spanish website Diario Red and the television channel Canal Red began to release a series of leaked audio recordings between powerful right-wing figures in the Americas. They called it HondurasGate. By May 6, the outlets had released a total of 37 WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram messages.  What they reveal is a shocking network pushing undermine leftist leaders in th...

The U.S. has funneled billions into allies in the region under the guise of fighting the drug traffickers. It has ripped apart countries. And the violence has only gotten worse. Decades of fighting, with little to show for it except human rights abuses, displacement, and tens of thousands of dead and disappeared. In the last episode, host Michael Fox took you to Mexico City to walk through Mexico'...

Increasingly, Trump has his sights set on Mexico—promising to send in US troops in the name of fighting cartels and advancing a so-called drug war policy. But Trump’s actions harken back to an era of US empire much, much older. See, Mexico has withstood a long history of foreign intervention by the Spanish, French, and multiple times by the United States. In 1848, Mexico lost more than half its te...

At least 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are on board with Trump’s new military alliance. They are calling it the America’s Counter Cartel Coalition. Latin America’s top right-wing leaders are involved, including El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. They met in Florida for the event on March 7th. The United States has promised to use lethal force to destroy cart...

Cuba is facing the greatest existential threat it has seen in decades. Trash is filling streets, because garbage trucks can’t make the rounds. Rolling blackouts, rising food prices and cuts to transportation, university classes, and hospitals amid a gas shortage, the likes of which the country hasn’t seen in years. US President Donald Trump, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials h...

Since the beginning of 2026, US forces have killed people in Caracas, Venezuela, on boat strikes in the Pacific, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  This is a new era, where US law enforcement kill people in plain sight and then blame it on the victims, accusing them of being agitators or terrorists — domestic or foreign — whether they are in fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific or protesting on...

On January 3, 2026, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. It was the first U.S. invasion of a Latin American country since the 1989 invasion of Panama.  The United States fired missiles and bombs that blew out windows and hit residential apartment blocks. Helicopters. Explosions. Firebombs. They cut electricity. They destroyed a medi...

In the hours after the Jan. 3 US invasion of Venezuela, social media was inundated with fake videos and images. Some showed Venezuelans holding huge rallies in favor of the US invasion. Others showed US troops landing or firing from helicopters. Others showed Maduro being kidnapped. Not all were AI. Some were old, showing anti-government rallies from years past. Or from other places—other invasion...

Thousands have marched against Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. And leaders are leading the charge against U.S. intervention in the region, in some unexpected places. But Trump is now also pointing elsewhere in the region. Cuba, Colombia and Mexico are in his sights. Today, host Michael Fox looks at the response around the world to Trump's invasion of Venezuela. He also takes a deep dive into Trump’...

In the early hours of Saturday morning, January 3rd, Venezuelans were awoken by the sounds of bombs falling. US helicopters whirled overhead. Explosions struck across the capital Caracas and in surrounding states. Hours of chaos, fear, and uncertainty. President Donald Trump would post over social media that the US had “captured” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores amid a...

On September 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office that the U.S. Navy had carried out an air strike on a boat in international waters. That boat strike rewrote U.S. policy for Latin America overnight. Three months later, 26 boats have been hit, killing more than 90 people. The United States has codified its justification for the boat strikes as part of a new National Secur...

Hi folks, this is Michael Fox, the host of Under the Shadow. If you've enjoyed this series, you will be happy to know that I’ll be bringing you Season 2 next year.  Over the last year, I’ve been traveling across South America and this season will be a deep dive into the dictatorships of the 1970s, Plan Condor, the fight for justice and memory today, and of course, the role of the United States.  B...

On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama with tens of thousands of troops. It was the largest US invasion since Vietnam. The first US military action since the fall of the Berlin Wall one month before. The testing ground for the Iraq Wars. The US invading forces destroyed 20,000 homes and killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians, dumping bodies into mass graves. And the United States...

In December 1823, US president James Monroe delivered his State of the Union address in which he coined what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine. It was a framework that would later be used to legitimize US intervention up and down the hemisphere. But in those early days, Monroe’s statements were applauded by Latin American leaders as supporting their independence struggles. They were even e...

On Sunday, July 28th, President Nicolas Maduro won reelection there. According to the country’s national electoral council, he took 51% of votes over 44% for his rival Edmundo González Urrutia. But the opposition called fraud, claiming that they actually won the vote. Most international media have been on board with that narrative. In fact, the United States, and several other right-wing led Latin...

Panama is, perhaps, the country in Central America that has suffered under the longest US shadow, right from the very beginning. The country and its famous canal would grow to become the United States's most important asset in the region. During World War II, the US installed as many as 100 military bases throughout Panama, and it was the base of Washington’s Latin American military training appar...

In this episode of Under the Shadow, host Michael Fox takes us to Costa Rica to examine the so-called peaceful and democratic beacon in a region beset by dictatorships and violence, and the myths surrounding the elimination of the country's military, along with how the United States did its utmost to encourage San Jose to do its bidding. This is Episode 11. Under the Shadow is an investigative nar...

Noam Chomsky needs no introduction. He’s a celebrated linguist, who has long denounced U.S. empire at home and abroad. And he has a long relationship with Latin America. Chomsky’s 1985 book, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace , was formative for many academics and activists analyzing the U.S. role in the region. In 2012, NACLA awarded him  the Latin A...

In the late 1980s, British film director Alex Cox spent several months in Nicaragua filming Walker, a movie about the U.S. filibuster who invaded and took over the country in the mid-1800s. As Cox puts it, he was trying to make “a revolutionary film in a revolutionary context." That did not go over well in Hollywood. The movie would get him blacklisted. Even today, you still can’t find the movie s...

In the early 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan launched a covert war to destroy the fledgling Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. It was brutal: Paramilitary war, CIA attacks, economic blockade, and more. It would wreak havoc on the country, killing tens of thousands and ravaging the economy. But an international solidarity movement stood up in response. And the Reagan government's hubris, and d...

The 1979 Nicaraguan revolution that overthrew a brutal U.S.-backed dictator ushered in a wave of hope in the Central American country. The new Sandinista government launched literacy and healthcare campaigns, carried out land reform and promised to improving the lives of all. But the United States, under president Ronald Reagan, feared the dominos would fall across Central America, and they unleas...

In 1912, the United States invaded Nicaragua and began what would become the longest US occupation in Latin American history. The occupation would birth both a dictatorship and one of Latin America’s most important revolutionary heroes: Augusto Sandino. Sandino would wage a six-year-long guerrilla insurgency to rid Nicaragua of the US Marines. And he would win. The United States finally pulled out...

William Walker was a journalist, lawyer and physician from Nashville, Tennessee, who in 1855 invaded Nicaragua with a few dozen troops and conquered the country. At the time, he was one of thousands of private U.S. citizens who had their sights set on taking over foreign nations, all in the name of Manifest Destiny. In this episode, host Michael Fox follows in the footsteps of William Walker as he...

A New York court has found former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández guilty of drug trafficking and weapons possession. It’s a huge verdict that will likely see the former president imprisoned for life. In the last episode of Under The Shadow, host Michael Fox looked deeply at Hernández’s time as president from 2014 to 2022, which many came to call a narco-dictatorship. He won office in a f...