On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama with tens of thousands of troops. It was the largest U.S. invasion since Vietnam. The first U.S. military action since the fall of the Berlin Wall one month before. The testing ground for the Iraq wars. The U.S. invading forces destroyed 20,000 homes and killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians, dumping bodies into mass graves. And the United States government and the mainstream media ignored or whitewashed the violence. The story told to the...
Sep 04, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In December 1823, U.S. 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 U.S. 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 embraced at Simón Bolívar’s Panama Congress of 1826. In this episode, host Michael Fox travels to...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Panama is, perhaps, the country in the region that has suffered under the longest U.S. shadow—right from the very beginning. The country and the canal would become the United States’ most important asset in the region. The United States installed as many as 100 military bases throughout Panama, during World War II, and it was the base of Washington’s Latin American military training apparatus. Panama was the heart of the United States in Latin America, and, as we will see, the United States ripp...
Jul 24, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Costa Rica has been called the “Switzerland of Latin America.” In this episode, host Michael Fox takes us on a dive into this so-called peaceful and democratic beacon for a region beset by dictatorships and violence. He looks at the myth Costa Rica has created around the elimination of the military and how the United States did its utmost to encourage San José to do its bidding. This is Episode 11. Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 11
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 America Peace and Justice Award for his ongoing commitment to social justice in the Americas. Chomsky’...
Jun 25, 2024•14 min
In the late 1980s, British film director Alex Cox spent several months in Nicaragua filming his movie Walker, 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 streaming. In this bonus episode for Under the Shadow, host Michael Fox speaks with Cox about his 1...
Jun 24, 2024•35 min
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. The war wreaked havoc on the country, killing tens of thousands and ravaging the economy. But an international solidarity movement stood up in response. Meanwhile, the Reagan government's hubris and drive to fuel its war on Nicaragua broke U.S. laws and led to a shocking scandal in Washington...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 10
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 improve the lives of all. But the United States, under President Ronald Reagan, feared the dominos would fall across Central America, and they unleashed assault on the country: paramilitary war, CIA attacks, economic blockade, and much more. In this e...
May 14, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In 1912, the United States invaded Nicaragua and began what would become the longest U.S. 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 U.S. Marines. And he would win. The United States finally pulled out in 1933, the year before Sandino was assassinated by the forces of the man who would take power...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 9
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 retraces the footsteps of William Walker as he recounts one of the most twisted stories of U.S. imperialism in Central America—a story that still h...
Apr 12, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 8
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 fraudulent election, consolidated unprecedented power, pushed a neoliberal sell-off, and carried out...
Mar 26, 2024•59 min0
In June 2009, Honduras faced a devastating coup that shattered the country’s fragile democracy and sunk the country into violence, repression, and a decade-long narco-dictatorship. But the people fought back. In this continuation of Episode 7, host Michael Fox looks at the fallout of the 2009 coup in Honduras, walking from 2009 into the present. He takes us to Tegucigalpa to dive into the fraudulent U.S.-backed elections that ushered in a narco-dictatorship, as well as the resistance movement th...
Mar 12, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In June 2009, a devastating coup shattered Honduras’s fragile democracy and sunk the country into violence, repression, and a decade-long narco-dictatorship. But the people fought back. In this episode, host Michael Fox dives into the tremendous resistance to the 2009 coup. He looks at the government of ousted president Manuel Zelaya, the Latin America Pink Tide movement of the 2000s, and the push back against Zelaya from Honduran elites and the United States. This is Part 1 of a two-part episod...
Feb 27, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In the 1980s, Honduras was ground zero for U.S. operations in Central America. It was a base of operations for the U.S.-trained, funded, and backed Contras, in their war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. And it was a staging ground for U.S. military involvement and CIA missions in the region. Within the country, that meant using the same strategy seen throughout the rest of the region: state repression, disappearances, torture, and the overwhelming presence of the United States. In this...
Feb 13, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 6
El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele has been reelected. While the official results aren’t yet in, with 70 percent of the ballots counted, Bukele has received an astounding 83 percent of the votes. He declared victory on Sunday night over X, formerly Twitter. Host Michael Fox was on the ground for the election. He takes us there and sits down for an in-depth conversation with Dartmouth assistant professor of Latin American Studies Jorge Cuellar . They look at the vote. Concerns for the country’s...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 13 min0
Guatemala's new president Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated on January 14. But it did not come off without a hitch. Outgoing opposition lawmakers did their best to try to stymie the swearing-in of Arévalo and some of his party members. Arévalo’s supporters rallied in Guatemala City. As we looked at in Episode 2 , Bernardo Arévalo is the son of Guatemala's first democratic leader Juan José Arévalo, who ushered in the Guatemalan Spring. Bernardo Arévalo has promised to lift Guatemala once again, bu...
Jan 30, 2024•12 min0
Today, we look at Radio Venceremos—a grassroots guerrilla radio station that broadcast throughout El Salvador’s Civil War, denounced violent state repression, and inspired a nation. In this episode, Michael Fox travels to San Salvador, where he visits the Museum of Word and Image, the home of the archives of Radio Venceremos. He hears from former members of the radio about the revolutionary project and the U.S. and Salvadoran military attempts to shut it down. We look at what the museum means to...
Jan 23, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 5
1980s El Salvador was ground zero for the U.S. intervention in Central America. The United States funneled over $6 billion to El Salvador in mostly military aid and police and security training throughout the country’s 12-year civil war, which lasted from 1980 until 1992. The violence and the U.S. support for the country's bloody authoritarian regimes had a deadly cost, claiming the lives of and tens of thousands of innocent victims. In this episode, journalist Michael Fox heads to San Salvador,...
Jan 16, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In this episode, host Michael Fox visits a memorial for the disappeared on the outskirts of the Guatemalan town of San Juan Comalapa. He walks back in time to the 1980s, into the country’s genocide of Indigenous peoples, uncovering the overwhelming support from the United States and then President Ronald Reagan in the name of fighting the so-called “communist threat.” Between 1962 and 1996, 200,000 Guatemalans were killed and 45,000 were forcibly disappeared. For the majority of families, the wh...
Jan 09, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In this episode, host Michael Fox looks at the outsized role of the U.S. banana corporation, United Fruit, in Central America. You literally can't talk about the history of Central America in the 20th Century without mentioning it. Fox goes in search of the legacy of the company today. He travels to the Guatemalan town of Tiquisate, which was built by the company. We dig into the past and the 1954 CIA coup, which overthrew the democratically elected president in the name of U.S. corporate intere...
Jan 09, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Two hundred years ago, on December 2, 1823, then-president James Monroe delivered his State of the Union address to Congress. In his address, he laid out what would become both one of the most consequential and devastating ideas for Latin America—the Monroe Doctrine. We look back on the history of the Monroe Doctrine and the devastating impact on the region. The list of U.S. invasions, occupations, coups and sanctions is endless. Hundreds. From Mexico to Panama. The Caribbean. Colombia to the ti...
Jan 09, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 1
On Jan. 8th, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil's capital in a failed attempt to spark a military coup. In scenes that drew instant comparison to the events of Jan. 6th, 2021 in the US, Bolsonaro supporters smashed windows, destroyed artwork, and even climbed on the roofs of government buildings before being rounded up and arrested en masse by security forces. In this update to Brazil on Fire, Michael Fox examines the significance of the failed coup in scattering pro-Bolsonaro forc...
Jan 24, 2023•47 min0
Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the Brazilian presidency on October 30th. He defeated far-right president Jair Bolsonaro by just over 2 million votes. Tens of thousands of Lula supporters descended on Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue for huge celebrations. Brazil on Fire host Michael Fox was there and he takes us to the streets. But Bolsonaro supporters were also mobilizing. They shut down highways and called for the military to intervene. In this second update to Brazil on Fire , we l...
Nov 16, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 8
The first round of Brazil’s elections has come and gone. As expected, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was the big winner, with 48 percent. But he fell short of winning outright. Current president Jair Bolsonaro exceeded expectations and came in just a handful of points behind the former president. And it’s going to mean weeks of intense campaigning as Bolsonaro has now become a real contender for the second-round election at the end of the month. In this first update to Brazil on Fire...
Oct 14, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 7
The Amazon is a place that both Brazil’s former military regime and President Jair Bolsonaro have eyed with dreams of development, looking to take advantage of bountiful resources. It’s a place where Bolsonaro’s deconstruction of state institutions is wreaking havoc. Where illegal and armed actors are pushing into formerly protected areas and plundering the land to make a quick profit. Where Indigenous people are constantly under threat, whether staring down the barrel of a gun, fires, or Covid-...
Sep 27, 2022•42 min•Ep. 6
Brazil’s military dictatorship was a dark time in the country’s history. Hundreds were killed. Thousands jailed and tortured. And it is an era that President Jair Bolsonaro remembers with nostalgia. It's the place where he got his start and something he has long championed as being worthy of returning to. As president, Bolsonaro has called for the closure of Congress and the Supreme Court, marched with supporters to demand military intervention, and appointed more military officials to his gover...
Sep 20, 2022•38 min•Ep. 5
Brazil has a long and complicated history with fascism, going back to the early 20th century. Far-right and white supremacist groups have been emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro—with some members of his own cabinet openly sporting Nazi tattoos. They’ve unleashed online attacks, pushed fake news and misinformation in favor of Bolsonaro, and threatened Brazil’s Supreme Court and its justices. But the country’s top court is pushing back. In this episode, we look at Brazil’s troubled past of rea...
Sep 14, 2022•32 min•Ep. 4
Jair Bolsonaro could not have won the presidency without the support of one very important group: Evangelical Christians. There is, perhaps, no other group that Bolsonaro has so vocally courted, or that has been so loyal to the president. And they remain key for Bolsonaro’s hopes of recapturing the presidency this year. In this episode, we visit those spreading the gospel for Bolsonaro. And look at how Bolsonaro and his allies are pushing a religious war of good versus evil, with dangerous reper...
Sep 06, 2022•30 min•Ep. 3
The election of President Jair Bolsonaro was never a foregone conclusion. For most of that electoral season, someone else was ahead in the polls. But he was jailed on supposed corruption charges by a biased judge, six months out from the election, and blocked from running. In this episode, we look at the fight to free former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from prison, the corruption investigation that jailed him, the role of the United States, and what it all means ahead of the 2022 electio...
Sep 06, 2022•29 min•Ep. 2
As candidate Jair Bolsonaro neared the presidency in 2018, violence rippled across Brazil, mostly perpetrated by Bolsonaro supporters. Hundreds of threats and attacks, including several killings, were reported in the weeks and months leading up to the election. Bolsonaro's hateful rhetoric and fake news machine spurred on the violence, painting the election as a battle for the soul of the country. With key issues like family values and security, Bolsonaro tapped into a growing culture war aime...
Sep 06, 2022•34 min•Ep. 1
