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. But before we get there, I wanted to let you know about a podcast I’ve been writing, hosting and produc...
Jul 23, 2025•5 min
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 government and the mainstream media ignored or whitewashed the violence. The story told to the Ameri...
Sep 05, 2024•54 min
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 embraced at Simon Bolivar’s Panama Congress of 1826. In this episode, host Michael Fox travels to see...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 4 min
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 American countries have now recognized the opposition candidate as the victory. At the same time, m...
Aug 06, 2024•1 hr
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 apparatus. Panama became the heart of the United States in Latin America, and the US ripped apart the cou...
Jul 23, 2024•56 min
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 narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous p...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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 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 streaming. In this bonus episode for Under the Shadow, host Michael Fox speaks with Cox about his 198...
Jun 11, 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. 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 drive to fuel its war on Nicaragua, would break U.S. laws and lead to a shocking scandal in Washingto...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 8 min
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 unleashed assault on the country: paramilitary war, CIA attacks, economic blockade, and much more. In this...
May 14, 2024•38 min
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 in 1933, the year before Sandino was assassinated by the forces of the man who would take power and...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 12 min
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 recounts one of the most twisted stories of U.S. imperialism in Central America — a story that stil...
Apr 12, 2024•54 min
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 min
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, and also the resistance movement that...
Mar 12, 2024•57 min
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 episode, host Michael Fox dives into the tremendous resistance to the 2009 coup. He also looks at the government of Manuel Zelaya, the Latin America Pink Tide movement of the 2000s, and the push back from Honduran elites and the United States. This is Part 1 of a two-part episode lo...
Feb 27, 2024•42 min
In the 1980s, Honduras was ground zero for US operations in Central America—it was the primary point from which the US would wage its proxy wars and launch its interventionist operations across the region in the name of “fighting communism.” The 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala, which we explored in Episode 2 of Under the Shadow , was staged from Honduras. It was the main base of operations where US forces trained, funded, and backed Contras in their war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. And ...
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% of the ballots counted, Bukele has received an astounding 83% of the votes. He declared victory on Sunday night over X (formerly Twitter). Under the Shadow 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 coun...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 13 min
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 min
Today, we look at Radio Venceremos — a grassroots guerrilla radio 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 today, a...
Jan 23, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 5
1980s El Salvador was ground zero for the US intervention in Central America. The United States would funnel over $6 billion US dollars to El Salvador in mostly military aid and police and security training throughout the country’s 12-year civil war, which would last from 1980 until 1992. The violence and the US support for the country's bloody authoritarian regimes would have a deadly cost, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of innocent victims. In this episode, journalist Michael Fox head...
Jan 16, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In the third episode of Under the Shadow, host Michael Fox visits a memorial for the disappeared on the outskirts of the Guatemalan town of San Juan Comalapa. Then, he walks back in time to the 1980s, into the country’s genocide of Indigenous peoples—and the overwhelming support for the violence that came from the United States and then-President Ronald Reagan in the name of fighting the so-called “communist threat.” Between 1962-1996, 200,000 Guatemalans were killed and 45,000 were forcibly dis...
Jan 09, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In the second episode of Under the Shadow, host Michael Fox digs into the past to examine the outsized role one US banana corporation, United Fruit, played in shaping the history of modern Central America. While literally walking in the footsteps of those who worked at United Fruit’s former central Guatemalan operation in the town of Tiquisate, Fox goes in search of the legacy of the company today. Then, like taking an elevator to the past, Fox takes us to the heyday of United Fruit’s economic d...
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 US invasions, occupations, coups, and sanctions is endless. Hundreds. From Mexico to Panama. The Caribbean. Colombia to the tip...
Jan 09, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Support the production of this podcast now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brasilonfire/under-the-shadow-of-the-united-states-a-podcast History is often lost in the past. Hard to grasp. Difficult to explain. The story of the US role abroad is often muddled or forgotten. In this podcast series on US intervention and revolutionary resistance in Latin America, independent journalist Michael Fox makes that history come to life, taking listeners to places in the present on a search for the lega...
Sep 18, 2023•4 min
