Two U.S. officials who died in a car crash after a reported drug lab bust in Mexico on Saturday were operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency, reports have revealed, amid the Trump administration’s expansion of paramilitary and covert operations in Latin America. The officers died alongside two Mexican military officials on their way from a raid on a drug lab in the state of Chihuahua.
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The U.S. and Mexico have established a mining agreement which has Indigenous and other residents of the Sierra Norte mountains, as well as activists around Mexico, worried. Announced on February 4, the U.S.-Mexico Action Plan on Critical Minerals aims to guarantee the U.S.’s supply of minerals for its arms industry, technology like data centers and smartphones, and the so-called energy…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 10, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”
“Inspiring because it shows what is possible,” Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. “Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction.”
Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called “a historic step” for Mexico.
Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico’s public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.
According to TeleSur, universal access would be rolled out gradually, with universal emergency care and continuity of treatment, free of financial constraints, beginning in January. Specialized services such as radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies would be phased in later that year, and universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization would also be added to the program in 2028.
“The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received,” Sheinbaum said.
🇲🇽🏥 SHEINBAUM TO DECREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH SYSTEMBy presidential decree, any Mexican will be able to receive healthcare at any public institution, regardless of enrollment. 120M
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 hearken 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 territory to the United States. The US states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more used to be part of Mexico.
Today, host Michael Fox visits Mexico’s National Museum of Interventions in Mexico City, and we look back at the devastating history of foreign intervention in Mexico amid Trump’s threats against Mexico and elsewhere in the region today.
This is Episode 9 of Under the Shadow, Season 2.
Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present. Season 2 responds in real time to the Trump administration’s onslaught on Latin America.
Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
Theme music by Michael Fox’s band, Monte Perdido. Monte Perdido’s 2024 album Ofrenda is available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to music.
Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.
Script editing by Heather Gies. Hosted, written, produced, mixed, and edited by Michael Fox.
Guests
Christy Thornton, Associate Professor of History at NYU
Resources
Here is the link to Mexico’s National Museum of Interventions.
You can check out Michael Fox’s Patreon to see exclusive pictures of the museum and the wall out front.
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Josué Aguilar Valle, a Honduran national, recalls the “terrible” conditions at the migrant jails where U.S. immigration authorities imprisoned him last year. In La Salle County, Texas, Aguilar shared a frigid cell with 50 men, sleeping on the concrete floor. “I thought I was going to experience hypothermia,” he explained. Aguilar’s wife struggled to locate him…
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In accordance with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s long-standing vendetta against Cuba, Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 29 aimed at tightening the U.S. noose around Cuba’s neck. Trump’s order preposterously declared Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat,” without providing a shred of evidence, and warned that he would impose punitive tariffs on states that deliver fuel…
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