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The Real News Podcast · The Real News Network

How the United States Stole Mexico

·37 min·1 clip
The episode opens at Churubusco Fort in Mexico City, where the wall still carries the scars of U.S. gunfire. Those marks become the starting point for a larger history of invasion, occupation, and territorial loss. In 1847, U.S. forces attacked the fort during the Mexican-American War. The United States won that battle, occupied Mexico City, and defeated Mexico by early the next year. The Treaty of Hidalgo followed. Under it, the U.S. took more than half of Mexico's land. That seizure reshaped the map of North America. California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and more were once part of Mexico. The episode does not treat that as abstract history. It frames the loss as theft and as an enduring political wound. The story then moves to other moments of U.S. interference. Veracruz becomes the next major stop. Christy Thornton explains how the United States blockaded the port in 1914. U.S. Marines occupied the city and tried to influence the course of the Mexican Revolution. She describes the port as both commercially important and militarily strategic. The episode notes that a few hundred people died during the seven-month occupation. It also points out how close the situation came to a wider war. World War I got in the way of larger U.S. plans. The closing thread is plain: the United States has repeatedly intervened in Mexico, and that pattern still matters.

As heard by us

A clear-eyed history of conquest with echoes in the present.

This episode follows a long U.S.-Mexico arc, opening at Churubusco Fort and moving through the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Hidalgo, when the U.S. took more than half of Mexican territory, including what is now the western half of the United States.

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Why you'd press play

You want the historical stakes behind today's U.S.-Mexico military threats.

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