Neil Harvey is a professor and academic department head in the Government Department at New Mexico State University. His main areas of interest encompass politics in Mexico and Latin America, especially social movements in the struggle for democracy and new forms of political representation. He has carried out field research in Chiapas, Mexico, into their independent peasant movements, land conflicts and agrarian reform. He has also been researching the causes of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in 1994 as well as the subsequent development of autonomous governments run by Indigenous communities. He is the author of The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle of Land and Democracy. Today’s interview focuses on the political dynamics and history of the drug cartels of Mexico and countries to the south.
Recorded 8/10/21.