As a toddler, Marco Rubio sat at his grandfather’s ft cigar-smoke curling on the front porch as tales spilled out — tales of Cuban heroes like José Martí and the guerilla troopers who fought Spanish rule, and of life below the communist regime his household left behind. Even then, Rubio imagined himself as half of Cuba’s unfinished battle.
“I boasted I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba,” Rubio recalled in his 2012 memoir, “An American Son.”
A half-century later, that childhood bravado seems strikingly prophetic. Rubio, now President Donald Trump’s secretary of state and nationwide safety adviser, played a central role in shaping the US navy’s beautiful capture of a distinct Latin American chief, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime shut ally of Cuba. In the aftermath, Trump asserted Rubio would assist “run” Venezuela by the ensuing upheaval.
The end result didn’t unfold precisely as Rubio, 54, imagined it as a boy, nevertheless it bore the imprint of the politics that outlined his upbringing. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio got here of age in Miami immersed within the metropolis’s exile neighborhood, rising politically inside a tradition the place reminiscences of the island and a deep worry of socialism remained highly effective forces.
Now, as Rubio emerges as the general public face of a brazen new period of American international coverage — one which has rattled allies, undercut Congress’ warfare powers and thrust the Western Hemisphere into uncertainty — longtime buddies and allies say they see the product of these formative forces.
“Marco has brought to the White House not just the knowledge and the history but how people feel when they have to flee everything they have,” Tomas Regalado, a trailblazing Cuban American broadcaster and former Miami mayor, instructed NCS. “He is what every Cuban mother wants their sons to be – loving Miami, thanking the United States but never forgetting Cuba.”
With that perception in Rubio comes the hope, if not, the expectation, that he might quickly oversee the autumn of the regime in Cuba as properly.
“Make no mistake,” stated former Hialeah, Florida, Mayor Steve Bovo, a detailed good friend, “a free Caracas should lead to a free Havana.”
Miami’s Cuban immigrants have lengthy commanded outsized affect in American politics, a byproduct of their prominence in Florida, a coveted battleground state till just lately. Episodes that roiled the neighborhood — from the mass immigration of Cubans to Florida in 1980 often known as the Mariel boatlift, to Fidel Castro’s Air Force capturing down two civilian plane in 1996, to the 1999 custody battle over Elián González, to President Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2016 go to to Havana — have repeatedly threatened to reshape electoral politics.
In outlets and eating places all through Little Havana, photos memorialize many years of bold politicians sipping cafecito and donning guayaberas throughout pilgrimages to the colourful Cuban neighborhood. When they arrive, regardless of their social gathering, it’s anticipated they share their visions for a post-communist Cuba.
Exile politics are inescapable in South Florida, irrespective of the workplace on the poll, stated former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican.
“People want to know first that you’re one of them, and then they want to hear what you’re doing about everything else,” he stated. “You could not be a Castro sympathizer and expect to get any votes, even if you’re running for property appraiser. That’s why this is so baked into Rubio’s DNA.”
“When you think of Cuban American Gen Xers, our entire lives have been eclipsed by the struggle for freedom, justice and democracy in countries like Cuba and Venezuela,” Curbelo went on. “We grew up in direct contact with the people who suffered through these tragic events. But we’re very fully American. It’s a very potent combination.”
Rubio absorbed this actuality by his maternal grandfather — “my mentor and my closest boyhood friend,” he wrote. His grandfather detested President John F. Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs debacle and revered President Ronald Reagan for his hardline anti-communism. He believed, Rubio wrote, that with no robust America “the world would succumb to darkness, and a strong country required a strong leader.”
Those sentiments, broadly shared amongst Cuban exiles, have given Republicans an edge in Florida, and so they turned “defining influences on me politically,” Rubio stated.
In his 20s, Rubio immersed himself in these politics. He interned within the workplaces of Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Cuban stalwarts on Capitol Hill. In 1996, at age 25, he served because the South Florida coordinator for Bob Dole’s presidential marketing campaign.
Two years later, contemporary out of legislation faculty and newly married, Rubio challenged an incumbent for a seat on the West Miami fee. Armed with fluent Spanish and boyish attractiveness, Rubio canvassed neighborhoods the place conversations about native issues reliably turned towards Cuba’s previous and future.
During that marketing campaign, Rubio later wrote, he found who he was.
“I was an heir to two generations of unfulfilled dreams,” Rubio wrote. “I was the end of their story.”
That story, nevertheless, has shifted through the years.
Rubio has typically described himself because the Miami-born “son of exiles,” a distinction that means his mother and father arrived within the US after Fidel Castro seized energy in 1959. He has urged as a lot repeatedly, together with in his official US Senate biography.
But in 2011, multiple news outlets uncovered official data exhibiting that his mother and father first arrived within the United States greater than two years earlier than the Castro-led revolution, amongst other inconsistencies in the family timeline.
Rubio acknowledged the errors, attributing them to his household’s “oral history,” however he maintained that his mother and father recognized as exiles as a result of they’d have returned to Cuba had been it not for Castro’s rule.
“They were from Cuba. They wanted to live in Cuba again,” Rubio instructed the Washington Post on the time. “They tried to live in Cuba again, and the reality of what it was made that impossible.”
Rubio received his race for West Miami commissioner in November 1998. One month later, Venezuela elected a brand new president: the left-wing populist Hugo Chávez.
Chávez’s rise alarmed Cuban exiles in Miami, many of whom insist to today they warned Venezuelans that the political forces that overtook Cuba might take maintain there as properly.
“Venezuelans said, ‘That can’t happen to us, we have oil, we’re not Cuba, we’re not an island,’” stated Alina Garcia, the Supervisor of Elections of Miami-Dade County. “But it did.”
From 2000 to 2010, as Rubio rose by the Florida legislature to develop into the state’s first Cuban American Speaker of the House, roughly 70,000 people fled Chávez’s rule and resettled in the US. Many arrived in South Florida, becoming a member of Cuban exiles in demanding a hardline method in opposition to socialism in Latin America.
“There has never been any separation in solidarity in the call for freedom for Cuba and the call for freedom in Venezuela and Nicaragua as well,” stated Ana Carbonell, a veteran GOP adviser on Hispanic engagement. “And that’s something very special about South Florida.”
Garcia, who served as Rubio’s first legislative aide, stated these new arrivals didn’t initially dominate conversations in Tallahassee. Coverage of Rubio’s time there hardly ever mentions the nation, neither is Venezuela addressed in his first e book.
“He was always inquisitive about the history of Latin America and would ask often about my father who was a Bay of Pigs veteran,” stated Bovo, whose spouse Viviana is a longtime Rubio aide. “But there wasn’t always a forum for it until he got to the Senate. That’s when he showed his chops.”
Floridians elected Rubio to the Senate in 2010, and he grew more and more outspoken on Venezuela. In 2014, he cosponsored sanction legislation and delivered a blistering Senate-floor critique of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, amid violent crackdowns on protesters.
“They look more and more like Cuba economically and politically every single day,” Rubio stated in his speech.
Rubio ran for the GOP nomination for president in 2016 arguing Trump wasn’t match for the world stage. But after falling quick — capped by a stinging second-place end in Florida, the place he failed to consolidate the Cuban vote — Rubio returned to the Senate with renewed deal with South America.
He typically stood out as a singular voice urging the US to confront socialist regimes in its yard. At instances, he posted hourly updates about Venezuela’s humanitarian disaster on social media. He visited the nation’s border to push for Maduro to enable US support to attain his residents.
His advocacy made him a recognizable determine throughout Latin America and Trump’s level particular person on the Western Hemisphere. Standing alongside Rubio in Peru on the 2018 Summit of the Americas, Curbelo was stunned by the crowds that shaped round them. Everyone needed to hear from Rubio.
“Losing is very healthy for most people,” Curbelo stated. “When he lost the 2016 nomination, he went from being a great politician to being a great statesman.”
A marketing campaign by Rubio to oust Maduro, although, stalled throughout Trump’s first time period. Although the administration — at Rubio’s urging — joined allies in recognizing opposition chief Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful president, the worldwide push fizzled and Maduro maintained energy. When Trump misplaced reelection, Rubio’s affect waned.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s collapse accelerated migration out of the nation. Nearly 8 million individuals have fled the nation since 2014, according to the United Nations. More than 750,000 landed within the US, and nearly half of them in Rubio’s home state.
While in workplace, President Joe Biden granted the overwhelming majority of Venezuelan refugees short-term protected standing permitting them to stay within the US, a move Rubio vocally backed. Trump ended these protections final yr and his administration made clear this week they nonetheless face deportation following Maduro’s ouster.
“Secretary Noem ended Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Venezuelans,” the division stated in a post on X, “and now they can go home to a country that they love.”
The Department of State didn’t reply to NCS’s request for remark for this story, together with the query of whether or not Rubio believed it was secure for Venezuelans dwelling within the US to return to their nation.
Rubio isn’t a affected person man by nature. As a toddler, he would complain throughout household visits to IHOP when his meals failed to arrive rapidly.
“I struggle with impatience to this day,” Rubio wrote in his e book, “and when I exhibit the weakness at a restaurant or in some other public place, my wife will remind me that I am behaving like that six-year-old at IHOP.”
Yet, on Venezuela, Rubio has performed an extended recreation. He outlasted different Latin America hawks who had been solid out of Trump’s orbit when he left workplace in 2021. Rubio endorsed Trump in the course of the GOP major for president in 2024 and maintained shut ties along with his internal circle, together with marketing campaign supervisor and fellow Floridian Susie Wiles. The gambit paid off when Trump received, named Wiles chief of employees and tapped Rubio to lead the State Department.
Rubio discovered new allies in his push for regime change in Venezuela, together with senior White House adviser Steven Miller, NCS recently reported. He additionally recalibrated his message.
“He recognized the winning argument was no longer about nation building and toppling a dictator and bringing Democracy but going after drug traffickers and stopping Russia and China influence,” a Republican operative shut to Rubio instructed NCS. “It didn’t change his goals, but it reframed his argument.”
In South Florida, many Cubans have grown emboldened by Maduro’s removing and Rubio’s affect on the sudden sea change in American international coverage.
“If you speak to any Cuban, they’ll tell you Cuba will be soon and it’ll be next,” Garcia stated.
Trump has not discouraged the hypothesis, telling reporters Cuba might quickly “fall on its own.” Rubio has been much less circumspect in regards to the destiny of his ancestral residence.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government,” Rubio stated on Sunday, “I’d be concerned.”