SEATTLE – In his autobiography written shortly after he was elected to the US Senate in 2010, Marco Rubio said he inherited his anti-communist beliefs from his grandfather, who he’d told he would help free Cuba from Fidel Castro’s rule.
“I boasted I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba,” he wrote in An American Son.
Rubio’s parents left the island in 1956, three years before Castro seized power. Rubio was born in 1971 in Miami, Florida, in a community of hardliners. Nevertheless, the experience of being “exiles from a troubled country” powerfully shaped his world view, likely including his recent support for regime change in Venezuela.
Today, Rubio, 54, is Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. In the immediate aftermath of the capture of Nicolás Maduro, Trump told reporters the US would be “running” Venezuela and the task would fall to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Rubio, who The Washington Post dubbed the “viceroy of Venezuela”.
To be frank, Rubio did not look thrilled by the news, aware perhaps of the huge challenges in making a success of the task he had been given.
Maduro “had multiple opportunities to find his way somewhere else,” Rubio said, referring to talks that had been going on about him going into exile. “He could have been living somewhere else right now, very happy. But instead he wanted to play big boy.”
The following day, Rubio – chosen for his hardline attitude as much as his ability to speak Spanish and links to the region – appeared on television to try to fine-tune the Trump administration’s vision for Venezuela.
He said US forces would remain in the region to oversee a blockade of sanctioned oil and potentially launch a second operation if Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, does not fall into line.
“It’s not running – it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” the highest-ranking Hispanic American official in US history told NBC News.
Donald Trump alongside Rubio, left, and his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, following US military actions in Venezuela (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP)June Dreyer, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, told The i Paper that it was impossible to be sure with 100 per cent certainty whether Rubio had led Trump or if it was a case of the two men “echoing each other’s sentiments”.
But she said now Rubio had been tasked with making a success of Venezuela, not least meeting Trump’s demand that US oil companies quickly be permitted to return, he was bearing a poisoned chalice.
If either he failed to kick-start Venezuela’s economy, or if the prosecution of Maduro – the 63-year-old ousted leader who on Monday pleaded not guilty in a US court to several charges, including narco-terrorism – failed, then it would look very bad for Rubio.
And it could harm his chances of becoming the Republican nominee for president in 2028. Rubio is frequently touted as one of Trump’s favoured successors, along with Vice President JD Vance.
“Obviously he can’t screw it up, or it will make his political future very much in doubt,” Dreyer said. “There are so many unknowns.”
Nicolás Maduro standing next to his deputy, and now new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas in January 2019 (Photo: Luis Robayo/AFP)Rob Burrell, a senior research fellow at the University of South Florida, suggested that Rubio – who has historically been a moderate and challenged Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016 – would be happy with the outcome of the raid, but would have opposed the way it was carried out.
“What narrative are [they] painting?” Burrell said of the Trump administration, pointing out that the action to grab Maduro was taken without a United Nations resolution or even a vote in Congress.
“The narrative we’re painting is that the US is an imperialist power. That is not a narrative that’s well accepted in Latin America. And Rubio knows that,” he said.
Burrell also suggested that if Trump wanted to carry out similar operations against the leaders of Cuba and Nicaragua, then he had made his task harder.
“I think he wants to see change in the region. I think Venezuela was his number one target. But if you piss off everybody around there, then good luck with that.”
Commentators have been struck by how many times Trump has mentioned Venezuela’s oil during his recent interactions with the media, and how little he has talked about human rights or re-establishing a true democracy in the country.
Rodríguez, Venezuela’s newly sworn-in President, has already issued a video statement that is being interpreted in Washington DC as a signal of increased conciliation.
“We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” she said.
Rodríguez added: “President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war.”
Rubio will hope this shows he may yet pull off the massive task Trump has set him.
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Rubio, who was confirmed unanimously as Secretary of State last year, was already fulfilling two roles: as the US’s top diplomat and as Trump’s acting national security adviser. Only one other individual – Henry Kissinger – has held both jobs at the same time.
With the Venezuela portfolio added to those duties, Rubio will truly have his work cut out.
Looking ahead, the pressure will be on Rubio, not just to keep in Trump’s good graces but also in the hopes that Venezuela can help him emerge as a key US presidential nominee for 2028.
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