By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternally explosive cigar.
For more than 175 years — since the United States annexed half of Mexico — nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out.
We have helped depose democratically elected leaders and supported murderous strongmen. Trained death squads and offered bailouts to friendly allies. Implemented economic embargoes and encouraged American companies to treat the region’s rich and its workers like cookie jars.
From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, from the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we have seen only Latin America while wrapping our actions under the banner of philanthropy.
It rarely ends well for anyone involved – especially us. Many of the leaders we put in power became dictators and endured until they got their way, like Manuel Noriega of Panama. The political upheaval we have created has displaced generations of Latin Americans AnswerEven while fundamentally changing our country, many Americans think that people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral home.
So Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, insisting that the US military capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife was as spectacular and consequential a military operation as D-Day. He also declared that the idea of the US “running the country” and making money from Venezuela’s oil practically kicked out his weird “YMCA” dance.
His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, as is the rest of Latin America. And if allies and foes still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do anything in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donor Doctrine.”
Because of course he did.
No one in Washington knows more about this grim history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the United States-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.
Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades despite US sanctions. As one of Florida’s US senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who in one way or another fled the US-initiated civil war.
Yet he is Trumpworld’s biggest cheerleader for Latin American regime change, helping to torpedo the president’s anti-interventionist campaign promises like narco boats off the South American coast.
Read more: How Rubio is Conquering Trumpworld by Attacking Venezuela
On Saturday, Rubio watched silently as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said Cuban leaders “should be worried” and warned the rest of the world: “Don’t play office with this president, because it’s not going to be good.”
In Latin America, more than a few are abused sold out – Sales. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is the original sin of tribes who allied with Spanish conquistadors to overthrow oppressive empires, only to suffer the same tragic end. sold out have dominated the region’s history and undermined its development, leaders – Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, Somozas in Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic – are more than happy to get along. The Yankees At the expense of his own countrymen.
Rubio belongs in this long, ugly lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst sold out Among all of them.
Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 presidential debate with candidate Donald Trump. (Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)
I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy who tried to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Seemed like a Latino politician threading the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us, though too right-wing for my taste.
It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s rudeness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “In the coming years, there are going to be a lot of people … who are going to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because somehow it’s not going to end well.”
The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio endorsed Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged, and declared at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not only transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”
Rubio’s reward for licking the boot? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks display.
I’m sure all this comes across as leftist chatter in the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fortunes from Spain to Mexico, from Miami to Los Angeles. It’s just an illusion stupid Maduro could support what he did in Venezuela, a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America lurched from one crisis to another.
But for Trump, ousting Maduro is not about the interests of Venezuela or bringing democracy to his country; It was about securing a foothold in flexing American power and making America prosperous
Meanwhile, his deportation leviathan has gobbled up tens of thousands of undocumented Venezuelans and revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands.
Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to qualify for temporary protected status, which is given to citizens of countries deemed too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would be a de facto death sentence for the countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”
now? At a press conference in May, he maintained that the 240 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador in 2025 “were not immigrants, these were criminals,” as the Deportation Data Project found that only 16% of them had criminal convictions.
Read more: To ‘run’ Venezuela, Trump has forced the current regime to its knees
Rubio has long presented himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has since become a hero to many Latinos.
But Bolivar was also known to be suspicious of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that America “seems destined by Providence to plague. [Latin] America is suffering in the name of freedom.
Plague, your name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant in Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of American intervention that binds your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s friends stay in power if they play with you and Trump, even if they steal the election in 2024, you prove to the Venezuelan people that you are just as important as Maduro.
sold out.
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the LA Times and then to your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
