By invading Venezuela, President Trump lit up America’s eternal cigar of explosions.
In the 175 years since the United States conquered half of Mexico, nearly every president has pissed off Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay out of it.
We have helped depose democratically elected leaders and supported murderous strongmen. Train suicide squads and provide relief to favored allies. Imposing an economic blockade and encouraging American companies to treat the region’s wealth and workers like cookie jars.
From the Mexican-American War to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, from the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we have looked out for our own interests in Latin America, even when our actions were under the banner of benevolence.
It rarely ends well for anyone involved, especially us. Many of the leaders we have come to power have become tyrants that we tolerate until they go their own way, like Manuel Noriega in Panama. The political unrest we helped create led to generations of Latinos immigrating to Northernfundamentally changed our country, even though too many Americans believe people like my family should remain in their ancestral homes.
So Trump insisted at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday that the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife by U.S. forces was a military operation as glorious and important as the Normandy landings. He also declared that the United States would “rule this country” and almost did his weird “YMCA” dance around the idea of making money from Venezuelan oil.
His message to the world: Venezuela is ours unless we say so, like the rest of Latin America. If allies and foes still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated version of the Monroe Doctrine – the idea that the United States could do whatever it wanted in the Western Hemisphere – known as the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Because of course he did.
No one in Washington understands this horrific history better than Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio is the son of Cubans who fled the island when U.S.-backed head Fulgencio Batista ruled the island.
Rubio grew up in an exile community where Batista’s successor, Fidel Castro, remained in power for decades despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented the millions of Latin American immigrants who in one way or another fled the civil war sparked by the United States.
Yet he is the biggest supporter of regime change in Latin America in Trumpworld, helping to undermine the president’s anti-interventionist campaign promises like a drug-trafficking ship off the coast of South America.
Read more: How Rubio won over Trumpworld in cracking down on Venezuela
On Saturday, Rubio watched quietly as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said the Cuban leader “should be worried” and issued a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this sitting president because it won’t end well.”
In Latin America, few people compare Vendido ——Sold out. Betrayal of one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin that can be traced back to the tribes who allied with the Spanish conquistadors to overthrow the tyrannical empire, only to suffer the same tragic end themselves. Vendidos The leaders who have dominated the region’s history and hindered its development—Mexico’s Porfirio Díaz, Nicaragua’s Somoza, the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo—are more than happy to side with the region. yankees at the expense of their own countrymen.
Rubio belongs in this long, dirty lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst Vendido All of them.
Then – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (left) listens during a debate with 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
I still remember that fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Even though he’s too right-wing for my taste, he seems like a Hispanic politician who can move between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.
It was great to see him call out Trump’s rudeness when the two were running against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. His words sounded more prophetic than ever, he told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “There are a lot of people over the next few years…who are going to have to explain and justify how they fell into the trap of supporting Donald Trump, because no matter what, it’s not going to end well.”
Alas, the desire for power can corrupt even the most idealistic heart. Rubio eventually endorsed Trump in 2016, backing his claims that the 2020 election was rigged and declaring at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “not only transformed our party, he inspired a movement.”
Rubio’s reward for licking boots? He sets our foreign policy agenda like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stand.
I’m sure all of this is leftist nonsense to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom are cheering Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, from Miami to Los Angeles. Just a deluded person Pendejo One can support Maduro’s actions against Venezuela, which for decades has been a prosperous country and a relatively stable ally of the United States while the rest of South America has lurched from one crisis to another.
But for Trump, overthrowing Maduro was never about the welfare of the Venezuelan people or about bringing democracy to their country. It’s about gaining a foothold to demonstrate American power and enrich the U.S.
Meanwhile, his deportation Leviathan has swallowed up tens of thousands of undocumented Venezuelans and revoked Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands more.
Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to be eligible for Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to citizens of countries deemed too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a literal death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”
Now? At a press conference in May, he insisted that the 240 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador in early 2025 “were not immigrants, they were criminals,” despite the Deportation Data Project finding that only 16 percent of them had criminal convictions.
Read more: To ‘manage’ Venezuela, Trump forces existing regime to kneel
Rubio has long cast himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led South America’s liberation from Spain and has been a hero to many Latin Americans ever since.
But even Bolivar knew he was skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the United States “seemed destined to suffer a plague.” [Latin] America suffered in the name of freedom. “
Plague, your name is Marco Rubio. By fueling Trump’s rampage across Latin America, you are activating the old song of American intervention that binds your family to mine. If Maduro’s cronies work with you and Trump to keep them in power, even if they win the 2024 elections, it proves that you share Maduro’s support for the Venezuelan people.
Vendido.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.