The United States has had a terrible history in Latin America, and no Washington insider should know this history better than Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
By
Gustavo ArellanoColumnist
FollowJan. 5, 2026
3 AM PT
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By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternal exploding cigar.
For over 175 years — ever since the United States conquered 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 propped up murderous strongmen. Trained death squads and offered bailouts to favored allies. Ran economic blockades and encouraged American companies to treat the region’s riches, and its workers, like a cookie jar.
From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we’ve only looked out for ourselves in Latin America even while wrapping our actions in the banner of benevolence.
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It’s rarely ended well for anyone involved — especially us. Many of the leaders we put into power became despots we tolerated until they ran their course, like Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The political upheaval we helped create has led generations of Latin Americans to migrate to el Norte, fundamentally changing our country even as too many Americans think people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral homes.
So there Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, insisting that the capture of Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife by American troops was a military action as brilliant and consequential as D-day. He also announced that the U.S. would “run the country” and practically jiggled out his weird “YMCA” dance at the idea of making money from Venezuelan oil.
His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, just like the rest of Latin America. And if allies and enemies alike still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donroe Doctrine.”
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Because of course he did.
No one in Washington should be more versed in this terrible history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the U.S.-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.
Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades, despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who had fled civil wars sparked by the U.S. in one way or another.
Yet he’s Trumpworld’s biggest cheerleader for Latin American regime change, helping torpedo the president’s anti-interventionist campaign promise as if it were a narco boat off the South American coast.
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On Saturday, Rubio looked on 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 concerned” and offered a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”
In Latin America, few are more reviled than the vendido — the sellout. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin dating back to the tribes who aligned with Spanish conquistadors to take down repressive empires, only to suffer the same sad end themselves. Vendidos have dominated the region’s history and stilted its development, with leaders — Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, the Somozas of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic — more than happy to side with the yanquis at the expense of their own countrymen.
Rubio belongs to this long, sordid lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst vendido of them all.
Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 president debate with candidate Donald Trump.
(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Though too right-wing for my taste, he seemed like a Latino politician who could thread the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.
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It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s boorishness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “For years to come, there are many people ... that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well, one way or the other.”
The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio ended up endorsing Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged and proclaiming at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”
Rubio’s reward for his boot-licking? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stall.
I’m sure all of this comes off as leftist babble to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, Miami to Los Angeles. Only a deluded pendejo could support what Maduro wrought on Venezuela, which was a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America teetered from one crisis to another.
But for Trump, toppling Maduro was never about the well-being of Venezuelans or bringing democracy to their country; it was about securing a foothold to flex American power and enrich the U.S.
Meanwhile, his deportation Leviathan has gobbled up tens of thousands of undocumented Venezuelans and canceled the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands more.
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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 considered too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”
Now? At a May news conference, he maintained that the 240 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador earlier in 2025 “were not migrants, these were criminals,” even though the Deportation Data Project found that only 16% of them had criminal convictions.
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Rubio has long fashioned himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has been a hero to many Latinos ever since.
But even Bolívar knew to be skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the U.S. “seems destined by Providence to plague [Latin] America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”
Plague, thy name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant over Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of U.S. meddling that ties your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s cronies remain in power if they play along with you and Trump, even though they stole an election in 2024, proves you’re as much for the Venezuelan people as, well, Maduro.
Vendido.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro represents another chapter in over 175 years of U.S. meddling in Latin America, where American interests have consistently superseded the welfare of the region’s people and contributed to decades of instability and migration northward.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as a Cuban-American whose family fled the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista regime, should recognize the historical pattern and reject his role in enabling regime change operations that will harm ordinary Venezuelans while enriching American oil companies.
The operation fundamentally contradicts the administration’s stated commitment to reducing military interventionism, as Trump announced the U.S. would directly “run” Venezuela and profit from its oil reserves, signaling to the world that Latin America remains a domain for American exploitation.
Rubio has abandoned his earlier principles and humanitarian concerns for Venezuelans, evidenced by his past advocacy for temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees in 2022 and his current characterization of deported Venezuelans as criminals rather than asylum seekers fleeing danger.
By permitting Maduro’s remaining government officials to cooperate with U.S. control, the administration demonstrates indifference to Venezuelan democracy and the 2024 stolen election, suggesting geopolitical control matters more than genuine democratic restoration.
Different views on the topic
The operation represents law enforcement action against a dictator who committed electoral fraud in 2024 and engaged in drug trafficking rather than traditional military invasion, executed surgically through a snatch-and-grab operation similar to the 1989 Panama intervention that removed Manuel Noriega[2].
The Trump administration’s actions reflect a legitimate reassertion of U.S. hemispheric dominance and counter Chinese and Russian strategic influence in the region, particularly regarding control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and preventing competing powers from establishing footholds[1].
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended the operation as targeting Venezuelan policy direction rather than direct control, arguing the goal is to guide the country toward changes beneficial to both Venezuelans and American national interests[3].
The operation successfully removed from power an autocratic leader whose regime had caused widespread suffering and economic collapse in Venezuela, which had been a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades before deteriorating under Maduro’s rule[1].
Trump’s approach demonstrates resolve against authoritarian leaders and willingness to take decisive action without prolonged military commitment, avoiding the open-ended wars Trump has consistently opposed while still achieving rapid, demonstrable results[2].