Little Marco indeed. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a reminder that no matter how high and mighty you get in Trump\u2019s White House, a Latino is still an exotic \u201cother.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tokenizing someone is always an ugly thing \u2014 yet Rubio deserves no tears. He has made a career out of wearing his latinidad like a shiny guayabera when convenient, long casting himself as the boy-faced exception to the corrupt, ineffectual Latino politician archetype<\/a>. That stance has fueled a 27-year career<\/a> \u2014 Florida speaker of the House, U.S. senator, former presidential candidate, secretary of State and national security advisor. That has made many conservatives and more than a few Latinos feel he\u2019s not just capable of a strong White House run but that he could even win were he to do so.<\/p>\n All it cost Rubio was his morals and backbone. All he had to do was roll over. <\/p>\n We Latinos deserve better \u2014 and yet we kind of don\u2019t.<\/p>\n The story liberals and conservatives have always told about America\u2019s largest minority is that we would irrevocably change the United States \u2014 the former group maintained it would be for the better,<\/a> the latter insisted we would cause this country\u2019s downfall<\/a>. Rubio proves that at our worst, Latinos show that in our rush to assimilate and be embraced, we often become the worst kind of Americans. <\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks as President Trump during a NATO summit in June in the Hague. <\/p>\n (Brendan Smialowski \/ Pool Photo)<\/p>\n We\u2019re the ones whom the American psyche sees as perpetual invaders, yet we sign up by the thousands<\/a> for the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies in Trump\u2019s deportation Leviathan. Even as Trump slimed Latinos during his first term and his years out of office, an increasing number of us warmed up to him \u2014 surely, he was referring to other Latinos \u2014 until Trump captured more of our votes in 2024<\/a> than any Republican presidential candidate ever.<\/p>\n It takes a certain type of person to go from child of Cuban immigrants<\/a> \u2014 the favorite son of an exile community that transformed Miami from a retiree haven into one of the capitals of Latin America<\/a> \u2014 to tell European leaders last month<\/a> that they and the United States \u201copened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.\u201d <\/p>\n It takes the worst kind of Latino.<\/p>\n I called Rubio a vendido<\/a> in a previous columna after he cheered on the extrajudicial capture of Venezuelan despot Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>. He\u2019s definitely still a sellout \u2014 what else to call someone who once fiercely opposed Trump but now sidles up to him like a cockapoo? But the most pathetic part about Rubio\u2019s rise is that his followers see him as the culmination of the long-held dreams of Latinos that things would become better for our ancestral Latin American countries and ourselves once one of us was charge.<\/p>\n Alas, no. He\u2019s living up to a realpolitik maxim attributed to various Latin American caudillos: For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.<\/p>\n Strongmen like El Salvador and Argentina presidents Nayib Bukele<\/a> and Javier Milei<\/a> get coddled and receive foreign aid; college students on study visas who criticize the Trump administration get nabbed by la migra<\/a>. Rubio is overseeing a foreign policy that currently has the U.S. dictating how Venezuela will be governed<\/a>, is bombing Iran like the country was a game of Pachinko<\/a> and is slowly choking Cuba into collapse. He\u2019s the unholy child of Bush-era neoconservativism and MAGA \u2014 and Rubio is just getting started.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how he set himself up to be used as Latino punch line by Trump and Hegseth. The setting: the inaugural meeting at a Trump golf course near Miami of the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Western Hemisphere countries ostensibly assembled to fight drug cartels. It resembled one of those lesser super-groups in the Marvel Cinematic Universe \u2014 you got Costa Rica instead of Mexico, Bolivia instead of Brazil. The group even has a crappy logo. You know how unserious the confab was when Trump\u2019s point person for this is Kristi Noem, whom he literally had just fired as Homeland Security secretary<\/a>.<\/p>\n After Trump rambled through a short speech, it was Rubio\u2019s time to offer remarks. Here was a chance for the secretary of State, the man the Atlantic recently called \u201cbright and well spoken,\u201d to channel his inner Sim\u00f3n Bolivar or Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed. The secretary of State thanked everyone present in English, but not before praising Trump for his \u201cbold leadership\u201d and bragging that the president is \u201cone of the most historic figures in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Rubio looked back at his beaming master.<\/p>\n President Trump signs a proclamation committing to countering cartel criminal activity at the Shield of the Americas Summit on Saturday at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla.<\/p>\n (Rebecca Blackwell \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n \u201cYou all right if I \u2014 \u201c he began before Trump cut him off with a magnanimous, \u201cSure. Please.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Little Marco spoke in flawless Spanish. Rubio\u2019s comments weren\u2019t much different from what he said in English, save his remark that what they all planned to do by following Trump \u201cwill make future generations grateful for the work we are doing today.\u201d<\/p>\n That last statement sums up Rubio. For centuries, Latin America has yearned for prosperity and peace free from American interference. This hope has fueled revolutions, music, film, culture and all the best things the region has produced only to have U.S.-backed tyrants crush those movements.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the torch Rubio now proudly carries.<\/p>\n \u201cAll my life I\u2019ve been in a hurry to get to my future,\u201d he wrote in his 2013 memoir, \u201cAmerican Son.\u201d Rubio\u2019s future is now. And our present \u2014 not just Latinos, but all Americans \u2014 is worse because of it. <\/p>\n Dios m\u00edo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pet did a neat trick: Before a room filled with heads of state from across Latin America,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[22735,3316,22734,22733,5655,3775,22732,186,95,64,6626,8746,885,74,10337],"class_list":{"0":"post-34046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marco-rubio","8":"tag-bad-kind","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-defense-hegseth","11":"tag-few-latinos","12":"tag-future","13":"tag-latin-america","14":"tag-little-marco","15":"tag-marco-rubio","16":"tag-miami","17":"tag-president-trump","18":"tag-rubio","19":"tag-secretary","20":"tag-state","21":"tag-trump","22":"tag-u-s-history"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116435980306871616","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Secretary](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776671970_463_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776671970_23_.jpeg\")
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