United States belligerence in South America has reached a new high with the launch of military strikes and the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, followed Tuesday by President Trump's order for a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers heading to or from that country. These moves mark a clear shift in regional foreign policy from the anti-interventionism of recent decades.
But for one cohort in South Florida, it's exactly what they've been waiting for. Washington's new activism demonstrates the U.S. presence and policies that Cuban Americans have supported here since they fled their country following the arrival of Fidel Castro and his communist agenda in 1959.
“This is our boy,” Lorena Cabrera said as she walked her two small dogs through Cuban Memorial Park in Little Havana on a recent afternoon. She is referring to Mr. Rubio, who serves as both secretary of state and interim national security adviser and who is widely seen as the central force behind the Trump administration's hardline stance in Latin America this year.
Why did we write this
The Trump administration's more aggressive approach to Latin America is welcomed by many in the Cuban diaspora. They see one of their own, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as the architect of a change they believe is long overdue.
The Cold War ended 35 years ago, and US foreign policy – no longer consumed by the communist threat – shifted toward terrorism and drug trafficking. However, for many on the political right in Latin America and within the Cuban diaspora in South Florida, the danger of communism never went away. Rubio's rise has expanded the worldview of the Cuban diaspora, shaped by the historical loss of freedom, community, property and human rights in their homeland.
“The new US philosophy on foreign affairs reflects the view of most of us within the Cuban-American community: end the regime in Venezuela… and, of course, in Cuba,” says Miguel Cossio, chief operating officer of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami.
For Rubio, this is an anti-Castro dream
The clicking and spinning sounds of dominoes mingling on the table before a new round of play fills Little Havana's Domino Park in early December. Despite published rules prohibiting shouting and using bad wordsor bad words, one quartet breaks both codes of conduct in a matter of seconds, sitting down together and quickly dissolving into hugs and laughter.
“Faced with a lifetime of pain, Cubans become very joyful people,” says Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, co-founder and spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Authority, which promotes democracy and human rights in Cuba. “It's unfortunate to be lost and torn away from Cuba, our land. But, man, we'll find a good time anywhere,” said Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat, whose family fled in 1971 when he was 5 years old.
He describes the mindset of the Cuban diaspora in South Florida, with all the reservations that come with a population of two million, as patriotic, family-oriented, prioritizing individual autonomy and freedom, independent-minded and valuing democracy.
In the 1950s, when the Castro brothers led a guerrilla campaign to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista, many in Cuba believed the fight would return the island to democracy. But Fidel Castro and his supporters soon began carrying out indiscriminate arrests and executions, confiscating private property and assets, and turning to the Soviet Union for financial assistance.
Mr. Rubio's parents left Cuba in 1956, and he was born in Miami in 1971. Like many young people raised in South Florida by Cuban-born parents, Mr. Rubio grew up hearing how communism had destroyed lives there and that the United States was uniquely positioned to bring freedom to the island. As a child, he dreamed of leading an army of Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro's regime, he wrote in the book “American Son: A Memoir,” published in 2012.
Mr. Rubio became a political figure in South Florida, working for the first Cuban-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually winning election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1999.
His decision last January to place the Cuban regime back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as well as the seizure of a Cuba-bound oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela earlier this month, illustrate Mr. Rubio's support for the diaspora worldview, locals say.
“He understands what a communist regime is and the damage it can cause,” Mr. Cossio says. “We are seeing a philosophical shift in foreign policy.”
“Iconic” mode
The Cold War, which lasted from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, resulted in an ideological tug-of-war in Latin America between US-backed anti-communist efforts and Soviet-backed leftist movements. The US supported military coups in Guatemala and Chile, and also supported authoritarian military dictatorships that considered leftist citizens to be the enemy.
For the United States, the main threat was the prospect of communism gaining a foothold in its backyard, says William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert at American University in Washington. “With the exception of Cuba itself, almost everything that the United States considered threats in the region disappeared” with the end of the Cold War, he says. The same thing happened with Washington's attention to the region.
But in 1998, members of the Cuban diaspora watched closely as the bombastic former paratrooper was elected president of Venezuela, promising a new economic system that would forge a path between capitalism and communism. President Hugo Chavez's victory ushered in a so-called “Pink Tide” of left-wing populist leaders across the region who vowed to end elitist politics.
The political opposition in countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina saw communism in these leftist victories. Most of these democratically elected leftists openly praised Castro's regime in Cuba or had close ties to it.
“The regime in Cuba is a landmark for the left,” Mr. Gutierrez-Boronat says.
The US remained largely on the sidelines.
Rapprochement with Venezuela
Today, from Mexico to Chile, left-wing political candidates are often labeled communists by opponents. Electorally, it's “very, very effective,” says Dr. LeoGrande.
What appears to be changing, however, is Washington's willingness to take a similar view. President Donald Trump intervened in the fight November Honduras presidential election to call the leader a “borderline communist”, and in the same month he called New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic”. In Florida, the state government introduced a new curriculum to teach the risks and realities of communism in public schools.
Anastasios Kamoutsas, Florida's education commissioner, expects other school districts around the country to adopt something similar. “What Mamdani is promoting is very similar to what Fidel Castro promoted in communist Cuba. It is important that our students understand these policies and how they can end,” he says.
Trump's new National Security Strategy places the geopolitical focus of the United States solely on America. It views Latin America as the source of some of the United States' most serious problems – drug trafficking, immigration, Chinese investment – and calls on the region as a whole to work toward achieving U.S. goals.
In oil-rich Venezuela, all these interests come together. And since September, the United States has stepped up its military pressure, throwing out ships carrying suspected drugs and deploying the world's largest aircraft carrier in an attempt to remove authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, Mr. Chavez's successor, from power. Washington says it is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, but the legality of its strikes is in question.
“Why do people ask if this is legal? Blow them up,” says Adela Diez outside the café window of a Little Havana restaurant. Calle Ocho earlier this month, referring to the 25 ships sunk by the US and more than 90 people killed in the Caribbean and Pacific. “Maduro is stuck with drug money,” she says. “Maduro holds Cuba. They all must fall – Marco Rubio and Donald Trump have the right idea.”
The Cuban diaspora in Florida has grown and changed since the 1960s. The children and grandchildren of exiles are further removed from the turmoil that communism brought to the island, and new arrivals do not always see eye to eye with the old guard.
But “everyone agrees on one thing: communism is bad,” says Gennady Rodriguez, who fled Cuba in 2013 and now hosts a political podcast called 23yFlagler.
This collective disdain for communism can be translated as: “Everyone in Miami is a communist.” It just depends on who you ask,” jokes Mr. Rodriguez. In 2023, an online news site accused him of being a supporter of the Cuban regime, Mr. Rodriguez recalled, and promoting a policy of engagement with Cuba as a strategy for regime change. The loudest voices in the Cuban community here favor an isolationist approach.
When it comes to communism, “Marco Rubio uses that word a lot. South Florida Cubans use that word a lot,” says Guillermo Grenier, a sociology professor at Florida International University. “It carries an us-versus-them agenda,” which is typical of current U.S. politics, he says.
José Hasan Nieves Cardenas, who worked as a journalist in Cuba before his exile in the United States in 2019, believes that resistance to communism is so strong that it interferes with conversation. “Once you criticize certain core ideas, you become a communist and are banned from debate,” said Mr. Nieves, editor-in-chief of El Toque, an independent online news site serving an audience mainly in Cuba.
This worries him, especially in this political moment.
Living experience with an extreme political movement such as the Cuban regime tends to push people to the opposite extreme, he said. He is not surprised that the diaspora is largely conservative and shares Rubio's views. What really surprises him, however, is that Cubans fled from a “caudillo,” or strongman, and now appear to be defending similar behavior by the Trump administration.
The debate within the Cuban diaspora, Mr. Nieves says, is more important than ever.
