US Secretary of State Rubio’s obsession with Cuba is part of his American dream

WASHINGTON – As the most powerful Cuban American inside the United States government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio views the future of the communist island as a deeply personal matter.

In his 2012 autobiography An American Son, the man oft-memed as the “viceroy” of Cuba, recounts boasting to his exiled Cuban grandfather that he would one day overthrow Fidel Castro and free Cuba.

Today, the fiercely anti-Castro 55-year-old is seen as the chief architect of the “maximum pressure” policy that US President Donald Trump has imposed on Cuba’s leaders.

“For President Trump, he’s made clear that this is a bit of a legacy issue. No other president has been able to do it in Cuba,” said Emily Mendrala, senior advisor at Latin American think tank Dinamica Americas.

“For Secretary Rubio, I think it is more personal. He has obviously committed his career to this issue, and has spoken a lot about, and called for democracy in Cuba,” she added during a recent exchange with journalists.

The United States has held Cuba under embargo since 1962, and yet relations have deteriorated even further in 2026, particularly since the US ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January.

Since then, the United States has imposed a de facto oil blockade on the island, enacted new sanctions against Cuban companies and officials, and indicted former president Raul Castro – brother of the late revolutionary hero and leader Fidel Castro, in a case dating back to 1996.

Disaster

“The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent one,” Rubio likes to say, accusing the Cuban government of disastrous mismanagement and diverting national resources at the people’s expense.

Rubio backed sanctions targeting Cuba’s military conglomerate GAESA, which the State Department says controls up to 70 per cent of the Cuban economy.

On May 20, the day Raul Castro was indicted, Rubio issued a video message in Spanish – he is the first US Secretary of State to be fluent in the language – and called on Cubans to choose a new path.

Washington makes no secret of its desire for regime change in Cuba, America’s bete noire for more than 65 years, but with Venezuela as a model, the US government is keen to avoid chaos or prolonged conflict, and refrains from publicly naming a leader or a timetable.

“The biggest problem Cuba has is that the regime is a disaster, their economic model doesn’t work, and the people who run the country don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Rubio told reporters last week during a trip to the Philippines.

“It’s a failed state. But I’ve never laid out any timeline as to what change would look like or when it would happen. I wish it was tomorrow because they deserve it – the people of Cuba deserve a better future.”

Child of Miami

Rubio was born in Miami on May 28, 1971, to Cuban parents who had emigrated 15 years earlier to escape poverty. Rubio has never been to the island his family left behind after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

Rubio is very close to Florida’s highly politicised Cuban diaspora, comprised of generations who fled military dictatorship and then a communist regime they despise.

After studying law, Rubio quickly climbed the political ladder, winning his first election in 1998. He became speaker of the Florida House of Representatives at 34, before being elected to the United States Senate in 2010.

A practicing Catholic and father of four, Rubio is married to the daughter of Colombian immigrants. He frequently speaks about his humble beginnings as the son of a bartender and a hotel maid.

Deeply influenced by his Cuban grandfather, Rubio says he embodies the American dream.

Esteban “Steve” Bovo, the former mayor of majority-Cuban Hialeah in Florida has known Rubio since he was just a city councilman in West Miami.

“In South Florida, from the 80s and perhaps until the last few years, what happened in Cuba penetrated a lot and touched all of us who were elected officials...who went out to knock on doors, to seek votes,” Bovo said.

Rubio is knowledgeable about “the pain of the Cuban exile... because he is a product of South Florida,” Bovo added.

“Trying to fill the hope of the Cuban exile is not going to be easy.” AFP