What Marco Rubio’s State Department appointment could mean for Latin America

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Senator Marco Rubio has been tapped by President-elect Trump to be secretary of state. Rubio was born in Miami, the son of Cuban immigrants. And if he's confirmed by the Senate, he'll become the first Latino secretary of state. And odds are, Latin America will become a focus of American foreign policy. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports.

EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Throughout his career, Senator Marco Rubio has spent much of his time focused on Latin America.

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MARCO RUBIO: Socialism and Marxism has done in Cuba what it has done everywhere in the world that it's been tried. It has failed.

PERALTA: He has been particularly critical of leftist Latin American governments. In interviews, he's criticized Mexico's leftist government. In 2019, Rubio was a key supporter of a Trump administration plan to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

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RUBIO: (Speaking Spanish).

PERALTA: "If we're really Democrats," he told CNN, "we should support it with more than words." Arturo Sarukhan used to be the ambassador of Mexico in the United States.

ARTURO SARUKHAN: I think that on some issues, he'll be reflecting trends, particularly in more hawkish corners of American foreign policy.

PERALTA: Margaret Crahan, who runs the Cuba program at Columbia University, says big domestic promises made by Trump, including a mass deportation program, will come before any of Rubio's plans for Latin America.

MARGARET CRAHAN: I think, though, that Rubio will push, and it will be part of the joint push on Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba to achieve regime change.

PERALTA: But that push, she says, is very likely to look a lot like what's already happening under the Biden administration - that is, a deepening trade and travel embargo with Cuba and the use of economic sanctions to isolate the governments of Nicaragua and Venezuela from the world and their people. But Sarukhan, the ambassador, says what we've learned from Trump's first term is that he's willing to cut deals. He talked about ripping apart the free trade agreement with Mexico and ended up signing a new one. In Venezuela, his plan for regime change failed, and Trump never escalated beyond sanctions. Sarukhan says Trump could even find common ground with Venezuela's Maduro.

SARUKHAN: At the end of the day, Trump is a very transactional character. And so if there's some form of accommodation that can be found where he can claim that he has helped to diminish authoritarianism in Venezuela, he will cling to that.

PERALTA: Alexander Avina, who teaches Latin American history at Arizona State University, says he foresees little significant change.

ALEXANDER AVINA: In terms of policy, like, there's going to be more continuity than change. The difference I see is Rubio and his allies will use a different discourse to describe what they're doing in Latin America.

PERALTA: In historical terms, he says, Rubio is very much in line with most other American secretaries of state. For example, Rubio rails against authoritarianism and socialism when it comes to Cuba and Venezuela, but he also traveled to El Salvador, and he has become one of the most vocal backers of President Nayib Bukele, a rising authoritarian figure in Latin America who used to belong to the Socialist Party in the country. That, says Avina, is in line with one of the central contradictions of American foreign policy in Latin America.

AVINA: You can target certain countries as kind of, like, convenient enemies. But then you also have to work with inconvenient allies to help project and maintain U.S. geopolitical power or influence in the region.

PERALTA: And even with Rubio's personal interest and experience in Latin America, he says, that dynamic is unlikely to change. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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