Will Marco Rubio bring Marconsistency or Rubiocrisy to Latin America?

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COMMENTARY If a Secretary of State Marco Rubio hopes to rally Latin America against left-wing despots like Nicolás Maduro by exalting right-wing despots like Nayib Bukele, it could backfire.

I can find no video of Argentine President Javier Milei dancing tango. But there are copious clips of the populist-of-the-pampas doing the “YMCA” shuffle at Mar-a-Lago last week — when he became the first world leader to meet with President-elect Donald Trump after his Nov. 5 victory.

As I pointed out recently, Milei’s own right-wing election win last year was a MAGA morale boost for Trump as he engineered his political comeback. That’s why Milei is now Trump’s new BFF in Latin America — and the point man for a conservative hemispheric alliance already being forged by Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

It’s an evolving bloc that Latin American exiles in Miami, especially, are hoping will bring down the region’s “troika of tyranny” — the leftist dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — and stamp out all the socialismo , real or imagined, they see from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.

But if Rubio is really going to rally Latin America around a new Trump Administration’s mission to dislodge left-wing authoritarianism, he’s going to first have to convince the region that he’s put aside his double standard when it comes to its right-wing authoritarianism.

READ MORE: Rubio harps on U.S. democracy — after hugging Salvadoran autocracy

Meaning, the Cuban-American Senator from Miami will have to demonstrate less Rubiocrisy on Latin America.

That’s the brand of hypocrisy that’s led him, for example, to demonize President Barack Obama for meeting with Cuban President Raúl Castro in Havana in 2016, while cheerleading then President Trump’s gushing bromance with then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a reactionary ogre who military leaders say urged them to stage a coup to overturn the 2022 election he lost.

Rubio instead will have to display more of what let’s call Marconsistency on Latin America.

Would Latin America policy consistency — Marconsistency — or hypocrisy — Rubiocrisy — be the norm under Trump's choice for Secretary of State?

We’ve seen encouraging glimpses of that consistency — most recently when Rubio signed on to a statement back in December that warned Guatemala’s ultra-corrupt right-wing elites not to block the inauguration of reformist, left-of-center President Bernardo Arévalo after he defeated that cabal’s candidate.

Still, the big question is whether Rubiocracy or Marconsistency would be the norm in Latin America if he becomes Secretary of State.

And that matters mucho , because we’ve already seen over and over in the past two centuries how not just Rubio’s but America’s hemispheric policy in consistencies undermine its efforts to promote capitalist democracy and democratic capitalism south of its border.

Cuba is the most glaring example.

"Cool dictator"

It oughta be a no-brainer to oppose la revolución’s hoary, iron-fisted totalitarianism. But many if not most Latin Americans still apologize for it, because it represents David standing up to Washington’s Goliath.

Cuba’s managed to get away with that because Washington can’t quite quit its own habit of giving passes to Latin American thugs as long as they’re simpatico with Washington, or at least the Washington right.

Argentine President Javier Milei dancing at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's Palm Beach, Fla., residence, on November 14, 2024.

Rubiocritical case in point: El Salvador.

That small Central American nation is run today by the self-proclaimed “cool dictator,” Nayib Bukele, a right-winger no matter what he says to the contrary. He's shut down institutional democracy — and trashed the constitution to win an illegitimate second term this year. Meanwhile, he's tossed almost 2% of his population behind bars, the world's highest incarceration rate.

But because Bukele has also shut down much of the gang violence that was ravaging El Salvador, he's the darling of American conservatives.

Believe me, no one, least of all myself, is unhappy to see vicious Salvadoran gangs like MS-13 neutralized. And I realize Bukele enjoys widespread popularity in Latin America for it.

Even so, that doesn’t make Bukele — as Rubio has astonishingly hailed him — one of the model “democratic leaders in our hemisphere,” someone the U.S. needs to buddy up to.

And if Rubio believes exalting the likes of Bukele will convince Latin America to turn the screws on the region’s leftist despots — it could backfire.

In fact, it already backfired during Trump’s first presidency, when the hemispheric Lima Group backed off what looked like robust support of U.S. efforts to pressure (if not push out) Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.

As time went by, Trump’s adulation of right-wing authoritarians like Bolsonaro and Guatemala’s then President Jimmy Morales helped erode that regional resolve.

Because consistency sells better than hypocrisy.

And Marconsistency will sell better than Rubiocrisy.

Want more stories about the Americas? Sign up for WLRN’s Americas Report newsletter and we’ll send a round up of the most important news and stories from the hemisphere, every Thursday morning. Sign up here.

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Will Marco Rubio bring Marconsistency or Rubiocrisy to Latin America?

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