Tell me who you hang out with and I'll tell you who you are: Meet Marco Rubio's friends
Published at: 05/04/2025 09:08 AM
Marco
Rubio , the former US senator and now Secretary of State of the United States, has maintained an obsession with Venezuela since his beginning in
politics, which seems to have the objective of diverting media
attention to its practices and links with drug trafficking.
At only 16 years old, he was a student
at South Miami High when his family was involved in a very
controversial case to date (1987) called Operation Cobra, the most
important maneuver of that year against drug trafficking in South Florida.
According to an
investigation conducted by Univision Investiga in July 2011,
“federal prosecutors in Miami ordered the seizure of the house
where Barbara Rubio, Marco Rubio's sister, lived with her husband Orlando Cicilia. The prosecution announced that the house was
being used for activities that violate drug laws. Another
property owned by the couple, which is located in what is now an
office building, was also seized for the same reason.”
The investigation adds
that “despite the fact that Bárbara Rubio
was neither arrested nor charged, her husband Orlando
Cicilia was convicted and
sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and
marijuana, in addition to belonging to a criminal organization implicated in the
death of a federal informant, as well as the bribery of several police officers of
Miami”.
However, in the federal
records that
Univision's research team had access to, Cicilia was identified
as a member of a drug trafficking group led by Mario Tabraue, a Cuban-American known for illegal trafficking in exotic animals.
Regarding this
familiar episode, Univision noted that Marco Rubio did not give details during his 2009 election
campaign for the U.S. Senate, because “it's a topic that the senator doesn't want to talk about.”
The close friendship of Marco Rubio and Álvaro Uribe
Regarding this relationship,
which is more than 20 years old and is well known in
American political circles, to the point that “in Washington,
there were funny people who called him 'Narco' Rubio because of his close friendship with Colombian Álvaro Uribe, an increasingly strong relationship between the Florida politician and the former president of
Colombia that gradually
became an alliance that now frowns on more than one observer.” This
was detailed by the Canadian journalist based in Cuba, Jean-Guy Allard.
Allard explained that “Rubio and Uribe, in addition to being vicious against Venezuela and its allies, have episodes in their history that
link them, in one way or another, to drug trafficking... which opens the
door very wide to delicate conjectures that have not been clarified by the US government.”
He also describes that it was in “the state of Florida,
where Marco Rubio thrived,
protected from prominent members of the Cuban-American Mafia. This pack has
dominated political life for half a century, not only in Miami and New Jersey, but also in Washington, where its best-known
members, such as Bob Menéndez and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, often guide the nation's foreign policy.”
Journalist Allard added that “contrary to the legend of the victim of the Castro regime that Rubio fabricated
for years, when he lived off the anti-Cuban rhetoric that thrived in Miami, he strengthened ties with activities associated with the trafficking and distribution of narcotics.”
Uribe, friend of Marco Rubio and partner of Pablo Escobar
On this, we bring an investigation
carried out by Colombian journalists Norberto
Emmerich and Joanna Rubio in
which they link, with details, the closeness of these characters. There they describe that “in
the 90s Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Pablo Escobar Gaviria were friends and business
partners; while Escobar
died in a police confrontation in 1993, Uribe became president of Colombia”.
The journalists explained
that Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, is a
native of Antioquia, whose father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, who was a
renowned drug trafficker in the region, granted licenses to many of the drug pilots when he was director of Aerocivil.
In 1983, Uribe Sierra was
assassinated near his La Guacharaca estate, in Antioquía, and his burial was attended by the then President of the
Republic, Belisario Betancur and part of the cream and cream of high society in that department, this amid protests from
those who knew his
links to cocaine production.
Emmerich and Rubio state, in their analysis of the case
published under the title Álvaro Uribe: the true patron of evil,
that “it is clear that talking about Uribe is
talking about power and drug trafficking”.
According to the research, Uribe applied to Colombia what he learned in a conflict resolution course at a school affiliated with Harvard University and ended up making
an agreement with the paramilitary
leader Carlos Castaño, a
great partner and protector of the drug trafficker Orlando
Henao, who was present throughout the northeast of the country until the border
with Ecuador; this with the approval of
senators Bob Menéndez and Marco Rubio, from New Jersey and Florida respectively.
On the other hand, the Colombian
journalist and writer, resident in Paris, Hernando Calvo Ospina, in his book Colombia,
laboratory of enchantments. Democracy and State Terrorism, he described, among many
other revealing details, how on July 30, 2004, the Colombian Presidency
publicly rejected a declassified
document from the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA), one of the most secret
and powerful security services in the United States.
Calvo Ospina pointed out that the report states separately: “Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a
Colombian politician and senator, collaborates with the
Medellín Cartel from senior positions in the government. Uribe was involved in drug trafficking activities in the United States. His father was murdered in Colombia because of connections to drug
trafficking. Uribe has worked
for the Medellín Cartel and is a personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria...”
From
Miami to Bogota, common interests
During the Santos administration in 2014, the Bogotá press, in early November of that year, covered the news of “the visit of the senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, who sounds
like a candidate
for the presidency of the United States,
paid a visit to Colombia for
two days; the night of his first day in the country, he met with Uribe and his people in a discreet room
of an exclusive bar in the capital”.
In the Colombian press releases, they stated that “Rubio travels to Colombia as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
to discuss issues of interest. The meeting between the two politicians is one of partners
and they fraternize without protocol”.
According to what was published about the
talks, “Uribe
harshly criticized the peace talks with the FARC,
in the face of which Senator Rubio
expresses all his solidarity and concern.”
Also, the newspaper El
Colombiano reported that “although the
members of the CD (Uribe's party), out of respect,
did not reveal the names of the congressmen they
interviewed, on social networks it became known that they were with the
Republican senator Marco Rubio, the republican representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
, Mario Diaz-Balart,
and Democrat Henry Cuéllar
scheduled a new meeting in Washington for February 2015.”
Regarding what was published
about the reports of both meetings, the one in Bogotá and the one in Washington,
the newspaper El Colombiano wrote that “out of discretion, there was no mention of Venezuela, an issue to which the two
politicians dedicate a large part of their time, vehemently denounce the Bolivarian Revolution and conspire
with its worst elements. Álvaro Uribe was much less discreet when he was photographed with the Venezuelan terrorist leader Lorent Gómez Saleth, shortly before his
capture and surrender by the Government of Colombia to Venezuela. Nor
is the discretion of Rubio, in Miami, happily conspiring with Venezuelan
fugitives sought by the Venezuelan justice system.”
Since 2010, the friendship between Rubio and Uribe has been consolidated with common interests such as Venezuela, Cuba, the U.S. military presence in Colombia, negotiations with paramilitarism, drug trafficking routes, among others; as well as the close relationship that these characters have with the right national fascist, such as María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.
AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team