"Venezuela may be marching along the Cuban road, according to Congressmen" is the title given by NBC-News to Suzanne Gamboa's article dated July 19, 2017, in Washington D.C., citing words from New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, a vehement promoter of the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for more than half a century.

"Castro has condemned his own people to poverty, hunger and immense suffering, while accumulating wealth and power," this corrupt politician declared, without blushing. He has had a criminal trial for corruption pending since 2015 that has seriously disturbed his political career in the U.S. The trial against Menéndez is scheduled for the period in which the election process will take place that will elect his replacement in a Senate seat the Democratic party does not want to lose. This has led Menéndez to conceal, as far as possible, his legal situation.

Many of the members of the US Congress who are now focusing their attention on the situation in Venezuela are of Cuban descent. It is not that they were born on the island but that they were formed in the heat of hatred for the island's national independence and socialism. The extreme right of the United States and the oligarchies across the continent have played a key role in this struggle. Many are from Florida, Texas and New York, where the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants can be found.

Another American politician who has a leading role in the development of the current US right-wing campaign against Venezuela, because of its winning back positions won in recent decades by the continent's anti-imperialist left, is Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.

Rubio played a significant role in the maneuver of the Venezuelan pro-imperialist opposition – which ended in failure two weeks ago – to call on Venezuelans to participate in an illegal "plebiscite", which – except in the extremely pro-imperialist milieus – was totally obscured by the effort of the Venezuelan government which confirmed broad popular support for the process of choosing the Constituent Assembly on July 30.

Marco Rubio gained notoriety for his participation in the show recently starring President Trump in Miami to announce the implementation of new US government provisions against Cuba. He claimed to be Cuban for several years to take advantage financially of the U.S. establishment's multi-million dollar campaign of hatred against Cuba. He thus moved up in the ranks of his party and gained strong economic support until reaching the upper echelons of national policy as an "extreme right Cuban-American". He was among the possible Republican candidates for the presidency and lost in a tough race against current president, Donald Trump.

Rubio had a serious setback when, at a certain moment in the representation of a false native identity, it was discovered that not only had he not been born in Cuba, but that he had never even been in his alleged country of origin.

Marco Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, in May 1971, when the Cuban revolution had been in power for more than a decade. His parents were Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in 1956, under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and were naturalized as US citizens in 1975. From a Catholic family, Rubio made an abrupt switch of faith. After his first Catholic communion in 1984, and his marriage, also Catholic, he became a Mormon; soon afterwards he became a Catholic again and later he went to the Baptist church until he returned to Catholicism.

Rubio is in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In 2010, he won a position in the United States Senate as a favorite candidate of the Tea Party movement, a political formation that is located to the right of the political spectrum, but is not formally linked to the Republican Party.

His candidacy for the Senate has been tarnished by unfinished investigations into embezzlement of Republican Party funds. He competed for the Republican presidential nomination during the 2016 primaries, until he finally decided to withdraw from the race because of his defeat by politician and tycoon Donald Trump in Florida, the state of which he is a senator.

It is quite logical that in the struggles for its definitive independence there are many similarities between the current political processes of Venezuela and Cuba, as well as between the independence aspirations of all the Latin American countries that have in common the objective of liberating themselves from the condition of semi-colonies of the United States.

July 29, 2017.

- Manuel E. Yepe http://englishmanuelyepe.wordpress.com/

(edited by ALAI)

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann