I am always skeptical of the claims expats make concerning their home countries, unless they're refugees from Afghanistan or Palestine or something, and I've met a few of them.
I grew up in San Antonio. It's not Miami, but it gets its share. In the 1970s we had a small wave of well-heeled Nicaraguan refugees fleeing from the Sandinista revolution. One of them, a stunningly attractive woman, married a friend of mine.
We did not remain friends for long. I met her family, and they were a lot like the Rubios. Descendants of the old colonial Creole aristocracy based on the Spanish racial caste system that was in place 300 years before Simon Bolivar overthrew it, and those families have been fighting, with varying degrees of success, often with foreign assistance, to regain all their lost privileges and take pounds of flesh in revenge ever since.
Indeed. Many such cases. I am reading Inside Latin America currently and am already through the Central America part. It is very much like that throughout most of Latin America, and the Sandinistas were actually not unreasonable. The percentage of people who were in those positions of power, I don't remember the statistic but perhaps like 5% of the country owned land.
Even from Afghanistan or Palestine they could still cause you problems or give you nonsense advice, especially say in Afghanistan if they're trying to tell you whatever about the tribes in their home country. I believe Hamid Karzai lived abroad for a long time hence being so well placed to be put in power by the Westerners and he did a bang up job over there. No country is so wretched as to not have an upper class which wants to maintain their power...or for that matter a lower class which probably fails to understand what makes the economy work to whatever marginal extent it is. It's just overall bad to listen to them.
I don't know, people have an enormous capacity for obliviousness, commonly had little contact with the peasantry, by Rubio's generation have never been there and have grown up on nostalgic tales of the olds, and usually aren't making many claims about helping the public they're more claiming if they ruled the place they would be American pawns, which is true, so it's a mixed bag.
Just today some Chinese bitch on Twitter claimed people in the PRC were only poor to get pulled out of poverty because the CPC has kept them in poverty since taking power since 1948, which is so incredibly ridiculous you pretty much have to be a true believer to be willing to claim it publicly.
As I read your analysis, I feel the need to exclaim "excellent" at almost every line. (I remembered the countless attempts to assassinate Castro during JFK's time - some so ridiculous, so absurd, that I wonder if the CIA wasn't a nursery of tragicomedy screenwriters).
Never doubt the quality of your work. From everything I've read published by you on Substack, about events and places I knew – some well, others little or not at all – I've noticed some qualities that you are blessed with and that anyone would like. You have talent, intelligence, honesty, meticulousness in documentation, warmth of soul. There are explorers who are only interested in records. You go to unknown places or places that we only think we know to understand what they are like, what is really happening and, if possible, to help us better understand the world we live in. And you are, often, the very first.
Thanks, that is kind of you to say, though that doesnt mean that everything I ever write will be good and that I shouldnt ask myself if a specific article is working
This is my perception as well. The powerful constantly teach us lessons of cynicism and arrogance. Unfortunately, many of us have deluded ourselves that change is possible.
"Despite the countless historic examples and Machiavelli’s clear lesson, Americans over all are yet to learn that you simply can’t trust exiles to work with you on foreign policy, and we sure love letting them into our country and into our ears."
Since the elites pay no personal or professional price, why should they care?
Consequences are for the poors. It's not as if Dick Cheney was hounded for his role in The War On Iraq. Liberals still lionize St. Obama in spite of his War On Libya.
yeah of course Iraq is a key example of this with Chalabi and the "Heroes in error" etc, I mean it's how I always instinctively knew this before reading Machiavelli, as it was formative to me.
Also you're correct in our society the President pretty much just retires rich and has a great time no matter what, it isn't so much like an actual Prince where this could easily end with his death/overthrow.
This is a really good article. I was in the gold exploration business and traveled to Venezuela in the early 1990s in an effort to obtain exploration licences in eastern Venezuela. The notion that rural Venezuelans in pre-Chavez Venezuela were "rich" is delusional (as you observe). In 19th century Ontario, rural farmers with few resources built substantial farm houses but Venezuelans in Callao and other towns and villages lived in shanties. Government corruption in pre-Chavez Venezuela was endemic and toxic to the economy. Geologists needed permits for even minor tasks and each permit had "administrative" costs. Venezuela's pre-Chavez oil revenue wasn't used to build a diversified economy but to build a grossly oversized and overweening bureaucracy which traveled to Miami for holidays and to shop. The connection between Miami and Venezuela upper and middle class goes back a long time. I was actually in Caracas in 1992 during the first (and unsuccessful) Chavez coup. I was staying at a Tamanaco hotel overlooking the air force base which was a center for the rebellion. The government set up heavy guns on the roof of the hotel and fired down on the base, while the base fired heavy artillery at the hotel. The guests were evacuated to a basement restaurant while a battle took place in the parking garage. Next to me under one of the tables was the then famous marathoner Bill Rogers who was in Caracas to be grand marshall of the Caracas marathon. The next day, I went downtown on the subway and was trapped for a while in an alley, pinned down with about 20 others by a sniper. Government troops arrived and we ran to safety, You are 100% correct that pre-Chavez Venezuela was no paradise, particularly for anyone not in the bureaucracy.
Oh wow, that is quite the story. Thank you for the feedback, I did not do the most thorough research on that partially relying on putting it together myself, so am glad for the confirmation there lol.
Remember the British "Opium wars". And those who made money from it, went to America and founded the Yale University (look up "Skull&Bones").
Murican oligarchs like Rockerfeller made their money 150 years back both helping the Brits keep China addicted in their 100 years humiliation and Rocks made a mint selling the drugs here. Wasn't even illegal yet. And the Rocks are one of the biggest early champions of US having a CIA for their operations of all kinds ever since.
Air America, the fleet of CIA planes and helicopters were smuggling heroin out of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, China and then Afghanistan, when they moved it there, and the US army protected those poppy fields for twenty years, after the Taliban forced a poppy growing ban for one year in the year 2000. I know they shot Gary Webb in the head, but as the son of a top CIA guy, maybe they're not gonna shoot you in the head as well if you tell the truth, which everyone knows by now. They are the drug dealers, and by the way, when drugs were legal, over the counter, heroin in cough syrup, it was much, much better. They made it worse, to make more drug profits, because they, the US government are the drug dealers.
The Roosevelts were one of the first American families to trade with China, and it is the source of the fortune, opium in particular. In WW2, the "nationalists" were able to greatly abuse FDR's trust, due to the romantic vision he had of the Orient due to his own family history. H. H. Kung helped steal perhaps as much as half of aid to China to distribute amongst their cronies. After the war, Truman tried to look into the China [Taiwan] Lobbby and its sources of funding, but even as President his efforts had to be careful and were stymied by the deep connections Kung had within the Treasury etc. Of course they helped fund McCarthy and many other things. The China Lobby was the original really powerful foreign/exile lobby, only ever to be matched by Cuba and Israel, and of course they all remain close.
[Kung was Chiang's brother-in-law. Most of the extended family ended up in America after he conquered Taiwan because he was too crazy and unpredictable to be around. They carried diplomatic passports for like 20 years after the ROC fell on the mainland and they didn't have those jobs.]
And Taiwan itself was actually formed by the British opium trade.
Kuo Min Tang was a British proxy. The island of Chinese Taipei was stolen by the British after the English Navy decimated China’s mainland harbors during those opium wars, same with Hong Kong.
yeah that's an unknown thing here is that Taiwan had not been part of China for some time, it was just awarded to them as a WW2 spoil, then Chiang had to mass slaughter the residents to take it over, who were primarily Melanesians [I think?] and Japanese colonists etc.
Amusingly int he 1930s Mao told Edgar Snow something along the lines of that they wouldn't seek to reclaim the imperial possessions of Korea and Taiwan but would help them expel the Japanese and then treat them as brothers, or whatever. Snow's only note in later editions meant to change the meaning is saying something like "He couldn't have possibly meant this" lol
There’s a good chance that if all the Armenians that lived in California lived in a Swing state like Florida Nagorno Karabakh would never have been taken by Azerbaijan
The Greek-Armenian lobby is pretty solid, but they lost Menendez. After the fact we got AZ's aid waiver stripped (I supportef that because was the right thing to do)
Always find your long articles fascinating, they’re well-informed and thought-through - and even when I don’t fully agree they’re the sort of contrarian take on liberal mainstream pieties that make me feel like I have properly considered the issue.
Rubio's brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, was convicted in 1989 of distributing approximately $15 million worth of cocaine and served nearly 12 years in federal prison. Cicilia is married to Rubio's older sister, Barbara
Someone else mentioned that, I hadn't looked into it, but figured as much, that they're all involved in trafficking other ways
I never heard this confirmed just remember someone saying this, but what I heard in 2008 was that when they had Republican debates in Miami like the entire front row were Cuban mafioso Giuliani supporters. I probably should have at least made passing references to how these people are themselves surely the criminals.
Remember "Little Marco Rubio" and the hand comparisons in the 2016 Republican primary debates? What in the world happened? I remain mystified by Trump's appointment of Little Marco as anything, and of all things, secretary of state!
I am always skeptical of the claims expats make concerning their home countries, unless they're refugees from Afghanistan or Palestine or something, and I've met a few of them.
I grew up in San Antonio. It's not Miami, but it gets its share. In the 1970s we had a small wave of well-heeled Nicaraguan refugees fleeing from the Sandinista revolution. One of them, a stunningly attractive woman, married a friend of mine.
We did not remain friends for long. I met her family, and they were a lot like the Rubios. Descendants of the old colonial Creole aristocracy based on the Spanish racial caste system that was in place 300 years before Simon Bolivar overthrew it, and those families have been fighting, with varying degrees of success, often with foreign assistance, to regain all their lost privileges and take pounds of flesh in revenge ever since.
I positively despise those people.
Indeed. Many such cases. I am reading Inside Latin America currently and am already through the Central America part. It is very much like that throughout most of Latin America, and the Sandinistas were actually not unreasonable. The percentage of people who were in those positions of power, I don't remember the statistic but perhaps like 5% of the country owned land.
Even from Afghanistan or Palestine they could still cause you problems or give you nonsense advice, especially say in Afghanistan if they're trying to tell you whatever about the tribes in their home country. I believe Hamid Karzai lived abroad for a long time hence being so well placed to be put in power by the Westerners and he did a bang up job over there. No country is so wretched as to not have an upper class which wants to maintain their power...or for that matter a lower class which probably fails to understand what makes the economy work to whatever marginal extent it is. It's just overall bad to listen to them.
The exiles know full well that they are making shit up. Since they don't get called to account, why should they care?
I don't know, people have an enormous capacity for obliviousness, commonly had little contact with the peasantry, by Rubio's generation have never been there and have grown up on nostalgic tales of the olds, and usually aren't making many claims about helping the public they're more claiming if they ruled the place they would be American pawns, which is true, so it's a mixed bag.
Just today some Chinese bitch on Twitter claimed people in the PRC were only poor to get pulled out of poverty because the CPC has kept them in poverty since taking power since 1948, which is so incredibly ridiculous you pretty much have to be a true believer to be willing to claim it publicly.
True, humans are masters at rationalization.
As I read your analysis, I feel the need to exclaim "excellent" at almost every line. (I remembered the countless attempts to assassinate Castro during JFK's time - some so ridiculous, so absurd, that I wonder if the CIA wasn't a nursery of tragicomedy screenwriters).
Alas for Venezuela!
I’m glad you liked it. I wasnt sure if it was good while I was doing it but thats often a good sign for quality.
Never doubt the quality of your work. From everything I've read published by you on Substack, about events and places I knew – some well, others little or not at all – I've noticed some qualities that you are blessed with and that anyone would like. You have talent, intelligence, honesty, meticulousness in documentation, warmth of soul. There are explorers who are only interested in records. You go to unknown places or places that we only think we know to understand what they are like, what is really happening and, if possible, to help us better understand the world we live in. And you are, often, the very first.
Thanks, that is kind of you to say, though that doesnt mean that everything I ever write will be good and that I shouldnt ask myself if a specific article is working
You certainly do. Usually an author is more demanding than his readers.
Nobody of influence and authority in the US cares about Venezuela or Venezuelans, except as victims to be sacrificed or sheep to be fleeced.
Hell, the exiles see them as exceptionally mulish livestock.
This is my perception as well. The powerful constantly teach us lessons of cynicism and arrogance. Unfortunately, many of us have deluded ourselves that change is possible.
"Despite the countless historic examples and Machiavelli’s clear lesson, Americans over all are yet to learn that you simply can’t trust exiles to work with you on foreign policy, and we sure love letting them into our country and into our ears."
Since the elites pay no personal or professional price, why should they care?
Consequences are for the poors. It's not as if Dick Cheney was hounded for his role in The War On Iraq. Liberals still lionize St. Obama in spite of his War On Libya.
yeah of course Iraq is a key example of this with Chalabi and the "Heroes in error" etc, I mean it's how I always instinctively knew this before reading Machiavelli, as it was formative to me.
Also you're correct in our society the President pretty much just retires rich and has a great time no matter what, it isn't so much like an actual Prince where this could easily end with his death/overthrow.
This is a really good article. I was in the gold exploration business and traveled to Venezuela in the early 1990s in an effort to obtain exploration licences in eastern Venezuela. The notion that rural Venezuelans in pre-Chavez Venezuela were "rich" is delusional (as you observe). In 19th century Ontario, rural farmers with few resources built substantial farm houses but Venezuelans in Callao and other towns and villages lived in shanties. Government corruption in pre-Chavez Venezuela was endemic and toxic to the economy. Geologists needed permits for even minor tasks and each permit had "administrative" costs. Venezuela's pre-Chavez oil revenue wasn't used to build a diversified economy but to build a grossly oversized and overweening bureaucracy which traveled to Miami for holidays and to shop. The connection between Miami and Venezuela upper and middle class goes back a long time. I was actually in Caracas in 1992 during the first (and unsuccessful) Chavez coup. I was staying at a Tamanaco hotel overlooking the air force base which was a center for the rebellion. The government set up heavy guns on the roof of the hotel and fired down on the base, while the base fired heavy artillery at the hotel. The guests were evacuated to a basement restaurant while a battle took place in the parking garage. Next to me under one of the tables was the then famous marathoner Bill Rogers who was in Caracas to be grand marshall of the Caracas marathon. The next day, I went downtown on the subway and was trapped for a while in an alley, pinned down with about 20 others by a sniper. Government troops arrived and we ran to safety, You are 100% correct that pre-Chavez Venezuela was no paradise, particularly for anyone not in the bureaucracy.
Oh wow, that is quite the story. Thank you for the feedback, I did not do the most thorough research on that partially relying on putting it together myself, so am glad for the confirmation there lol.
Here's a short note on the experience from 20 years ago.
https://climateaudit.org/2005/08/25/remniscences-of-a-coup/
Remember the British "Opium wars". And those who made money from it, went to America and founded the Yale University (look up "Skull&Bones").
Murican oligarchs like Rockerfeller made their money 150 years back both helping the Brits keep China addicted in their 100 years humiliation and Rocks made a mint selling the drugs here. Wasn't even illegal yet. And the Rocks are one of the biggest early champions of US having a CIA for their operations of all kinds ever since.
Air America, the fleet of CIA planes and helicopters were smuggling heroin out of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, China and then Afghanistan, when they moved it there, and the US army protected those poppy fields for twenty years, after the Taliban forced a poppy growing ban for one year in the year 2000. I know they shot Gary Webb in the head, but as the son of a top CIA guy, maybe they're not gonna shoot you in the head as well if you tell the truth, which everyone knows by now. They are the drug dealers, and by the way, when drugs were legal, over the counter, heroin in cough syrup, it was much, much better. They made it worse, to make more drug profits, because they, the US government are the drug dealers.
The Roosevelts were one of the first American families to trade with China, and it is the source of the fortune, opium in particular. In WW2, the "nationalists" were able to greatly abuse FDR's trust, due to the romantic vision he had of the Orient due to his own family history. H. H. Kung helped steal perhaps as much as half of aid to China to distribute amongst their cronies. After the war, Truman tried to look into the China [Taiwan] Lobbby and its sources of funding, but even as President his efforts had to be careful and were stymied by the deep connections Kung had within the Treasury etc. Of course they helped fund McCarthy and many other things. The China Lobby was the original really powerful foreign/exile lobby, only ever to be matched by Cuba and Israel, and of course they all remain close.
[Kung was Chiang's brother-in-law. Most of the extended family ended up in America after he conquered Taiwan because he was too crazy and unpredictable to be around. They carried diplomatic passports for like 20 years after the ROC fell on the mainland and they didn't have those jobs.]
And Taiwan itself was actually formed by the British opium trade.
Kuo Min Tang was a British proxy. The island of Chinese Taipei was stolen by the British after the English Navy decimated China’s mainland harbors during those opium wars, same with Hong Kong.
yeah that's an unknown thing here is that Taiwan had not been part of China for some time, it was just awarded to them as a WW2 spoil, then Chiang had to mass slaughter the residents to take it over, who were primarily Melanesians [I think?] and Japanese colonists etc.
Amusingly int he 1930s Mao told Edgar Snow something along the lines of that they wouldn't seek to reclaim the imperial possessions of Korea and Taiwan but would help them expel the Japanese and then treat them as brothers, or whatever. Snow's only note in later editions meant to change the meaning is saying something like "He couldn't have possibly meant this" lol
There’s a good chance that if all the Armenians that lived in California lived in a Swing state like Florida Nagorno Karabakh would never have been taken by Azerbaijan
The Greek-Armenian lobby is pretty solid, but they lost Menendez. After the fact we got AZ's aid waiver stripped (I supportef that because was the right thing to do)
Always find your long articles fascinating, they’re well-informed and thought-through - and even when I don’t fully agree they’re the sort of contrarian take on liberal mainstream pieties that make me feel like I have properly considered the issue.
That said, I couldn’t agree more with your overall conclusion that US-enforced regime change in Venezuela would be sheer lunacy. And right on cue in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/opinion/venezuela-trump-maduro.html
Thank you. I didnt myself to reading that but indeed, I saw the headline. Every damn time!
Lil Narco "fighting the drug cartels" LOL )
Rubio's brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, was convicted in 1989 of distributing approximately $15 million worth of cocaine and served nearly 12 years in federal prison. Cicilia is married to Rubio's older sister, Barbara
Someone else mentioned that, I hadn't looked into it, but figured as much, that they're all involved in trafficking other ways
I never heard this confirmed just remember someone saying this, but what I heard in 2008 was that when they had Republican debates in Miami like the entire front row were Cuban mafioso Giuliani supporters. I probably should have at least made passing references to how these people are themselves surely the criminals.
Don't forget the Operation "Underworld" when the OSS/CIA sided with the mafia for sex/drug/human trafficking:
youtu.be/pCfMbBwdVDQ?t=98
Remember "Little Marco Rubio" and the hand comparisons in the 2016 Republican primary debates? What in the world happened? I remain mystified by Trump's appointment of Little Marco as anything, and of all things, secretary of state!
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
The easily manipulated part is the most dangerous. All Marco Rubio has to do is flatter Trump and lick his boots, and he gets his war on Venezuela!
We are seeing this play out in real time.
The US needs another war like another hole in its head. Trump would be making a huge mistake.
Super detail.
What do you make of the claims that Rubio's wife comes from Miami Vice cocaine money?
I dont know anything in particular about it but find it entirely believable.