On first trip, Rubio to wield big stick in Latin America

by Shaun TANDON

Traditionally, when US secretaries of state make their international debuts, they travel to major US allies and offer bromides about working together.

Marco Rubio's first trip will be different. He will travel to five small Latin American nations to aggressively push President Donald Trump's doctrine of US self-interest, starting with the Panama Canal.

Rubio will start his trip Saturday in Panama, after Trump charged that China has unfair influence over the canal and vowed that the United States would be "taking it back."

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Rubio will then head to El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic to hammer leaders for cooperation on one of Trump's priorities -- deporting millions of people, mostly Latin Americans, living illegally in the United States.

Days before Rubio's trip, Trump showed the punishment he can dole out for resistance.

When Colombia's leftist president, Gustavo Petro, refused US military aircraft of detained citizens and pleaded for more humane treatment, Trump threatened massive tariffs on the longstanding US ally and Rubio suspended visa services. Petro quickly backed down.

- Raw self-interest -

Rubio, in an interview with SiriusXM radio ahead of the trip, said he sought "stronger" partnerships in the Western Hemisphere and that Central American nations had their own incentive to decrease instability.

"I think we're going to have a Western Hemisphere that's more secure" and "our interest in the Panama Canal will be more secure," he said.

Rubio, a former senator and presidential contender, is the first Hispanic and first fluent Spanish speaker to serve as the top US diplomat.

But Trump's style also marks a return to an earlier time -- the "big stick diplomacy" of the early 20th century when the United States brandished force to get its way, including in building the Panama Canal.

Trump in his inaugural address evoked that era as he said the United States still had a "manifest destiny" to expand.

"Trump's comment about somehow needing to take back the canal really brings up old ghosts, the ghosts of US imperialism," said Leland Lazarus, an expert at Florida International University and the Atlantic Council.

He noted that Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino has said his country, which took full control of the canal in 1999, would "jealously preserve and protect its sovereignty."

But Lazarus also pointed to "silent movement" by Panama to review China's clout including through an audit of Hutchison Holdings, the Hong Kong company that operates ports on both sides of the canal.

- Championing the right -

Maureen Meyer, vice president for programs at the Washington Office on Latin America, which promotes human rights, expected many in the region to be concerned about a relationship built not on "mutual cooperation and respect, as much as by bullying and sometimes a transactional relationship."

But she said that all wanted to avoid tariffs by their giant neighbor to the north.

"Each of these countries has their own interest in developing a good relationship with the Trump administration," she said.

Rubio, a Cuban-American vociferously opposed to the island's communist government, is also expected to promote Latin American conservatives in the region's ideological tug-of-war.

Chief among them is El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, who has earned hero status within Trump's Republican Party for his no-holds-barred crackdown on crime in which tens thousands of people have been rounded up.

Human rights groups have criticized Bukele over detentions of innocent people. But once prevalent homicides have dropped sharply and he was re-elected last year with 80 percent of the vote, with Donald Trump Jr. attending his inauguration.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader for his part has championed a Trump-style hard line on chronically unstable and impoverished Haiti, starting work on a wall and ramping up deportations.

Rubio will find a different dynamic in Guatemala whose president, Bernardo Arevalo, is an anti-corruption advocate who faced down threats by the conservative elite to take power after his upset 2023 election victory.

Arevalo -- whose country is a major source of migrants -- has been quick to cooperate with Trump, including by accepting deportees.

"Arevalo is looking for support from the Trump administration, because he knows his own government has been threatened by internal forces that oftentimes have had strong relationships with members of the Republican Party," Meyer said.