Marco Rubio and the Future of Internationalist Solidarity

From February 1-6, 2025, Marco Rubio traveled to Central America for his first official visits as U.S. Secretary of State. With the exception of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Belize, every country hosted Rubio. His stated aim was “to advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy.” The four axes of this policy for the region are: migration, organized crime, China, and U.S. economic investment. These are part of his administration’s broad strategy to re-assert exclusive U.S. political and economic dominance in the region it has long considered its “back yard.”

The region has been slipping out of U.S. hands “from above” (through Chinese partnerships and pseudo-leftist governments) and “from below” (through increasingly organized grassroots movements). Given its “backyard status” in the eyes of virtually every U.S. administration since James Monroe, it was logical for this to be the Secretary of State’s first foreign visit . Guatemala being no exception. From the Trump administration’s perspective, the trip was a success.

But Rubio’s accomplishments are detrimental for the people of Guatemala. The most notable is that President Arévalo agreed to a 40% increase in flights of deportees, be they Guatemalans or not. In exchange, Rubio publicly reaffirmed U.S. support for Guatemalan democracy. This was important for Arevalo, whose party remains in conflict with the corrupt Attorney General Consuelo Porras. More importantly, perhaps, Rubio pledged a U.S. partnership with the Guatemalan government to expand two new port facilities that will allegedly make Guatemala a hub of U.S. trade in the region.

As usual, every move by the United States government is driven by imperial interests. Supporting Arévalo and democracy is contingent on his subservience; should Arevalo resist, it’s not hard to imagine the brutal consequences, as the struggle of genocide survivors who seek justice and accountability from the effects of the last U.S. intervention attests. Collaboration on infrastructure to become a U.S. trade hub is positive for capitalist powers, US-American and Guatemalan, but certainly not for Indigenous People who defend life and territory against the forced displacement, environmental destruction, and state repression of global and local capitalist interests allied to corrupt state powers. Mass deportations will have damaging impacts at scales that are difficult to predict – for example: What will happen to the Guatemalan economy given that 1/5 of Guatemala’s GDP comes from remittances; or when the additional tens of thousands of deported people still can’t find employment or safety in Guatemala? The boomerang effect these agreements will have on the people of the U.S. in the long-run will also be devastating, with different but still significant social, political, economic and ecological impacts.

The people of Guatemala continue to face the systematic and manufactured dispossession brought by capitalism and U.S. imperialism. These systems change representatives and tactics, but their aims of global supremacy and insatiable profit do not. Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are not an exception to this rule, though it is arguable that in their general preference for the “stick” over the “carrot,” they do pose a heightened risk for causing new levels of chaos. In any case, while governments negotiate away the life of peoples and lands for the benefit of global capital, the people of Guatemala continue their generational struggles for justice and life. In the United States, growing numbers of people are also experimenting with resistance and the building of alternatives as more of them experience the dispossession long reserved for the Global South, now reaching their own lives.

As Rubio’s visit demonstrates, the life of the people of Guatemala and the people of the United States is tightly interconnected—economically, (geo)politically, socially, ecologically. What happens here impacts there, and what happens there impacts here. For better or for worse. The people of Guatemala and the people of the United States must develop a strong analysis of the what, how and why of this administration in order to respond strategically. As we face an uncertain future together, then, an all-important question must be posed: Is it the time for a renewed internationalist solidarity movement with the people of Guatemala?