By Hedelberto López Blanch
“It is not surprising that the United States Secretary of State meets with criminals, abusers of women and vulnerable people, notorious human rights violators, self-flagellating charlatans who blame others, and who disguise themselves as ‘opposition members’ to enrich themselves with American taxpayer money, which the Secretary himself openly gives them.”
This devastating paragraph was written by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez on his X account, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Cuban counterrevolutionary José Daniel Ferrer a few days after arriving in the United States, where he traveled of his own volition after being released from prison. Now let’s analyze the background of both men.
To gain the sympathy of the Cuban-American right in Miami, Rubio lied, claiming his parents had fled communism in Cuba. It was later discovered that they had arrived in the United States in 1956, during Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship on the island.
When Rubio was 16, his brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, was arrested in 1987 for trafficking a massive drug shipment valued at $15 million. Cicilia lived with Rubio’s sister, Barbara, very close to the house where Marco lived with his parents. At the 1989 trial, Rubio, then 18, refused to testify about whether he or his family had received money from Cicilia.
The drug trafficker, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, was released after 12 years following a plea deal. Immediately afterward, his brother-in-law, who was then a member of the Florida House of Representatives, used his position to secure Cicilia a real estate license. Because of these tangled relationships, he’s known in Miami as Narco Rubio.
There are many documented cases of corruption in which Rubio has been involved, such as the one involving the former Secretary of Education, from whom he received $98,000 for helping her obtain the position.
There’s also the case of Bernie Navarro, whose founder and CEO of Benworth Capital gave him $850,000 to repay his favors. He has also received substantial money from the National Rifle Association, the powerful Jewish lobby, and anyone else who needs his political services.
Meanwhile, José Daniel Ferrer, who is invited to an interview at the State Department and calls himself a human rights advocate, is a member of a group called the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), which has been funded (as he himself confessed in a public appearance on a Miami television station) by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two instruments of the U.S. government for the destabilization of the Cuban government.
This individual has an extensive criminal record and has even been convicted of assaulting employees under his command who have filed complaints against him. While in prison, he banged his head against a desk to claim he had been tortured, but the stunt backfired because all his actions were filmed.
A statement from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that Ferrer García, along with members of his family, left the country on October 13, 2025, bound for the United States.
This occurred following a formal request from the U.S. government and Ferrer García’s express acceptance, in accordance with the legal procedures between the two countries.
The statement also indicates that in January 2025, he had been granted early release after serving a sentence of four years and six months. Due to repeated violations of the obligations and requirements established by the court, as outlined in the Criminal Enforcement Law and its Regulations, his release was revoked in April of this year.
Ferrer García remained subject to the pretrial detention order issued by the Prosecutor’s Office, as he was charged with a new crime. Once the investigation was concluded, this body, in accordance with its legal powers, decided to modify the pretrial detention order, according to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX).
Ferrer García, as is always the case with those who attack the Cuban Revolution by any means, was received in Miami by the far-right Cuban-Americans Mario Díaz-Balard, Carlos Giménez, and María Elvira Salazar, and, to top it all off, Marco Rubio.
As the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.
IMAGE CREDIT: Photo: Social Media
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE AUTHOR, HEDELBERTO LOPEZ BLANCH
