By Raúl Antonio Capote
During the final day of the 5th International Patria Colloquium, the second edition of the book “Rubio: An Uncontrollable Mythomaniac,” by the prominent Cuban journalist Hedelberto López Blanch, was presented.
This edition, published by Nuevo Milenio and the Editorial de Ciencias Sociales with the support of Resumen Latinoamericano, was presented to a group of young Europeans and Latin Americans attending the 5th International Patria Colloquium, held from April 16 to 18, 2026, at the Estación Cultural de Línea y 18, Havana.
With masterful skill, Hedelberto exposes the inner workings of a monster of American politics, a being born from the darkness of a system, a regime that José Martí aptly described in 1881: “Politicians corrupt and poison all the banners of the spirit; these professional slanderers are public criminals.”
“Rubio is a mixture of this perverse being who tries to cause extreme harm, and the darkest aspects of insidious corruption and cynicism,” Graciela Ramírez Cruz, director of the Cuba bureau of Resumen Latinoamericano, described this character. “We could say he is the cursed doll Chucky, that horrifying and perverse mix who becomes Secretary of State,” she characterized.
Furthermore, said Jorge Legañoa, president of Prensa Latina: “The best thing about Hedelberto’s book is its journey — which is fabulous — through the history of the United States itself.”
Michel Torres, director of the Nuevo Milenio publishing house, screenwriter, and host of the program Confilo, elaborated on the murky origins of political financing within the American party elites.
For his part, Abel Prieto Jiménez, president of Casa de las Américas, considered the book a “description of the political and moral anatomy of an ultraright-wing monstrosity, an opportunist, a liar, a nefarious character.”
To conclude the event, the book’s author, Hedelberto López Blanch, expressed his gratitude for the warm reception of all editions of the book, both in Cuba and abroad.
Brief Notes on a Monster
The Cuban journalist’s work describes Marco Rubio’s close ties to drug traffickers convicted by the American justice system and reveals the true face of the affable politician of the current Secretary of State, heir to the history of imperialist politics.
It is very useful to recall how, during his long stay in the United States, José Martí, like no other, unraveled the ruthless soul of that system. Referring to the United States, he wrote in 1884: “In the very marrow, in the very marrow, lies the vice, in which life in this land has no other purpose than the accumulation of wealth!” (1).
Martí witnessed the seeds of decay, was not dazzled by illusions, and foresaw where the delirious and arrogant pace, the ferocious competition, would lead, relegating the spiritual to the darkest corners.
Indeed, just reading the first few pages of the text brings to mind Antonio Gramsci’s famous phrase: “The old world is dying, and the new one is struggling to be born; in this chiaroscuro, monsters emerge.” This metaphor of the “interregnum” is particularly useful for understanding reactionary political phenomena that emerge during moments of organic crisis in capitalism.
Because the monster that Hedelberto describes so well is born from Gramscian chiaroscuro, a child of the deepest darkness of American capitalism.
The new world struggling to be born—still weak, fragmented, without a well-defined hegemonic project, without a vanguard party to mobilize and guide the masses, with little capacity to articulate scattered demands—is fighting against the persistence of the old world. That repressive, corrupt, and increasingly violent and ruthless force is fertile ground for bogeymen.
Donald Trump is not an accident, not a mere demagogue: he is also a “monster” in the Gramscian sense, and Trumpism, a political formation that arises from the old order and channels popular discontent toward regressive, authoritarian, and destructive solutions.
Let us recall that Karl Marx described Bonapartism as an executive power that places itself above the classes in struggle, balancing their forces in the service of capital. Trump updates this figure: he presents himself as “the defender of the working people” against the elites, the Clintons, the media, the Washington bureaucrats (“the swamp to be drained”), but he governs for the wealthiest.
Trumpism—Bonapartism with social media and a constant spectacle—transforms the organic crisis into a convenient scapegoat: the wrongdoers are not capital or the system, but immigrants, the Chinese, the Russians, or the “globalists.” In this way, it displaces the class struggle onto the ethnic-nationalist terrain.
It is a form of what Gramsci would call “passive revolution”: incorporating popular demands against free trade and job losses, but emptying them of anti-capitalist content, redirecting them toward hatred of the other.
Darkness requires a charismatic leader to replace collective deliberation. Trump offers not a program, but an emotional identity: resentment as a political bond. He lies systematically, attacks the press, and despises the rules.
Only in circumstances like these—a product, moreover, of the historical evolution of American capitalism, as López Blanch aptly argues in his book—can a sinister figure like Marco Rubio emerge.
Trumpism is the deepest darkness, and Marco knew how to get close to its shadow to fully develop: a skillful opportunist, capable of easily metamorphosing and exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents, he constitutes a serious danger to Cuba and the world.
Defeating him requires ensuring that the “new world” struggling to be born becomes once again a credible and organized alternative. Meanwhile, in the shadows, the monsters will continue to appear.
(1) Letter to the Editor of La Nación. New York, May 1884.
[ Special thanks to Hedelberto López Blanch for providing us with this article in Spanish ]
