Marco Rubio, Bolsonaro and the Fight Over Brazil’s Sovereignty

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

The Bolsonaro family sought American pressure against Brazil’s courts, and Marco Rubio helped turn those demands into policy. From Brazil to Venezuela, his actions expose the contradiction between Washington’s promises of freedom and its insistence on deciding the terms of other nations’ sovereignty.

Flávio Bolsonaro and his family landed at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport on Wednesday, October 28. The defeated presidential candidate, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, had received State Department visas after losing the October 25 runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. His arrival followed months of family lobbying for American intervention in Brazil’s affairs.

His brother Eduardo, a former federal deputy, was already there, having campaigned for American pressure against Brazil’s courts. In October, the Supreme Court ordered him to begin serving four years and two months for coercion connected to those efforts. The lobbying was the conduct for which he was convicted, and he remains in the United States with a Brazilian arrest warrant outstanding.

An openDemocracy investigation documented Eduardo’s collaboration with Paulo Figueiredo, a Brazilian commentator and grandson of João Figueiredo, Brazil’s last military president, to obtain sanctions against Supreme Court justices. Eduardo publicly described their partnership by telling Figueiredo, “I open the door, I’m the heart, but you’re the brain.” Agência Pública later reported extensive meetings with Republican lawmakers and administration officials in pursuit of tariffs and retaliation against judicial authorities.

Rubio delivered one of the measures their lobbying campaign sought. In July 2025, he announced visa revocations against Justice Alexandre de Moraes, other Supreme Court members and their immediate families, describing the proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio and Eduardo’s father, as a “political witch hunt.” By adopting the family’s central accusation as the justification for American action, Washington moved beyond sympathy and applied pressure against the institutions the Bolsonaro family wanted to overcome.

Who gets to decide Brazil’s future?

In a June 23, 2026 letter disclosed by Flávio’s campaign and reproduced by Brazilian media, Rubio noted his “generous offer to place a transition team at our disposal should you be elected.” Flávio had asked Washington not to impose additional tariffs, and Rubio’s reply reiterated American commercial grievances while acknowledging the offer. The letter leaves the proposed team’s remit unexplained, but records a presidential contender offering Washington access to his prospective administration while seeking relief from American pressure.

Flávio’s legal position differs from Eduardo’s. The Federal Police said his travel restrictions and passport-surrender order did not, by themselves, make him a fugitive or authorize his arrest. Their dealings with Washington expose a contradiction that extends beyond either brother’s legal predicament, as politicians claiming to defend national independence enlist foreign power to overcome opposition at home.

Marcelino Lastra Muñiz, president of the Open Doors to the Hispanic World Association (PAMH) and Madrid’s Hispanic Cultural Circle, examines this contradiction in his essay on Marco Rubio, subtitled “Portrait of a Civilizational Deserter.” Originally published in Spanish by La Iberofonía and presented in English on Beltrán Arellanes’s Substack, the essay asks when opposition to a government becomes acceptance of foreign tutelage. His sharper accusation is that Washington’s authority becomes easier to impose when people who know the region help present its demands as the region’s salvation. Rubio’s dealings with the Bolsonaro family give that argument immediate political relevance.

In Venezuela, Rubio has been considerably more explicit about the choices Washington leaves its partners. After US forces kidnapped Nicolás Maduro and removed him from the country in January, Washington worked with acting president Delcy Rodríguez while using control over oil revenues and sanctions to influence her government’s decisions.

On October 27, Rubio explained that “we have asked them to do certain things that are in the interest of the national security of the United States, and they have done them.” He said Venezuela’s economic activity depended on American waivers and licences, adding, when discussing compliance with Washington’s transition process, “I don’t know what choice they have.” Evidently, Washington establishes the conditions under which another country can function, then points to its compliance.

Sovereignty on Washington’s terms

Washington has written its preference for aligned partners into its National Security Strategy, promising to “reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy.”

Support for Israel also links Rubio to the Bolsonaro family. Flávio promised to bring Brazil into the Isaac Accords, the Israeli–Argentine initiative to expand diplomatic, security and economic cooperation across the Americas. The United States was represented at the launch, while the Genesis Prize Foundation provided seed funding to advance the project under the explicit objective of “Countering Israel’s Isolation.” Rubio’s support for Israel places him firmly within that alignment. Flávio was offering more than a change of government at home. He was promising to bring Brazil into a regional network organized around Washington’s and Israel’s priorities

That proposed alignment fits a broader claim to regional authority. The revived Monroe doctrine, sometimes called the “Donroe” doctrine, rests on the assumption that Washington is entitled to shape political outcomes across the hemisphere. The Bolsonaro campaign shows how that ambition finds domestic advocates willing to enlist foreign pressure against their own institutions.

Lastra explicitly rejects the idea that ancestry dictates allegiance. Rubio’s Cuban origins neither require him to support Havana nor prevent him from serving the United States. The issue is the authority he claims over other peoples, and whether criticism of a government becomes an invitation for a foreign capital to determine the country’s course.

Sovereignty means Brazil’s future belongs to Brazilians, including those whose choices Washington dislikes. Opposition to Lula does not transfer that right elsewhere. Rubio’s actions give weight to Lastra’s essay, which challenges the promise that foreign tutelage will deliver freedom and asks whose ambitions are served when a country’s politicians accept the bargain.

Marcelino Lastra Muñiz’s essay published by Iberophony
Translated into English by Beltrán Arellanes from the Institute for Hispano Studies Substack

The Renegade: Marco Rubio, Portrait of a Civilizational Deserter
Marcelino Lastra on the price of seeing Hispanic America through Washington’s eyes.

Marco Rubio’s rise is a remarkable achievement for Cuban Miami. One of its own now serves as secretary of state, directing American policy toward the Caribbean and Spanish America. But a familiar surname and fluent Spanish cannot tell us whose interests that policy serves. That tension is the starting point for Marcelino Lastra Muñiz’s essay.

Lastra does not argue that opposing Cuba’s government makes someone a traitor. His question is more demanding: when does criticism of a government become contempt for a people? And when does a politician’s knowledge of his ancestral world help a foreign power claim authority over its future? These are questions Hispanic Americans should be able to ask while remaining free to criticize both the governments their families left and the power that received them.

Lastra holds a law degree and a master’s in business management and administration. He presides over Puertas Abiertas al Mundo Hispano (PAMH) and Madrid’s Círculo Cultural Hispanista, and describes himself as an advocate of Hispanic civilization. His essay, “El renegado: Marco Rubio, semblanza del desertor civilizatorio,” was originally published in Spanish by La Iberofonía on August 14, 2026. We are publishing this English translation so readers can engage his full argument and decide for themselves where the line between critic and renegade falls.

There are historical figures more unsettling than an avowed adversary. An external enemy occupies a position we can understand: he belongs to another political community, defends different interests, and fights for them. He may be fearsome, unjust, or implacable, but his conduct follows a recognizable logic. The renegade belongs to another category.

He is not simply someone who leaves a homeland, adopts another nationality, or integrates into another culture. Nor is he someone who harshly criticizes the faults of the society from which he comes. A civilization confident in itself does not demand loyalty on the basis of ancestry or turn family origins into a political obligation…..

Continue reading Marcelino Lastra Muñiz’s essay here.

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/10/29/marco-rubio-bolsonaro-and-the-fight-over-brazils-sovereignty/