This editorial by Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez originally appeared in the November 16, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mexico Solidarity Media*, or the Mexico Solidarity Project.*
In the contemporary political arena, Marco Rubio embodies the logic of the “life-saver,” that imperialist semiotic operation that seeks to invest its coup-plotting servant with an authority destined to condition the behaviour of our peoples under the veiled threat of monetary or military sanctions. This logic operates as a device of mafia-like and media intimidation, as a narrative choreography of bourgeois “punishment,” and as an ideological representation of US firepower cloaked in imperial arrogance.
Rubio thus emerges as the performative figure of an order that seeks to pontificate on the conduct of the insurgents, not through reasoned argument, but by naturalizing a petulant, supremacist, gusano position. His discourse is not merely a string of phrases, but a system of threats intended to function as warnings, ultimatums, or blackmail, directed at governments, peoples, and geopolitical adversaries. It is the classic gesture of the self-sacrificing figure: “I could destroy you, but I grant you the opportunity to submit.” This semiotics of punishment, cloaked in servile moralism, produces a sinister character, not because he possesses any power of his own—which he does not—but because he symbolizes the structure of an empire that uses him as a mouthpiece for global control.
Nauseating.
Rubio executes his script with theatrical precision; his public persona is a manual of the gestures of punishment, a liturgy of finger-pointing, a repertoire of threats presented as responsible warnings. In his rhetoric, “concern” for Latin America is merely the wrapping for plunder, murder, and intervention; his clownishness dressed as denunciation of sovereign governments is a murderous formula rooted in the most macabre bourgeois morality; the proposed sanctions are presented as a “necessary step” to defend freedom. In each of these semiotic offensives, the self-appointed arbiter grants—from his lofty perk—the other an opportunity to rectify, obey, or “return to the right path.” Classic gangster rhetoric that feigns cordiality before striking. Rubio’s sinister nature lies not only in his individual biography but also in the way his discursive body is designed to be the vehicle for this dramaturgy.
Our critical semiotics allows us to show that the self-appointed arbiter not only threatens, but also produces a perceptual order. His messages seek to generate a climate of managed terror, doubt, and calculated instability. At the same time, he attempts to consolidate a narrative in which the United States appears as the guardian of the people, the magnanimous protector who—despite his “patience”—is forced to punish. Rubio dramatizes this tension, making language a pedagogical instrument of fear. Thus, a pedagogy of submission is constructed; each of his interventions teaches which behaviors will be punished, who the “bad guys” of the moment will be, and what sanctions are considered legitimate. The sinister emerges from the naturalization of this structure; the self-appointed arbiter does not conceive of himself as an aggressor, but as a savior. And therein lies the deepest violence: punishment disguised as virtue.
The self-righteous savior needs to create enemies to justify his own role; he needs to generate the expectation of chaos to present himself as the manager of order.
In the Latin American context, Rubio unleashes a semantics of interference that presents the sovereign decisions of nations as pathological deviations in need of correction. His logic is that of the authoritarian adult facing the unruly child: “I know what’s best for you, obey and you’ll be better off.” This infantilization is one of the symbolic cores of the self-appointed guardian of power. And, once again, the sinister character is not defined by his personal abilities, but by the structure he embodies: that of the empire that believes it has the right to decide which countries deserve to live and which must be disciplined.
Rubio also employs a discursive style obsessed with the idea of the enemy. Every word he utters fabricates an absolute adversary who must be combated without nuance. This absolutization of the other—a classic propaganda technique—allows him to justify any measure: sanctions, economic pressure, soft coups, funding of destabilizing opposition groups. The self-righteous savior needs to create enemies to justify his own role; he needs to generate the expectation of chaos to present himself as the manager of order. Therefore, his discourse is always apocalyptic: “If I don’t act, catastrophe will occur.” It is the semiotics of the shadowy savior; he himself inflates the threat that he then promises to resolve.
Ultimately, Rubio serves a purpose: to translate the doctrine of interventionism into everyday language. His semiotic mission is to make imperial aggression palatable. He presents interference as a necessity, sanctions as a responsibility, and threats as moral gestures. The self-appointed guardian always needs to justify himself: he can only maintain his power if he manages to make the other believe—at least for a moment—that the threat is legitimate. The sinister figure becomes effective when his violence appears to be common sense. And Rubio works tirelessly to make imperial violence seem reasonable, inevitable, or morally correct.
That’s why it’s crucial to dismantle the grammar of his logic; every word he utters functions as a device of symbolic domination. His public gestures, his interviews, his social media posts, his interventions in the Senate: everything is articulated as a chain of signs designed to intimidate, persuade, overact, and discipline. Unmasking this self-appointed champion isn’t about criticizing Rubio as an individual, but about exposing the ideological machinery he represents. It’s about understanding how a sinister figure becomes the spokesperson for a semiotics of threat that seeks to subjugate entire populations to the order of global capital.
And finally, it’s important to remember that the self-appointed arbiter cannot exist without the complicity of a system that establishes him. Rubio is the broken mask of a decaying empire that, unable to maintain its hegemony through consensus, resorts to theatrical punishment, with weapons and “tariffs.” In this macabre theatricality, an old colonial gesture is reproduced: the master who, before striking, sends his servants to grant the slave the opportunity to repent. A cruel farce, a semiotics of subjugation. And, through it, a desperate attempt to maintain a power that history itself is already eroding. Meanwhile, we remain utterly disorganized.
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Marco Rubio is the broken mask of a decaying empire that, unable to maintain its hegemony through consensus, resorts to theatrical punishment, with weapons and “tariffs.”
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