Telesur on Marco Rubio

Check out Telesur's take on Marco Rubio's announcement of his presidential campaign. It offers a mix of fact and paranoia. Yes, he rants about leftist governments and supports sanctions against Venezuela. Yes, he's close to the anti-Castro lobby in Miami. Yes, he's banned from entering Venezuela and Nicaragua, to the extent that anyone cares. Then we have:

The Florida Senator met recently with Colombian former president and current Senator Alvaro Uribe to plot against the Venezuelan government, journalist Jose Vicente Rangel claimed Sunday. 

Rubio has assumed the chairmanship of a Senate subcommittee on the Western hemisphere, which has given him full oversight of U.S. foreign policy across the Americas. 

You're in trouble as soon as you write "Jose Vicente Rangel claimed" because he is the King of Conspiracies.

As for "full oversight," I do not think it means what you think it means. My sense is that the editorial sees this as having a lot of power. But oversight is much different than the actual power of policy making. Rubio, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, can have endless hearings on conspiratorial topics but the president is making policy (which at this point is obviously frustrating him).

Much of the U.S. right and the Latin American left have distorted and inaccurate views of each other, mixing facts and fears into an unhealthy combination. The notion that this could become part of the U.S. presidential campaign is simply depressing.