In the highest-level meeting between the two neighbours since president Donald Trump returned to the White House, Rubio met for an hour and a half in Mexico City with president Claudia Sheinbaum, who has calmly sought cooperation in the complicated relationship with Washington.
The visit came a day after Trump said US forces blew up an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that he said belonged to a criminal organisation tied to Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro, a nemesis of the US.
Later Wednesday, Venezuela’s interior minister Diosdado Cabello accused the US of committing extrajudicial killings in the attack, saying, “They murdered 11 people without due process.”
The attack, whose details could not be independently verified by AFP, marks a dramatic escalation by the US, which has for decades relied on routine policing operations rather than deadly force to seize drugs.
Rubio said that the policy had failed, as piecemeal seizures did not affect the bottom line of cartels.
The US “blew it up and it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now,” Rubio told a news conference.
“These are not stockbrokers. These are not real estate agents who, on the side, deal a few drugs.”
“If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl, whatever, headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the US,” he said.
“We’re not going to sit back anymore and watch these people sail down the Caribbean like a cruise ship.”
Respecting Mexican sovereignty
The attack has stirred jitters in Mexico, with some of Trump’s allies in Congress having mused about military action against cartels south of the US border.
But Rubio instead praised Mexico’s record, hailing the efforts by Sheinbaum.
The two countries said they would set up a working group to carry out promises of further cooperation both against cartels and on curbing migration.
“It is the closest security cooperation we have ever had maybe with any country but certainly in the history of US-Mexico relations,” Rubio said.
The countries said in a joint statement their cooperation was “based on the principles of reciprocity, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, shared and differentiated responsibility, as well as mutual trust.”
Sheinbaum comes from the political left but has sought a pragmatic relationship with Trump. She has, however, called the US military “intervention” a red line.
Mexican foreign secretary Juan Ramon de la Fuente, asked about Tuesday’s strike, said Mexico believed in “self-determination, non-intervention and peaceful solution of controversies.”
Pressure on Venezuela
Trump, fond of dramatic announcements and imagery, rose to political prominence with harsh comments on Mexicans and his vows to seal off the southern border with a wall.
But Venezuela is a unique case, as the US does not recognise the legitimacy of Maduro, a leftist firebrand whose last election in 2024 was widely seen internationally and by the opposition as riddled with irregularities.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado hailed what she called a tightening of the “siege imposed by Western democracies” on Maduro’s “narco-terrorist cartel”.
“Venezuela is almost free,” Machado said in a video. “Nothing can stop a people who have already decided to be free and live in democracy.”
An effort by Trump in his first term to remove Maduro from power failed, with his political movement founded by the late Hugo Chavez maintaining support from a network of partisans and the military – as well as Russia and China backing him.
Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of Latin American leftists, has pressed for a hard line on Venezuela, despite efforts this year by Trump’s globe-trotting envoy Richard Grenell to engage Maduro.
Maduro’s communications chief Alfred Nazareth said on social media that Rubio “keeps lying” and that a US government video showing a fiery attack on a boat and posted online was generated by artificial intelligence.
AFP has found no evidence that the video was created by AI.
Rubio heads to Ecuador later Wednesday, led by right-wing ally Daniel Noboa.