* Marco Rubio is not one who can, right now at least, claim ignorance of Cuban immigrant cocaine money. Working for his major cocaine trafficker brother-in-law was literally his first job! But he does claim to have not noticed anything unusual until the day bro in law was arrested.
About the drug ring where Orlando Cicilia was the #2 man:
What began as a marijuana-import operation in the late 1970s had blossomed into the far more lucrative business of distributing kilos of cocaine smuggled into South Florida from Colombia. During operation from 1976 to 1986, the ring moved half-a-million pounds of marijuana and 200 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $75 million.
“It was a very large operation,” said Delbert Woodburn, a Miami-Dade narcotics detective who investigated Tabraue in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Planes from Colombia were coming into the Bahamas and the Keys, landing at small airports, dropping drugs into the Everglades.”
Once Cicilia joined, he became the “front man,” insulating Tabraue by handing over drugs to buyers and coordinating shipments around the country, according to interviews, DEA field reports and grand jury testimony obtained by The Washington Post.
As the business flourished, Cicilia took on the appearance of the quintessential Miami underworld hotshot, donning sunglasses and wearing his paisley suit sleeves rolled up.
$75 million in the 80′s is like $200 million now. But Marco, who I am sure never even saw Scarface or Miami Vice, had NO CLUE that a family member he saw everyday was involved with drugs.
“Mario was the kingpin, and Orlando was his second in command,” said Michael Fisten, a homicide detective who worked on the case and is writing a book about it. “He always had large amounts of cash on him.”
No clue whatsoever, there are many ways that a recent Cuban immigrant in 80′s Miami could “always have large amounts of cash on him.”
The couple also agreed to pay Rubio $10 a week for each of their seven Samoyed dogs he washed. He made enough to buy tickets for all eight Dolphins regular-season home games, Rubio wrote.
That same house where Rubio earned his football-ticket money would soon be under surveillance by federal agents. ….
Detectives had noticed a man behind the wheel of a Chevy Blazer that was appearing frequently among the stream of Ferraris, Maseratis and Jaguars that flowed to and from the kingpin’s pet store.
No way young Marco could even have suspected, in 80′s Miami, that a “stream of Ferraris, Maseratis and Jaguars” coming from a Cuban immigrant who wore his “paisley suit sleeves rolled up” could ever be involved with anything illegal.
* To be fair, “preternaturally alert, perceptive, and suspicious” is not an impression that Rubio ever gives of himself.
* “He made enough to buy tickets for all eight Dolphins regular-season home games, Rubio wrote.”
That’s wasn’t as hideously expensive as it is today, but yeah, that was still a lot of money back in the 1980s for a high school student.
Rubio’s brother-in-law was arrested when he was 16, so I’m not going to personally hold him morally accountable. But, still, the idea that Rubio deserves to be President because he’s ethnically Hispanic is a little bizarre since that’s the ethnic background — Miami Vice — he’s from, and he ought to be a little embarrassed about being from Scarfaceville.
In contrast, Jeb Bush was 27 when he chose to move from Caracas to Miami in late 1980 to make his fortune. Venezuela wasn’t Colombia, but still … Jeb must have had a clue what was going on. I’m sure he didn’t get directly involved in the Big C in Miami, but he clearly benefited from the cocaine trade pouring money into Miami. As a banker for Texas Commerce Bank I’m sure he could have arranged to have moved to a town with a lot of Spanish speakers for the benefit of his wife that was more respectable, more sedate, more militaryish, such as San Antonio or El Paso or San Diego or somewhere on the West Coast of Florida, such as Tampa.
But Jeb chose Miami in 1980. I spent a week in the Cape Canaveral area of Florida in July 1980 and it seemed pretty coked-up. And that was visiting the family of a guy with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. That’s probably the nerdiest part of Florida, and still every bar was blasting “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton.
I’m sure Trump has dealt with a lot of “private sanitation” guys who were obviously mobbed up, but that’s the environment he was born into. I understand that Jeb felt like his older brother George W. had Texas (either Houston or Dallas?) locked up, but that still left him a variety of choices besides Miami.
