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Marco Rubio’s journey, from growing up as the son of Cuban exiles to becoming a U.S. Senator, teaches us many things about a man’s life in the polis. The sacrifice of a parent can spark an appreciation and gratitude for one’s own lot and a desire to return something to the society that has made life better. Rubio’s story contrasts two forms of the polis, one in America and one in Cuba, and shows the lengths men will go to join and sustain a polis that is better for themselves and their children.
Mario Rubio was born and raised in Cuba in the 1920s. Fighting poverty like so many of his fellow Cubans, Mario worked for everything he had, often sleeping behind factories on a bed made out of wooden pallets. He met his future wife, Oria Garcia, after working as a guard for a grocery store in exchange for room and board. Oria also came from humble beginnings; as a child, she covered old Coca-Cola bottles with scraps of cloth to use as play dolls. The two married and had their first child, Mario Jr., in 1950.
With the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution, the Rubio family fled from Cuba to the United States and settled in Miami. Their work was no easier—they labored in a factory stitching together nylon beach chairs—but at least they had freedom. Like so many American immigrants, Mario and Oria believed in the American dream. They wanted their children to have an opportunity for a better life. So Mario bartended at the popular tourist hotels along the beach, while Oria took various jobs, for example, working as a Kmart stock clerk.
On May 28, 1971, their third child, Marco, was born. In 1979, the family packed up and moved west to Las Vegas. There the Rubio family continued their modest, hardworking life. Oria worked as a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace and Mario Sr. was a bartender at Sam’s Town Hotel.
By 1985, the family returned to the Miami area, just in time for Marco to enter South Miami Senior High School. By his junior year he made the varsity football team. He was undersized, but tough and smart on his feet. His teammates quickly recognized him as the mental leader of the team. Marco attended Tarkio College in Missouri on a football scholarship before transferring to Santa Fe Community College. He eventually graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in science. He pressed on with his studies and earned his juris doctor from the University of Miami.
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In 1996, his final year of law school, Marco worked for the presidential campaign of Bob Dole. With tireless ambition and unmistaken zeal, Rubio distinguished himself early on in politics. Rubio interned for Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and later served on the West Miami City Commission. In 2000, Marco Rubio was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and in 2006 he became the first Hispanic Speaker of the Florida House. Rubio’s meteoric rise continued in 2009 when he announced his election bid for the United States Senate.
Rubio’s senate campaign captured the hearts of millions of Americans. Unashamed of his lowly beginnings, Rubio spoke proudly of his parents’ journey from Cuba to the United States. As the child of a bartender and a housekeeper, he boasted of the power of the American dream.
In his final campaign video of the election, Rubio said, “America being exceptional is not something I read in a book. As the son of exiles, my parents were born into a society pretty much like every other in the world where if you’re not from the right family or with enough money you can only go so far. And that is a very different place from our America—a place where the son of [a] bartender doesn’t have to become a bartender and where the son of a maid can achieve any dream.”
Rubio believes in the democratic spirit of self-reliance and ingenuity, and he puts that belief into practice. While serving in the Florida House, Rubio traversed the state, hosting townhall forums to listen to the people of Florida and their ideas. Rubio compiled the one hundred best proposals into a book called 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future and it became the platform of his term. He succeeded in passing all one hundred ideas through the Florida House and fifty-seven of these ideas—from stiffer punishments for gangs and violence to helping small businesses attain health care they can afford—eventually became law.
With a Reagan-like enthusiasm, Rubio promised Florida’s voters that he would go to Washington DC to advocate on behalf of their ideas, not his. Rubio won the 2010 Florida Senate election in a landslide.
Sadly, Rubio’s father was not there to see his son’s historic victory. Mario Sr. passed away in September 2010, only two months before the election, after a long battle with emphysema and lung cancer.
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In a statement issued after his father’s death, Rubio said, “He was by far the most unselfish person I have ever known, always focused on others, and never on his own well-being. He was especially determined to provide his children opportunities he himself never had.”
Rubio added, “My dad worked as a street vendor, security guard, apartment building manager, and crossing guard. But for most of his life he was a bartender, and by all accounts a great one. But his greatest success came from the two most important jobs he ever had: husband and father.”
Mario Sr. didn’t stop working until he was seventy-eight years old. He and his wife sacrificed everything so that their children might live a better life. Their story and the story of their son Marco illustrate some of the best things about a man’s life in the polis. As Aristotle said, because man takes an interest in good and evil and right and wrong, he forms two institutions: the family and the polis (city). A man, like Marco Rubio, who loves his parents and city (or country) is surely twice blessed. Furthermore, the example and power of his parents can make a man engage with another “parent”—the parens patriae, Latin for “parent of the nation.” Because of the example and sacrifice of his parents, Marco Rubio serves the American people so that others might have the same chance he has.