As a child, Marco Rubio assured his exiled Cuban grandfather that he would overthrow Fidel Castro and lead Cuba. Today, at 43, he harbours a new aspiration: to be president of the United States.
The Republican senator from Florida, has told voters that he was in the race to start a "new American century", ending two years of speculation about whether he will pursue a 2016 campaign for the White House.
Rubio was born in Miami in 1971, the son of poor Cuban refugees who had fled the island 15 years earlier to escape poverty.
After Castro seized power in 1959, the family decided never to return to Cuba, a country Marco Rubio has never known.
But Cuba is a recurring theme for the first-term senator, whose ambitions reflect those of generations of refugees eager to carve out better lives in America.
"I am the son of immigrants, exiles from a troubled country," he wrote in his 2012 memoir, An American Son.
Rubio has chosen Freedom Tower, a Miami landmark known as the "Ellis Island of the South" for processing thousands of Cuban refugees, as the location for his campaign launch.
The son of a bartender and a housemaid, Rubio grew up in Miami's Cuban-American communities, although the family spent five years in Las Vegas, where they converted briefly to the Mormon faith before returning to Catholicism.
Influenced by his grandfather, who spoke no English, Rubio developed a passion for politics. He was a fan of Senator Ted Kennedy, a Democratic icon, before falling hard for Republican president Ronald Reagan.
Americans nationally learned of Rubio in 2010 when as an underdog he spectacularly won election to the Senate, riding the Tea Party wave that sent several small-government conservatives to Congress.
While some Republicans privately argue it is too early for a Rubio presidential run, many envision him becoming the nation's first Hispanic commander-in-chief, a rags-to-political-riches story embodying the American Dream.
Rubio has unveiled proposals to reduce poverty and introduced pension system reforms - without forgetting fundamental conservative values like traditional marriage.
On foreign affairs Rubio argues that global flashpoints including Iran, Syria and Ukraine require Washington be more engaged abroad.
He places Cuba in the same category as Iran - isolate the regime at all costs.
Rubio's campaign comes just days after Obama shook hands with Cuban strongman Raul Castro at a Latin American summit, the visual symbol of a detente to which Rubio is fiercely opposed.
