US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday lashed out at authoritarian left-wing regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, accusing them of being "enemies of humanity" and of causing a regional migration crisis.
Rubio is on the third leg of a visit to Latin America, his first foreign tour as the top US diplomat, which has focused largely on stemming migration to the United States.
"Those three regimes that exist in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba are enemies of humanity and they have created a migration crisis. If it were not for these three regimes there would not be a migration crisis in the (Western) hemisphere," Rubio told reporters in Costa Rica.
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"They have created it because they are countries whose systems do not work," Rubio, the son of Cuban migrants, said in Spanish.
He took particular aim at Nicaragua, where parliament last approved a constitutional amendment giving President Daniel Ortega, a one-time guerrilla, and his wife Rosario Murillo control of all state powers.
"In the case of Nicaragua, it's turned into a family dynasty with a co-presidency where they've basically tried to eliminate the Catholic Church and the religious community, and anyone who tries to take power from that regime is punished," Rubio said.
"We've seen thousands and thousands of Nicaraguans who are fleeing that system for the same reason people are leaving Cuba or Venezuela," he added.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was among the first regional leaders to react.
Writing on X, he said Rubio's remarks were proof of the "shamelessness" of US politicians and blamed his country's outflow of migrants on the more-than-six-decade US trade embargo on the communist island.
"It is proven that the migration exodus in Cuba is proportional to the tightening of the blockade, which deprives our people of essential goods," Diaz-Canel wrote.
"Humanity is endangered by your neofascism," he added.
Rubio left Costa Rica for Guatemala on Tuesday, after earlier visits to Panama and El Salvador.
In a stunning move, El Salvador's iron-fisted leader Nayib Bukele offered to jail US citizen convicts in a mega-prison for gang members opened two years ago on the edge of a jungle.
Rubio thanked him profusely for the offer and said that Bukele was also willing to accept deported gang members from other Latin America countries, including Venezuela.