U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the governments of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba on Tuesday of being “enemies of humanity” and causing the migration crisis in the region. “These three regimes that exist in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba are enemies of humanity and have created a migration crisis. If it weren’t for these three regimes, there wouldn’t be a migration crisis in the hemisphere,” Rubio said at a press conference in Costa Rica.
“They created it because they are countries where their systems don’t work,” declared the U.S. chief diplomat, son of Cuban immigrants, in Spanish. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called Rubio’s statements “shameless,” while Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused him of having a “pathetic” and “sick obsession” with the three countries.
“Shamelessness once again taking over cynical U.S. politicians. It’s proven that the migration exodus in #Cuba is proportional to the tightening of the #blockade, which deprives our people of essential goods. Humanity is endangered by your neofascism,” Díaz-Canel wrote on X. Gil, for his part, added on his Telegram channel that the “only enemies of humanity are those who, with their war machinery and abuse, have spent decades sowing chaos and misery in half the world.”
During his visit to Costa Rica, Rubio particularly referred to neighboring Nicaragua, where socialist President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo obtained absolute powers last week through a questionable constitutional reform. “Nicaragua has become a family dynasty with a co-presidency where they have basically tried, for example, to eliminate the Catholic Church and everything religious or anyone who could threaten that regime’s power has been punished,” Rubio declared.
“And we have seen what you [in Costa Rica] have had to face here, thousands and thousands of Nicaraguans who are fleeing that system for the same reason they are fleeing” from Cuba and Venezuela, the official added. Combating illegal migration is one of the priorities of U.S. President Republican Donald Trump, who in his first week in office deported hundreds of migrants, many handcuffed and shackled, to several Latin American countries.
The migration issue has been one of the key aspects of Rubio’s tour, his first as Secretary of State, which began Saturday in Panama, continued in El Salvador and Costa Rica. Rubio traveled to Guatemala this afternoon and will end the journey in the Dominican Republic.
