Rubio: Left Wing ‘Destroyed’ Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday in Quito, Ecuador, that left-wing governments have wiped out Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, rejecting any suggestion that leftist movements could gain new ground in Latin America.

Rubio delivered the comments during a stop on a three-nation tour of South America, hours after meeting with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in Quito.

Asked by a reporter whether the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century U.S. policy opposing European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, could fuel a new wave of leftist movements in Latin America, Rubio said in Spanish that such movements have existed in the region for decades and brought nothing but misery to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

Switching to English, Rubio argued the question missed the point, since left-wing movements never disappeared from the hemisphere: “The left wing destroyed Venezuela, the left wing destroyed Cuba, the left wing destroyed Nicaragua.”

He extended the point to Bolivia, saying it has suffered 25 years of left-wing governance, and argued that leftist factions in Ecuador and Colombia have allied with narco-trafficking organizations that now threaten regional and U.S. security.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla pushed back within hours, in a post cited by the Spanish wire service EFE, calling Washington’s record in the region a well-documented history of imperialism and tying it to what he described as mass killings, disappearances and torture connected to U.S. support for right-wing governments in Latin America.

On Thursday, Rubio wrapped up the three-nation trip with a stop in Peru, meeting President Keiko Fujimori a day after the Quito remarks and cementing Peru’s entry into the Shield of the Americas, a U.S.-backed coalition against drug cartels that Colombia recently joined under its new president.

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