San José, Costa Rica (AFP) February 4 - US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived Tuesday in Costa Rica as he presses to curb Chinese influence in Latin America on his first foreign trip.

Rubio, a longtime hawk on China, began his trip in Panama where he reported headway in his push to decrease China's influence around the crucial Panama Canal.

Like Panama, Costa Rica is a longstanding US partner that in recent years received a surge in Chinese investment.

Costa Rica in 2007 switched recognition to China from Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing -- a turning point as other Latin American countries followed suit.

But US officials also see hope in the example of Costa Rica, whose relations with China have turned rockier in recent years over local concerns about Beijing.

President Rodrigo Chaves, who will meet Rubio, in 2023 effectively forbade Chinese titan Huawei from bidding for the 5G network due to Beijing's refusal to sign an international agreement on cybercrime.

"President Chaves has been a great leader in that country in regards to recognizing the threat that China poses," said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the US special envoy on Latin America.

Rubio is also expected to speak in Costa Rica about how to handle neighboring Nicaragua, where strongman Daniel Ortega and his wife last week were granted absolute powers through a constitutional change.

Rubio, a Cuban-American and the first Hispanic to be the top US diplomat, is a sworn foe of Latin American leftists, although former president Joe Biden also took a hard line against Ortega.

Rubio's five-nation trip is heavily focused on President Donald Trump's top priority of sending back undocumented migrants.

Costa Rica, one of the most stable and prosperous nations in Latin America, has long supported US efforts on migration.

On Monday, Rubio visited El Salvador and said he received an extraordinary offer by the country's iron-fisted president, Nayib Bukele, not only to take in migrants but to jail Americans if Trump wants to outsource American prisons.

Rubio will arrive later Tuesday in Guatemala, a key source of migration and also the most populous nation that still recognizes Taiwan.

Trump has described China as a major adversary and has imposed punishing tariffs in what he sees as a way to correct an imbalanced trading relationship between the world's two largest economies.

Rubio accuses Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela over migration crisis

San José, Costa Rica (AFP) February 4 - 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.

"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.