Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro condemned the region's "cowardly left
on Wednesday, ranting against anyone who criticizes the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

Maduro, who has been described as a dictator, seemed to be referencing Chile's far-left president, Gabriel Boric, who has openly criticized both Ortega's Sandinista regime and Maduro's socialist regime numerous times for years of human rights abuses in their respective countries.

Boric is the only leftist leader in the region who has condemned fellow leftists' human rights abuses.

"We repudiate the campaigns against Nicaragua of a cowardly left," Maduro said in Cuba while at the 18^th anniversary of of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA), which is an "anti-imperialist" free trade bloc founded by Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro in 2004.

Maduro claimed that Ortega was "repudiated in campaigns against Nicaragua by a cowardly left that tries to set itself up as an example."

Maduro has ranted about Boric before. Last month, Maduro, without mentioning Boric by name, vented during a meeting of the leftist Sao Paulo Forum, saying, "There are those who accuse us of being dictators. I understand that Sebastián Piñera does it; I understand that Jair Bolsonaro accuses me; I understand that fascism accuses us. But, from the left, whoever tries to accuse us will have to sit face to face with us to debate the truth of Venezuela."

Maduro also said at the time that criticism coming from leftist leaders was meant to "normalize attacks" against the authoritarian regimes of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

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