I’m feeling ‘pena ajena’ for Marco Rubio. In other words, he’s cringe.

Spanish is a delicious language. For example, Spanish speakers have a clever way to say someone is behaving in such a disgraceful way as to trigger acute secondhand embarrassment in those of us observing them.

Mexicans choose the delightfully singsongy pena ajena to describe it; Cubans use the slightly starchier vergüenza ajena. In English, we might choose one word to describe what many of us Latinos are experiencing as we watch Marco Rubio’s egregious performance as Donald Trump’s secretary of state: cringe.

Who can forget Rubio — hands folded as he sat in sullen silence — looking on as Trump and Vice President JD Vance excoriated Volodymyr Zelensky for wanting to protect Ukraine from Russia’s expansionist war?

Bad enough the buffoonish VP (with zero chill and no foreign policy cred) stepped all over what should have been Rubio’s moment to shine, but that he did so to protect Russian gains should have been galling to the former senator. After all, Rubio — who’s Cuban American — is someone whose political rise in Florida benefited from his identification as the son of freedom-loving parents, who left their homeland in advance of the rise of Fidel Castro. A “thug” — as Rubio has described him — beholden to Soviet interests.

Rubio’s grandfather, who initially came to the U.S. in 1956, then went back to Cuba and returned to the U.S. in 1962 (reportedly mere weeks before the Cuban missile crisis), cited the increasingly oppressive policies the Castro regime was instituting on the island nation as his rationale.

Throughout his career, Rubio spoke out publicly against those oppressive policies — detainment/imprisonment of U.S. citizens on legally dubious charges, suppression of groups labeled as threats to the government, the imprisonment of protesters and dissenters exercising “internationally protected freedoms,” crackdowns on freedom of speech, the violations of human rights — as reasons the U.S. should not normalize relations with Cuba, even after Castro’s death.

But as the U.S. secretary of state for Trump, Rubio has embraced many of the selfsame suppressions and crackdowns he decried in Cuba.

To wit: Deportations that violate constitutional due process rights; mandatory directives to scrutinize media for expressions of sympathy for Palestinians during the war in Gaza; revocations of permanent resident status and deportation orders based on political beliefs; revocation of visa and incarceration in a detention center for a student (with legal immigration standing) for writing an op-ed in a student newspaper; and the revocation of visas for international students participating in protests.

Perhaps most damningly, Rubio has asserted the Trump administration has the authority to expel lawful people merely on the basis of their beliefs and stands behind Trump’s threat that U.S. citizens aren’t exempted from the possibility of being sent to a prison that may be outside of standard legal authority.

For a man who prided himself on making human rights a talking point of his senatorial career, Rubio as secretary of state has done nothing but flout the importance of human rights: He has made light of human rights violations at the Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration is paying for those it has deported to be housed. He has removed sections tracking the rights of LGBTQ people, women, and people with disabilities from the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights. He’s stood behind drastically reducing funding or defunding human rights nongovernmental organizations operating globally — even those he supported as a senator.

I myself have never been much of a fan of Rubio, but there was a time when I would listen to Cuban-in-exile friends enthuse about him (and his “flawless Spanish”) with some sympathy. The U.S. hasn’t had many Latino presidential contenders, and for a brief moment in 2016, it seemed like Rubio might be the first to make it past the primary candidate stage.

And unlike Ted Cruz — with whom he shared a debate stage with Trump and other GOP hopefuls — back then, Rubio would sometimes talk about immigrants as if they were real human beings rather than bogeymen, and engaged in a few random acts of bipartisanship, along immigration lines, because of that.

But even remembering Rubio in his prime is cause for vergüenza ajena.

The same Trump who characterized him as a “nervous basket case,” a “lightweight,” and who said, “The Rubios of the world could not get into that school.” — the Wharton School, Trump’s alma mater — “They don’t have the capacity,” when they were running against each other for the 2016 GOP nomination, is now expecting him to take the blame if (likely when) the administration’s policies go awry.

Compared with the rest of Trump’s cabinet, Rubio actually has some bona fides for the job he’s been given, but he doesn’t have Trump’s respect — his second-rank role in that memorable meeting with Zelensky is proof of that. So why, in God’s name, would he agree to be the fall guy for what is turning out to be this administration’s utterly despicable foreign doings? Where is Rubio’s self-respect? His self-preservation instinct? His decency?

In thinking about Rubio, I’m reminded of conversations I had with a Cuban friend who, unlike most Cuban-in-exile folks who came to the U.S. almost immediately after Castro rose to power, lived for some 40 years under Castro’s repressive regime before coming to the U.S.

He and I often commiserated about the commonalities of living under authoritarian rule — he under a left-wing one, I under a right-wing one in Central America — and how the people who supported these regimes often pointed to selective improvements as justification for the terror inflicted on so many of their compatriots.

In Castro’s case, it was the vastly improved literacy and health care on the island that people pointed to; in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines or Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador, it’s the reduction in the drug trade and its attendant violence that was effected with ruthless mano dura methods.

But in each of these cases, it is crucial to remember that something deeper and more precious was lost in trade: the right to worship freely, the right to think freely, the right to lift your voice in protest, the right to demand (or defend) a constitution that protects everyone’s rights — not just the rights of the favored few.

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“That is what wears you down,” my Cuban friend would tell me. “The knowledge that once it is determined you aren’t among those the regime can count on, or that the values you espouse don’t mesh with it perfectly, you have no rights. The regime will take every opportunity to remind you of that, and to remind you of the extent of its power over your life and the well-being of your loved ones.”

Which is exactly what the Trump administration is doing now — to our neighbors, our compatriots, our friends and allies, and even people we don’t like but who we still believe deserve their day in court. It is what Rubio is parlaying for the administration, defending both domestically and globally, and staking his future on. (Vaya imbécil — this never goes as planned for the underlings of authoritarians.)

I can’t help but think it’s not only us Latinos observing this from a distance who are feeling vergüenza ajena right now for Rubio. If his parents and grandparents were still alive, I’ll wager they, too, would cringe as they watch how easily his actions today — mira nomás — fit in with the Castro playbook.