HAVANA -- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pushed back against criticisms of Cuba’s human rights record that have intruded on her first state visit to the communist island, saying a U.S. detention camp for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay is also a concern.

Rousseff, who was inspired by Cuba’s revolution to take up arms against Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s, said that while she’ll discuss human rights in meetings today with President Raul Castro and his brother Fidel, their government’s record won’t be the sole focus. All countries, including Brazil, must protect the rights of their citizens, she said.

“We’re going to begin talking about human rights in the U.S., in regard to a base here called Guantánamo,” Rousseff, referring to the U.S. detention camp, which is located on Cuba’s southeastern tip, told reporters in Havana. “It’s not possible to use human rights as a political and ideological weapon.”

The death this month of jailed dissident Wilman Villar after a 50-day hunger strike has drawn attention in Brazil’s media to Castro’s rights record and the government’s refusal to criticize it. While Rousseff has so far ignored requests for a meeting from pro-democracy activists, her government last week granted a tourist visa to Yoani Sanchez after the Cuban blogger invoked the president’s experience surviving prison and torture in an appeal to be allowed to leave the island.

Rousseff vowed to make human rights a priority of her foreign policy, and in condemning abuses in Iran, she’s also distanced herself from the policies of her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Urged on by his Workers’ Party, some of whose leaders were exiled in Cuba, Lula refused to criticize Castro or his brother’s government while in power from 2003 to 2010. Following a visit in 2010, which coincided with the death of another hunger striker, the former union leader compared the country’s dissidents to “criminals” in Sao Paulo jails.

“Rousseff is going to be in a very awkward situation by choice,” former Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia said in a phone interview from Rio de Janeiro. “She didn’t have to go to Cuba.”

Rousseff, 64, said that with “great pride” she would meet Fidel Castro during her three-day tour of Cuba and Haiti, where she’ll head tomorrow to oversee Brazilian troops leading an United Nations peacekeeping force.

While the Brazilian leader is unlikely to address Cuba’s human rights situation publicly, she’s able to talk productively to Castro about his government’s record behind the scenes, said Julia Sweig, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

“There won’t be the kind of back-slapping that we saw when Lula was there,” said Sweig, who is the author of several publications on Brazil and Cuba. “Precisely because of Dilma’s history and her explicit sensitivity to human rights I think she is well positioned for political dialogue.”

Cuba’s government relies on beatings, short-term detentions, forced exile and travel restrictions to repress virtually all forms of political dissent, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this month. Cuba denies it’s holding any political prisoners and considers dissident activity to be counterrevolutionary.