"Hugo Chavez has tried to steal an inspiring phrase — 'Patria o muerte,
venceremos.' It does not belong to him. It belongs to a free Cuba."
(March 9, 2007)
Another case of campaign researchers apparently being off for the day: "Patria o muerte, venceremos" (which means in Spanish, "Fatherland or death, we shall overcome") does not belong to a free Cuba. The starkly fascistic phrase was, in fact, a tagline for Castro, who Romney had, earlier in the same speech, declared "a stain on Cuban soil." Romney might have gotten away with the misattribution had his audience been anywhere else than where — and what — it was: fiercely anti-Castro Latino Republicans gathered for the Miami-Dade Lincoln Day Dinner.