The Guardian
Hispanic delegates baffled by Newt Gingrich plan to liberate Cuba
Former speaker unleashes plan to equip Cubans with cellphone cameras to spy on instances of authoritarian repression
By Chris McGreal
Newt Gingrich has promised to liberate Cuba one camera at a time.
The Republican candidate sought to win over Latino voters in Miami on Friday with a scheme to flood the communist-ruled island with cellphone cameras so the population can film the authorities at work in order to discourage repression. The proposal was met with bafflement from some of the delegates Gingrich was addressing at the Hispanic Leadership Network.
After condemning Barack Obama for his support of the Arab spring without pressing for political change in Cuba, Gingrich said that as president he would not negotiate with Havana but use the power of his office to intimidate Cuban officials into the fear of being held accountable for their actions after the communist regime falls.
"The moral force of an American president who's seriously intending to free the people of Cuba and the willingness to intimidate those who would be oppressors by saying to them in advance: you will be held accountable," he said. "So one of my goals would be to flood the island with enough cellphones that are video cameras that any act of oppression is filmed by 30 people, and they start posting them: this person will be on the list after the revolution. You watch the moral of the police force drop dramatically as they are no longer all powerful."
Gingrich and Romney both addressed the conference as they tried to bolster support in a community often suspicious of Republican policy on immigration.
Romney, apparently fired up by a better debate performance that Gingrich on Thursday – he called the debate "delightful" – and a resurgence in the opinion polls, drew a more enthusiastic reaction from the mostly Hispanic audience.
Romney's youngest son, Craig, told the delegates in passable Spanish why his father would make an excellent president. Romney then went on to paint an optimistic picture of the future of Latin America, speaking about rapidly expanding trade with the US, which he described as "a massive opportunity, not of charity but of opportunity".
But there were times when his speech sounded like a throwback to the cold war days of the 1980s when he said that Cuba and the Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, are an "extraordinary threat" to the region. He pointed to what he said was their influence in Ecuador and Guatemala.
Gingrich also touted Chavez as a threat, particularly because of his strengthening ties with Iran. After telling a brief press conference before his speech that Iran obtaining nuclear weapons threatens "a second Holocaust" against Israel, Gingrich said that Tehran's growing ties to Venezuela potentially pose the greatest threat to the US since the Soviet Union backed anti-American forces in Latin America.
Romney said that in countering what he called repressive forces in Latin America, the US has to make the case for "freedom and free enterprise" as the best of what he said were the four competing models in the world today. He said that too many people believe that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US would be the model for the 21st century. But that has not turned out to be the case.
"China has proposed a different model. Theirs also encompasses free enterprise and they combine that not with freedom but with authoritarianism, and that's a model they're selling around the world and it's doing pretty well," he said. "Then you have Russia resurgent, given their energy resources. They want to become a superpower again. And then you have the jihadists and their view is that, post the collapse of all the others, they'll be the last man standing."
Romney said that these four forces are not just at play in Asia and the Middle East but "here" and the US needs to do more to "sell democracy around the world".
Neither of the candidates had anything new to say on the issue but both strongly denied being "anti-immigrant".
Romney said his "heart goes out" to the 11 million illegal immigrants in America, but that they are not "primary responsibility" of the US government. He acknowledged that "we're not going to go around and round people up in buses".
Gingrich stood by his support for the portion of the Dream Act that allows a path to citizenship for those illegal immigrants who serve in the US military, but said undocumented aliens who go to college should not receive the same treatment.
He also laid out his four stage plan: greater control of US border, legislation that makes English the official language (and requirements that new citizens have a good knowledge of American history), speedy deportation of illegal immigrants and an improvement of the visa system.
He said the US needs to make it easier for tourists from Latin America to visit Disneyworld or take a cruise out of Florida.
"We currently have visa laws that are so difficult and so complicated, it makes it hard to come here legally," he said. "It's harder today in some countries to get a visa to the United States than to sneak in illegally."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/27/gingrich-cellphone-video-cuba-plan
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