Remember: Where Texas-Senator Ted Cruz is, his father Rafael is not far behind
By Patrick
During recent weeks, US media and US citizens made a new discovery: They have started to realize that Texas-Senator Ted Cruz, the darling of the Tea Party and potential GOP presidential candidate for 2016, has a very outspoken father with some rather peculiar views - as well as a rather mysterious background.
A larger audience was first introduced to the extremist views of Rafael Cruz by
David Corn at Mother Jones through an article he published on October 31, 2013, in which he quoted and displayed some of the fanatic speeches by Rafael Cruz - who for quite some time already has been traveling the country giving one outrageous speech after the other. Rafael Cruz very often speaks at events organized by groups like
"FreedomWorks" and
"Heritage Action", groups which are the new right-wing political armies, assigned with the task of brainwashing the general population, and
which surely receive handsome funding from right-wing billionaires.
At Politicalgates we have also reported extensively about Rafael Cruz,
first in a post from October 3, 2013 in which we reported for example that Rafael Cruz in a speech to a GOP-audience strongly suggested that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that he in an interview explained how his son Ted is "destined for greatness" and how he politically educated his son.
Note: If you click on the videos in our post from October 3, 2013, who will see that the clips with controversial remarks by Rafael Cruz are starting to disappear from the internet rather quickly!
In a follow-up post from November 3, 2013, we revealed how
Rafael Cruz was caught blatantly lying about President Obama, trying to discredit Obama's Christan beliefs - and we also reported some more rather inconvenient facts about Rafael Cruz, for example about his mysterious past.
We wrote:
The conservative non-profit organization "FreedomWorks" conducted a radio-interview with Rafael Cruz in February 2013,
in which he explains in more detail his "official" life story: How he
fought for Fidel Castro for four years (!), at the age of 14 to 18, how
he was imprisoned and tortured, how he then somehow escaped to the USA,
how he didn't speak English, still got a place at an university in
Texas, then went briefly back to Cuba (?), but apparently was so
appalled by Castro's version of communism that he promptly returned to
the USA, disappointed about the "hope and change" that Fidel Castro had promised.
He conducted the interview with an ultra-conservative female host, who
obviously thinks that government healthcare is the embodiment of evil,
and who marvels how great it was how in the past when US citizens, after
they got sick, first turned to their "families", then their "churches",
then their "communities", and only then to the "government." Rafael
Cruz, whose son Ted enjoys the luxurious Goldman Sachs-healthcare plan,
immediately agreed with her. Oh, the good old days! Cruz also says in
the interview that people turn into "slaves of the government" when they accept Government handouts or use any other services.
Daddy Cruz also has more incredibly original thoughts. He further says
in the interview that that Democratic Party today follows "socialist policies", which are "not the policies which made America great."
He also claims that America turned to Socialism when Carter was
elected, and that Ronald Reagan then magically fixed the economy already
in his first year. I guess Reagan waved his magic wand!
Now comes the follow-up to the follow-up. By coincidence we discovered another speech which now is apparently being deliberately suppressed by "FreedomWorks" - and in which Rafael Cruz speaks about his past as a fighter for Fidel Castro and about his move to the USA in great detail. However, this speech prompts even more questions than it provides answers - and was afterwards grossly misrepresented in a ludicrous manner in a tweet by the "FreedomWorks" organization.
This is what happened: While I searched youtube for new clips,
I found a clip which was uploaded by a man called Paul LeBon. This clip contained excerpts from a speech by Rafael Cruz at an event by FreedomWorks which is very different from the clips we have seen so far - a speech in which Rafael Cruz extensively talks about his past, much more extensively than on other occasions.
However, as much as a I searched, I could not for the life of me find the complete clip of this speech! Through extensive googling I finally found the clip embedded
in a post on a right-wing blog in a post from March 3, 2013, and that was the only place I could find it anywhere.
When I examined the clip, I finally realized
why this clip, although it had been posted on the official youtube-channel of FreedomWorks, was virtually impossible to find:
It is now unlisted! Which means that it doesn't appear in the search engines, and without a direct link to the clip, you will never find it.
Screenshot:
Yes, I did indeed think twice about sharing it, but quickly realized that it would be considerate to share it with the public! :-)
I strongly believe that it wasn't unlisted right from the beginning, because more than 10.000 people have already watched it.
Here is the full clip, posted on the channel of "FreedomWorks":
Due to the fact that the content of this particular talk by Rafael Cruz is really unique and of great interest, Kathleen volunteered to spend a few hours transcribing the most important part of the speech. Thank you so much, Kathleen! :-)
Here is the transcript of this address by Rafael Cruz, which was apparently given on February 25, 2013 to activists from FreedomWorks in Washington D.C. :
RAFAEL CRUZ:
Thank you very much. Before I say anything else, I need to say thank you to Freedom Works. Without the passion, without the hard work that Freedom Works took into the race for Ted Cruz it would not have been possible. The biggest. most exciting, most energetic rally in the whole campaign was the one that Freedom Works put together at the American Airlines Center with over 16,000 people. (applause) Thank you Matt (Matt Kibbe, CEO and President of Freedom Works).
So, without you this would not be possible. Today I had the opportunity of meeting people from North Carolina, and other places that told me “We spent a lot of time on the phone calling for Ted Cruz”, so thank you.
I was born in Cuba and ah Cuba when I was in my early teens, Cuba ah became engulfed in a very bloody, very oppressive military dictatorship that began in 1952. I was thirteen years old. The dictatorship of Batista began killing everyone that disagreed with them. It was a military oppression. There was a lot of corruption. The mafia operated freely in Cuba and ah the military would come to any kind of establishment pretty much in the same way that the Chicago mobsters operated in the thirties with protectionism.
They would come into an establishment and say “Well Matt, you know, I don’t think your restaurant will pass health inspection.” And then this little sergeant would say “Well, you know, I’ve been thinking about going to Miami with my family for a week but it’s going to cost me $10,000.” And either Matt came out with $10,000 or this sergeant would close his place. And of course those who dared to oppose were killed. Thousands were killed. And of course as is happened with every revolution where do you think it started? It started in the high schools and universities.
So I found myself at fourteen years old involved in a revolution. And, ah, so, I spent nearly four years involved in ah sabotage, propaganda, and trying to collect ah weapons and training and so on and so forth. During this time a young charismatic leader rose up talking about “Hope and Change” (audience sniggers). His name was Fidel Castro and we all thought that he was the saviour of the country. So we blindly followed him and I did so for four years.
1957 I, ah, made the mistake of trying to recruit somebody who was a government informant. And so I found myself not in prison, because Batista tried to operate as if he was doing everything above the law, I was in an army garrison. Not technically in prison but in a cell in an army garrison. Severely tortured, beaten half to death, in a little cell about seven foot by seven foot with nothing but a concrete floor and about a thousand watt reflector on top. And they would beat me to a pulp to where nothing hurt, you were totally numb. They would throw you in that prison cell for about four hours. Now let me tell you, four hours later even your hair hurt and then they would take you out and do it again. And this went on around the clock for several days.
But, you know, God had other plans for my life. I thought that I was going to die because I had had friends who had been in the same position and a few days later had appeared dead in some street after being picked up by the army before. I truly thought I was going to die and that’s actually what gave me the strength to go through this torture.
I remember the last day, I got taken out of my cell at 2 o’clock in the morning, put in a jeep with four of these other soldiers, there was one with a pistol in his hand, there was another with a hand grenade, he had his finger on the ring, and they drove out of the army garrison and they said to me “Look, they’re going to kill you in the morning. We just wanted you to see the city for the last time.” And they drove around the army garrison. I guess they were figuring, what I figure is that they just want me to make a break for it so that they can shoot me. So I just sat very quietly in the jeep. They turned around, came back to the army garrison, and now actually, must have been God directing me because that was the right decision. That morning the colonel decided to turn me loose. They brought me to his office and he said “We’re gonna release you, but, if a bomb explodes anywhere in the city we’re going to pick you up.”
And I said to that colonel “How can I be responsible for what other people do?” He looked me in the eye and he said “I don’t care. If a bomb explodes in this city we’re coming to get you.”
Well I got home. My father took me home. I was eighteen years old and erm I had been home about an hour and a lady from the underground whom I didn’t know came and said “Look, you’re being followed. There are two people assigned to follow you around the clock in shifts of eight hours. She brought me to the window of the living room and she said “You see that guy in that corner, and that guy in the other corner, those are the two assigned to follow you now.” So I said “I want to go to the mountains” and she said “I’m sorry, it’s impossible.” Batista had at that time a very substantial raid. Had the mountains surrounded and she said that “The revolution says that the best thing you can do is to leave the country.” So that I would not jeopardize all the people who were involved.
So I figure, what’s the best way to get out of the country. I know, I’ll apply to a university in the United States and leave with a student visa. I wrote three letters, a letter to the University of Florida, a letter to LSU and a letter to University of Texas. UT was the first one to accept me and that’s how I became a Texan. (laughs and applause) So with my letter of acceptance from UT I went to the American Embassy got a four year student visa and then all I needed was a permit from the government to get out of the country. To the equivalent of the FBI or the KGB you could say. And a friend of the family who was a lawyer he bribed somebody in the government to stamp my passport.
So one morning, ah, with the car in the garage of my father’s house, I laid on the floor of the back seat, my father drove to Havana and I border, bordered a ferry boat to Key West. Landed in Key west with nothing but a few dollars sewn into my underwear. My mother was so afraid that they were going to steal my money, what several dollars my father could scrounge, that she sewed a pocket in my underwear. And I only had enough money for my bus fare to Austin and maybe to eat a couple of hamburgers along the way.
Got to Austin, went straight to the University office of student affairs and I said “Well here I am” Was a month before school started and I said “Well I need a job. I don’t have any money” Well within twenty four hours they send me to the IRS and within twenty fours I had a social security number. A valid, legal social security number. And, because I needed to work to pay for my university. I couldn’t speak a word of English so the obvious job was being a dishwasher, you don’t have to talk to anybody to wash dishes.
So I got a job as a dishwasher, worked full-time, went to school full-time. And at the beginning of 1958, I learned English very quickly, I’d started speaking at different Rotary clubs around Austin, Texas, in favour of Castro. I still thought that he was the saviour of the country.
January 1st 1959 Castro takes over and I went back to Cuba that summer and I got the shock of my life. That same man that had been talking about hope and change now was talking about how the rich were evil, how they oppressed the poor, and about the need to redistribute the wealth. And, ah, along with that there were several things that were instituted by the Castro regime.
My mother was an elementary school teacher, she taught sixth grade and, ah, the Castro regime told all teachers that they had to teach Marxism in school. And my mother did something for which I am extremely proud. She walked one day into her sixth grade class and faked an attack of insanity. She began foaming at the mouth, screaming, running up and down the halls, pulling her hair in the middle of her classroom and so she was dismissed for reason of mental illness. And in her own words she said “I would rather suffer public humiliation than poison the minds of children with communist indoctrination.” And I’m extremely proud of that stand.
There are a number of very interesting points to note about this speech by Rafael Cruz - just a few examples, there are certainly much more:
- From age 14 to 18, Rafael Cruz was engaged in
"sabotage, propaganda, weapons, training and so forth" for Fidel Castro - while he according to his own account never noticed that Fidel Castro was a Marxist.
- His claims about him being tortured by the Batista regime and his miraculous, virtually unbelievable lucky escape leave a lot of open questions and are not supported by any hard evidence.
- To escape the regime of president Batista, as a fighter for Fidel Castro, he chose to leave the country, and the
"best way" he could think of was to apply to a university in the USA. In this context it should be noted that
the USA only stopped supplying the Batista regime with arms in March 1958. However, Rafael Cruz left Cuba long before that point.
According to a very detailed article in the "Dallas News", Rafael Cruz already arrived in the USA in 1957. Therefore it doesn't seem logical that the USA, who were the allies of Batista at this point, were the obvious country for Rafael Cruz to seek refuge. Again, more questions than answers.
- I found particularly noteworthy that Rafael Cruz then claims that he
"started speaking at different Rotary clubs around Austin, Texas, in favour of Castro." Therefore, by his own account, he continued with the
"propaganda" for Fidel Castro in the USA.
His claim that he never noticed that Fidel Castro was a Marxist seems even more unbelievable in this context.
In any case, Fidel Castro's socialist/marxist sympathies were not exactly a secret. Fidel Castro said for example already in a speech in 1953
which I is available in full on the internet:
The five revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed immediately after the capture of the Moncada Barracks and would have been broadcast to the nation by radio must be included in the indictment. It is possible that Colonel Chaviano may deliberately have destroyed these documents, but even if he has I remember them.
The first revolutionary law would have returned power to the people and proclaimed the 1940 Constitution the Supreme Law of the State until such time as the people should decide to modify or change it. And in order to effect its implementation and punish those who violated it - there being no electoral organization to carry this out - the revolutionary movement, as the circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty, the only source of legitimate power, would have assumed all the faculties inherent therein, except that of modifying the Constitution itself: in other words, it would have assumed the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
This attitude could not be clearer nor more free of vacillation and sterile charlatanry. A government acclaimed by the mass of rebel people would be vested with every power, everything necessary in order to proceed with the effective implementation of popular will and real justice. From that moment, the Judicial Power - which since March 10th had placed itself against and outside the Constitution - would cease to exist and we would proceed to its immediate and total reform before it would once again assume the power granted it by the Supreme Law of the Republic. Without these previous measures, a return to legality by putting its custody back into the hands that have crippled the system so dishonorably would constitute a fraud, a deceit, one more betrayal.
The second revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable and non-transferable ownership of the land to all tenant and subtenant farmers, lessees, share croppers and squatters who hold parcels of five caballerías of land or less, and the State would indemnify the former owners on the basis of the rental which they would have received for these parcels over a period of ten years.
The third revolutionary law would have granted workers and employees the right to share 30% of the profits of all the large industrial, mercantile and mining enterprises, including the sugar mills. The strictly agricultural enterprises would be exempt in consideration of other agrarian laws which would be put into effect.
The fourth revolutionary law would have granted all sugar planters the right to share 55% of sugar production and a minimum quota of forty thousand arrobas for all small tenant farmers who have been established for three years or more.
The fifth revolutionary law would have ordered the confiscation of all holdings and ill-gotten gains of those who had committed frauds during previous regimes, as well as the holdings and ill-gotten gains of all their legates and heirs. To implement this, special courts with full powers would gain access to all records of all corporations registered or operating in this country, in order to investigate concealed funds of illegal origin, and to request that foreign governments extradite persons and attach holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban people. Half of the property recovered would be used to subsidize retirement funds for workers and the other half would be used for hospitals, asylums and charitable organizations.
Furthermore, it was declared that the Cuban policy in the Americas would be one of close solidarity with the democratic peoples of this continent, and that all those politically persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our sister nations would find generous asylum, brotherhood and bread in the land of Martí; not the persecution, hunger and treason they find today. Cuba should be the bulwark of liberty and not a shameful link in the chain of despotism.
These laws would have been proclaimed immediately. As soon as the upheaval ended and prior to a detailed and far reaching study, they would have been followed by another series of laws and fundamental measures, such as the Agrarian Reform, the Integral Educational Reform, nationalization of the electric power trust and the telephone trust, refund to the people of the illegal and repressive rates these companies have charged, and payment to the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past.
I get the impression that Rafael Cruz liked socialism so much than he now wants his Tea Party audiences to believe, and my suspicion is also aroused by another rather surprising fact Rafael Cruz mentions at his speech at FreedomWorks: Rafael Cruz rather proudly explains in the speech how he got his "social security number" in the USA already two days after arrival.
Well, Mr. Cruz, for somebody who now believes that US citizens are in danger of becoming "slaves of the government", you were surely very keen to benefit from the advantages of US social security!
I actually wonder whether these remarks by Rafael Cruz, which are not very much in line with contemporary Tea Party politics, and the fact that Rafael Cruz rather openly admits in the speech that he basically tricked his way into university in the USA were the reasons why FreedomWorks decided to suppress the speech.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but I have a hard time to believe that any US university would have accepted a student from abroad who doesn't speak a word of English.
But one of the most important contradictions in the account by Rafael Cruz in this speech from February 2013 to other accounts of his life becomes obvious when we compare a quote by his son Ted Cruz with the claims by Rafael Cruz, as reported by the "Dallas News" in October 2011:
He (Ted Cruz) said his father began fighting against Batista’s regime when he was 14, in 1953. When the elder Cruz was 17, he was imprisoned and tortured by Batista’s government, his son said. The next year, 1957, Rafael Cruz legally went to Texas on a student visa issued by the Batista regime, Ted Cruz said.
He went to Texas
"on a student visa issued by the Batista regime"...?
Wait a moment! This sounded slighty different from when Rafael Cruz told the story in February 2013. According to his own account, Rafael Cruz fled Cuba because he was a persecuted pro-Castro figher against the Batista regime, somebody who was thrown in jail and tortured - and then escaped because a bribed official
"stamped his passport":
So with my letter of acceptance from UT I went to the American Embassy got a four year student visa and then all I needed was a permit from the government to get out of the country. To the equivalent of the FBI or the KGB you could say. And a friend of the family who was a lawyer he bribed somebody in the government to stamp my passport.
I get the impression that Ted and Rafael Cruz haven't really "synchronized" their stories.
Another detail from the speech by Rafael Cruz caught my eye: Cruz said that he
"needed to work to pay for my university." This remark strikes me as grossly misleading as well, considering the fact that the Houston Chronicle reported in a major piece about Ted Cruz and his father Rafael
that Rafael Cruz actually had his tuition paid while he studied the in the USA.
It is important to have this particular speech by Rafael Cruz, which FreedomWorks obviously was not keen to promote any further, become part of the public record. He probably said more about his past in this speech than in hindsight it was advisable from his point of view.
It's absolutely unclear how much we can believe what Rafael and Ted Cruz are telling us. But one thing is certain: It has probably dawned on them that Rafael has said some unwise things in the past. The fact that clips of Rafael's speeches and interviews are disappearing from the internet at an alarming rate is an obvious sign that some very inconvenient facts and speeches are about to be purged.
To conclude the report about the speech by Rafael Cruz from February 2013, I present the "icing of the cake":
When FreedomWorks tweeted this speech on February 25, 2013, they distorted the facts in a way which is virtually beyond imagination - they claimed that the militant pro-Castro fighter Rafael Cruz, who fled Cuba about two years before Fidel Castro came to power, was
"being tortured and abused for his political beliefs during Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba":
Well - say it ain't so, Rafael!
This certainly won't be the last which we will hear from Rafael Cruz here at Politicalgates.
The man who
only became an American citizen in 2005, which is 48 years after he left Cuba, and who now tries to lecture Americans about how they should govern their country, and who uses lies and sinister distortions while doing so, remains the subject of great interest.
+++
BONUS:
Above, I mentioned that I found the clip from February 2013 originally
through the youtube-account of Paul LeBron, who had posted excerpts from this speech. This man recently posted another very interesting clip featuring Rafael Cruz, which definitely receives a wider audience.
This clip is an excerpt from a speech by Rafael Cruz from June 6, 2013, at Parker County Tea Party. There, in a very obvious way, he calls President Obama a "monster"
Watch:
There, Rafael Cruz says:
"Get rid of this monster that is trying to destroy the free enterprise system and trying to create a society where everybody is a serf to the government." Straight out of Karl Marx. All we got left is our honor. If we prostitute our honor, we deserve whatever we get. (...) We are going to retake the Senate, and and when we do that, we are going to be able to clip the wings of this out of control Obama monstrosity that is destroying us."
One thing I believe without any doubt: That Rafael Cruz is an expert on propaganda.I have seen him full of vicious propaganda, and many of his speeches have a frightening totalitarian tone.
Who, I wonder, is the monster?
One of the biggest Drill, Baby, Drill fallacies in this country is that by sucking oil out of every available piece of land in North America that we will decrease our dependence on foreign oil by standing next to the rigs and pumping it directly into American gas tanks.
One Montana county Tea Party group wants absolutely nothing to do with candidate Drew Turiano. It seems Mr. T has gotten into a lot of trouble with this bunch for slinging around a heap of racial slurs, aimed primarily at Hispanics. It is his contention that the U.S. should not just adopt a pathway to citizenship, but should also just send undocumented immigrants -- and their American-born children -- back to where they came from, via Operation Wetback. [Note to Mr. Turiano: It's illegal to do that, you ignorant creep.] 
