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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCuban Peers Dispute Ted Cruz’s Father’s Story of Fighting for Castro
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/cuban-peers-dispute-ted-cruzs-fathers-story-of-fighting-for-castro.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0
MATANZAS, Cuba Since he was a boy, Senator Ted Cruz has said, all he wanted to do was fight for liberty a yearning that he says was first kindled when he heard his fathers tales of fighting as a rebel leader in Cuba in the 1950s, throwing firebombs, running guns and surviving torture.
Those stories, retold by Mr. Cruz and by his father, Rafael, have hooked Republican audiences and given emotional power to the message that the Texas senator is pushing as a contender for the partys presidential nomination. In their telling, the fathers experience in Cuba when the country was swept up by the charismatic young Fidel Castro, only to see him become a repressive Communist dictator becomes a parable for the sons nightmarish vision of government overreach under President Obama.
But the family narrative that has provided such inspirational fire to Mr. Cruzs speeches, debate performances and a recently published memoir is, his fathers Cuban contemporaries say, an embroidered one. The elder Mr. Cruz, 76, recalls a vivid moment at a watershed 1956 battle in Santiago de Cuba, when he was with a hero of the revolution, Frank País, just hours before he was killed in combat.
In fact, Mr. País was killed seven months later and in a different place and manner.
In interviews, Rafael Cruzs former comrades and friends disputed his description of his role in the Cuban resistance. He was a teenager who wrote on walls and marched in the streets, they said not a rebel leader running guns or blowing up buildings.
Leonor Arestuche, 79, a student leader in the 50s whom the Castro government later hired to verify the supposed exploits of revolutionary veterans, said a term existed for people like Mr. Cruz ojalateros, or wishful thinkers. People wishing and praying that Batista would fall, she said, but not doing much to act on it.
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Cuban Peers Dispute Ted Cruz’s Father’s Story of Fighting for Castro (Original Post)
flamingdem
Nov 2015
OP
Octafish
(55,745 posts)1. Ojalatero
That's the name.
UTUSN
(70,740 posts)2. Why do DERSHOWITZ and TOOBIN claim Carnival CRUZ is so "smart"?!1
"Smart" based on *what* exactly?!1
niyad
(113,552 posts)3. is there ONE iota of truth that has come out of the collective clown car?
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)4. Well . . . it was Cuba
And it was the 1950s. Beyond that, I'm thinkin' no.