By now, most Americans have heard the heartwarming tales of Rafael Cruz’s excellent adventures: how he fought as a teenage revolutionary in Cuba, was captured and tortured, escaped to America by way of a student visa, spoke almost no English, worked 7 days a week to support himself and pay for school… an incredible story… Literally.
When Rafael Cruz spoke to Conservatives at the River Plantation Country Club in Conroe, Texas in January, D Magazine reported:
The Young “Revolutionary”
Rafael Cruz’s standard bio usually includes a phrase such as:
“Rafael suffered under a cruel, oppressive dictator. He began fighting Batista’s regime as a teenager and was imprisoned and tortured – beaten nearly to death – simply to be free.”
Rafael Cruz, born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1939, grew up in a “middle class” family; his father was an RCA salesman, his mother a teacher. As Cruz tells it, he began fighting with Castro’s revolutionaries against Fulgencio Batista in 1953, at the age of fourteen. First a little Castro back-history:
•1948 Bogotá, Colombia: after the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán; Castro spends five years traveling, learning about revolution and raising funds
•1952 Fidel Castro runs for Congress; Fulgencio Batista takes over in bloodless coup; elections canceled.
•1953 Castro attacks the Moncada barracks, he and brother Raul are arrested and imprisoned.
•1955 Castro brothers released; head to Mexico, not returning until 1956, when Batista’s forces drive them into the Sierra Maestra.
•Castro wages guerilla warfare from that location until Batista is driven from power two years later.
Obviously, Castro wasn't’t even around to talk about “hope and change” as Cruz has claimed but hey, if the voting base will fall for it… anyway… In Castro’s absence, many factions of the resistance such as the FEU (University Students’ Federation), and its’ militant arm the Directorio Revolucionario under Jose Eccheveria, along with the urban fighters of the “26th of July Movement” under Frank Pais (known as M-26-7 for the date that Castro had attacked the Moncada barracks), carried on independent of Castro.
Even so, Rafael Cruz would have us believe he existed as a high school student by day, and revolutionary “throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings” by night. One has to wonder, would that be before or after he did his homework, because by his own account he managed to maintain “straight A’s throughout high school”, while keeping his parents in the dark about his activities for four years.
In a fawning post in the National Review, Mario Loyola reports that by the age of 17, this straight A student/ revolutionary has supposedly become “…a leading FEU figure in Santiago de Cuba”. Quite miraculous, as Santiago de Cuba is over 400 miles from this straight A student’s home in Matanzas.
Of Cruz upon Castro’s return in ’56, Loyola writes:
“They knew that Castro intended to land in Cuba and hoped to organize an urban uprising along with it. But Castro and the anti-Batista forces failed to coordinate in any meaningful way, and when Castro’s boat landed near Manzanillo in Oriente province, the hoped-for urban uprising failed to materialize.”
I don’t know how Rafael missed the memo, but the urban uprising was planned for, and did take place in Santiago de Cuba to correspond with Castro’s arrival, on November 30, the day Castro told them he would arrive. The resistance was unaware that Castro had encountered trouble on his way to Cuba, so the plan went forward, carried out by M-26-7. Time Magazine reported on Monday, Dec. 10, 1956:
“Just before dawn one day last week, the revolt got under way—again in Santiago. Machine gunners, in olive-drab uniforms with black-and-red armbands marked “26 de Julio,” fired on police headquarters.
At the same time they tossed grenades and gasoline bombs on the building from a nearby rooftop and burned it down, while ammunition popped inside. For a time the attackers roamed the area freely, looting a hardware store for weapons.
At other towns—Holguin, Guantánamo, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara—other Castro-men rebelled.”
Somehow, this revolutionary “leader” missed the action, just as he seems to have missed the action in March of that year, when his fellow FEU revolutionaries lost their lives attempting to take over the Presidential Palace in Havana and kill Batista. That operation was carried out just 50 miles from his home.
Cruz tells how in 1957, while back in Matanzas, he gets caught by Batista’s forces; here’s where things get a little confusing for Rafael: sometimes he was captured once, sometimes twice; sometimes his father paid a bribe to get him out, other times they just let him go.
During his incarceration, he claims he was severely beaten by prison guards “every four hours, for several days’, describing the pain as almost unbearable to the point of being “unable to feel his hands and legs”, often claiming he was beaten “nearly to death”. Ultimately, “by the grace of God” he says, he was released.
Now consider, at the same time, Batista’s police and military are given carte blanche to deal with Castro’s followers as they wish:
Spartacus: “… Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining Castro.
History of Cuba: “… 4 youths are found dead in an empty building, including 14-year old William Soler. They had been arrested as suspects in revolutionary activities and tortured.”
Batista orders at least one of his generals to “kill ten rebels for every soldier killed”.
But they just let Rafael Cruz go… twice? Not only that, it seems they called Rafael’s Dad to come pick him up after they were through “torturing” him. Imagine that phone call:
“Hello, Mr.Cruz? Yeah look, we’ve got your son down here; he’s gotten himself into a little bit of trouble but I think he’s learned a valuable lesson. You can pick him up any time… by ambulance would probably be a good idea.”
So, Dad picks him up and takes him home; not to the hospital mind you, but home. Obviously a miraculous healer/ straight A student/ revolutionary. Here’s what supposedly happens next:
Well I got home. My father took me home. I was eighteen years old and… I had been home about an hour and a lady from the underground whom I didn't’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.”
Evidently, he’s being followed by the Keystone Cops, because these two mopes are standing on the street in front of his house in plain sight, while it seems no one is watching the back (They don’t seem to grasp the concept of working in shifts either). At the same time, this woman from the “underground” which, you know, means SECRET… well she’s just outed herself to Batista’s goons by coming to Cruz’s home. Anyway…Cruz continues:
So I said “I want to go to the mountains” and she said “I’m sorry, it’s impossible… [of course it is] … Batista had at that time a very substantial raid. Had the mountains surrounded…”
Yet, a New York Times reporter in Cuba at that time reported “a constant exodus from the city [Santiago de Cuba] of youths who try to join Fidel Castro, a young rebel leader in the nearby Sierra-Maestra.” But this “lady from the underground” tells Rafael:
“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”.
Is this guy serious? These people fighting for their country what – held an emergency meeting to discuss what 18-year-old Rafael Cruz should do… for the good of the entire urban operation? I guess we know where Junior acquired his propensity for overblown self-importance. The best term used for Rafael (and his son) thus far is Bette Noir’s description of them as “fabulists”.
In hundreds of articles and narratives regarding the revolution, including those of the FEU and the DR, as well as declassified State Department files, that identify the revolution’s key players by name, I’ve yet to find Rafael Cruz anywhere. Then again, I haven’t yet found the tributes to those who “heroically” bailed on their fellow freedom fighters. Cruz:
“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”.
Now the “brave young revolutionary”, having decided the possible freedom of his country isn't’t worth dying for, is getting out of Dodge. Imagine someone in our Revolutionary War saying, “Wow, things are really heating up; I think I’ll go study abroad.”
Is it likely that Rafael Cruz got caught up in the demonstrations against Batista as a teenager and threw some Molotov cocktails with his buddies? Sure it is. Is it plausible that someone who calls himself a “leading figure” in Cuba’s FEU would be caught once if not twice and let go, when his fellow revolutionaries were being murdered and left as warnings in the street? Hardly. Mr. Loyola makes a lame attempt to explain why Cruz was just let go:
“His quick release was due to the fact that Batista was on a political knife’s edge and simply couldn't’t afford to detain lots of people for very long.”
Flowery prose, but ridiculous. Batista’s men were torturing and murdering with impunity; they were hanging children from lampposts for God’s sake. It is sweet though, how Conservatives try to help Rafael cover the gaping holes in his narrative. (More about that in part 3)
Rafael Cruz is careful never to mention any particular events he took part in, just those he couldn't’t for one reason or another; if anything, he seems to have been an extremely inept revolutionary. It also seems the elder Cruz’s tales have managed to raise the ire of many Cuban exiles, as Cuba 54 reports:
“Cubans who fought in the Revolution were incensed at hearing Cruz’ claims that he escaped death several times and managed to get away ‘by the Grace of God.’ The[y] say that he ‘urinates on the graves of true youth heroes like William Soler, Jose Echeverria, and Frank Pais.’ The living Cuban heroes label Rafael Cruz a ‘bola de grasa’; a greaseball.”
And there you have it, from the mouths of his fellow countrymen. Maybe Ted shouldn't’t count on that Cuban-American vote just yet. Now we head to America, where Rafael Cruz’s “inspiring” biography runs completely, irretrievably, off the rails.
—
Thanks HarleyLady27 for posting I did not know ALL of this...
ping to #32 interesting!
HarleyLady, did you put this together? this is....amazing. great job. It makes me wonder if Rafael Jr had a grandpa who also marched with Martin Luther King Jr... I kid you not - seems these snakey lawyers will create anything out of a murky past. stinking lawyers... and stinking canuk usurpers.. can you ping me if you add to this?
Bookmark
Doesn’t it seem funny to some people that the war in Cuba with Bastisia and Castro was AFTER Senor Cruz was somehow released from prison, after he was beaten up, and went to some College in Texas? Especially during that time, we were not accepting Cubans into America...Kennedy was Pres. and the Bay of Pigs, etc..... and he just ‘happened’ to come here?
By now, most Americans have heard the heartwarming tales of Rafael Cruz’s excellent adventures: how he fought as a teenage revolutionary in Cuba, was captured and tortured, escaped to America by way of a student visa, spoke almost no English, worked 7 days a week to support himself and pay for school… an incredible story… Literally.
When Rafael Cruz spoke to Conservatives at the River Plantation Country Club in Conroe, Texas in January, D Magazine reported:
The Young “Revolutionary”
Rafael Cruz’s standard bio usually includes a phrase such as:
“Rafael suffered under a cruel, oppressive dictator. He began fighting Batista’s regime as a teenager and was imprisoned and tortured – beaten nearly to death – simply to be free.”
Rafael Cruz, born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1939, grew up in a “middle class” family; his father was an RCA salesman, his mother a teacher. As Cruz tells it, he began fighting with Castro’s revolutionaries against Fulgencio Batista in 1953, at the age of fourteen. First a little Castro back-history:
•1948 Bogotá, Colombia: after the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán; Castro spends five years traveling, learning about revolution and raising funds
•1952 Fidel Castro runs for Congress; Fulgencio Batista takes over in bloodless coup; elections canceled.
•1953 Castro attacks the Moncada barracks, he and brother Raul are arrested and imprisoned.
•1955 Castro brothers released; head to Mexico, not returning until 1956, when Batista’s forces drive them into the Sierra Maestra.
•Castro wages guerilla warfare from that location until Batista is driven from power two years later.
Obviously, Castro wasn’t’t even around to talk about “hope and change” as Cruz has claimed but hey, if the voting base will fall for it… anyway… In Castro’s absence, many factions of the resistance such as the FEU (University Students’ Federation), and its’ militant arm the Directorio Revolucionario under Jose Eccheveria, along with the urban fighters of the “26th of July Movement” under Frank Pais (known as M-26-7 for the date that Castro had attacked the Moncada barracks), carried on independent of Castro.
Even so, Rafael Cruz would have us believe he existed as a high school student by day, and revolutionary “throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings” by night. One has to wonder, would that be before or after he did his homework, because by his own account he managed to maintain “straight A’s throughout high school”, while keeping his parents in the dark about his activities for four years.
In a fawning post in the National Review, Mario Loyola reports that by the age of 17, this straight A student/ revolutionary has supposedly become “…a leading FEU figure in Santiago de Cuba”. Quite miraculous, as Santiago de Cuba is over 400 miles from this straight A student’s home in Matanzas.
Of Cruz upon Castro’s return in ’56, Loyola writes:
“They knew that Castro intended to land in Cuba and hoped to organize an urban uprising along with it. But Castro and the anti-Batista forces failed to coordinate in any meaningful way, and when Castro’s boat landed near Manzanillo in Oriente province, the hoped-for urban uprising failed to materialize.”
I don’t know how Rafael missed the memo, but the urban uprising was planned for, and did take place in Santiago de Cuba to correspond with Castro’s arrival, on November 30, the day Castro told them he would arrive. The resistance was unaware that Castro had encountered trouble on his way to Cuba, so the plan went forward, carried out by M-26-7. Time Magazine reported on Monday, Dec. 10, 1956:
“Just before dawn one day last week, the revolt got under way—again in Santiago. Machine gunners, in olive-drab uniforms with black-and-red armbands marked “26 de Julio,” fired on police headquarters.
At the same time they tossed grenades and gasoline bombs on the building from a nearby rooftop and burned it down, while ammunition popped inside. For a time the attackers roamed the area freely, looting a hardware store for weapons.
At other towns—Holguin, Guantánamo, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara—other Castro-men rebelled.”
Somehow, this revolutionary “leader” missed the action, just as he seems to have missed the action in March of that year, when his fellow FEU revolutionaries lost their lives attempting to take over the Presidential Palace in Havana and kill Batista. That operation was carried out just 50 miles from his home.
Cruz tells how in 1957, while back in Matanzas, he gets caught by Batista’s forces; here’s where things get a little confusing for Rafael: sometimes he was captured once, sometimes twice; sometimes his father paid a bribe to get him out, other times they just let him go.
During his incarceration, he claims he was severely beaten by prison guards “every four hours, for several days’, describing the pain as almost unbearable to the point of being “unable to feel his hands and legs”, often claiming he was beaten “nearly to death”. Ultimately, “by the grace of God” he says, he was released.
Now consider, at the same time, Batista’s police and military are given carte blanche to deal with Castro’s followers as they wish:
Spartacus: “… Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining Castro.
History of Cuba: “… 4 youths are found dead in an empty building, including 14-year old William Soler. They had been arrested as suspects in revolutionary activities and tortured.”
Batista orders at least one of his generals to “kill ten rebels for every soldier killed”.
But they just let Rafael Cruz go… twice? Not only that, it seems they called Rafael’s Dad to come pick him up after they were through “torturing” him. Imagine that phone call:
“Hello, Mr.Cruz? Yeah look, we’ve got your son down here; he’s gotten himself into a little bit of trouble but I think he’s learned a valuable lesson. You can pick him up any time… by ambulance would probably be a good idea.”
So, Dad picks him up and takes him home; not to the hospital mind you, but home. Obviously a miraculous healer/ straight A student/ revolutionary. Here’s what supposedly happens next:
Well I got home. My father took me home. I was eighteen years old and… I had been home about an hour and a lady from the underground whom I didn’t’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.”
Evidently, he’s being followed by the Keystone Cops, because these two mopes are standing on the street in front of his house in plain sight, while it seems no one is watching the back (They don’t seem to grasp the concept of working in shifts either). At the same time, this woman from the “underground” which, you know, means SECRET… well she’s just outed herself to Batista’s goons by coming to Cruz’s home. Anyway…Cruz continues:
So I said “I want to go to the mountains” and she said “I’m sorry, it’s impossible… [of course it is] … Batista had at that time a very substantial raid. Had the mountains surrounded…”
Yet, a New York Times reporter in Cuba at that time reported “a constant exodus from the city [Santiago de Cuba] of youths who try to join Fidel Castro, a young rebel leader in the nearby Sierra-Maestra.” But this “lady from the underground” tells Rafael:
“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”.
Is this guy serious? These people fighting for their country what – held an emergency meeting to discuss what 18-year-old Rafael Cruz should do… for the good of the entire urban operation? I guess we know where Junior acquired his propensity for overblown self-importance. The best term used for Rafael (and his son) thus far is Bette Noir’s description of them as “fabulists”.
In hundreds of articles and narratives regarding the revolution, including those of the FEU and the DR, as well as declassified State Department files, that identify the revolution’s key players by name, I’ve yet to find Rafael Cruz anywhere. Then again, I haven’t yet found the tributes to those who “heroically” bailed on their fellow freedom fighters. Cruz:
“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”.
Now the “brave young revolutionary”, having decided the possible freedom of his country isn’t’t worth dying for, is getting out of Dodge. Imagine someone in our Revolutionary War saying, “Wow, things are really heating up; I think I’ll go study abroad.”
Is it likely that Rafael Cruz got caught up in the demonstrations against Batista as a teenager and threw some Molotov cocktails with his buddies? Sure it is. Is it plausible that someone who calls himself a “leading figure” in Cuba’s FEU would be caught once if not twice and let go, when his fellow revolutionaries were being murdered and left as warnings in the street? Hardly. Mr. Loyola makes a lame attempt to explain why Cruz was just let go:
“His quick release was due to the fact that Batista was on a political knife’s edge and simply couldn’t’t afford to detain lots of people for very long.”
Flowery prose, but ridiculous. Batista’s men were torturing and murdering with impunity; they were hanging children from lampposts for God’s sake. It is sweet though, how Conservatives try to help Rafael cover the gaping holes in his narrative. (More about that in part 3)
Rafael Cruz is careful never to mention any particular events he took part in, just those he couldn’t’t for one reason or another; if anything, he seems to have been an extremely inept revolutionary. It also seems the elder Cruz’s tales have managed to raise the ire of many Cuban exiles, as Cuba 54 reports:
“Cubans who fought in the Revolution were incensed at hearing Cruz’ claims that he escaped death several times and managed to get away ‘by the Grace of God.’ The[y] say that he ‘urinates on the graves of true youth heroes like William Soler, Jose Echeverria, and Frank Pais.’ The living Cuban heroes label Rafael Cruz a ‘bola de grasa’; a greaseball.”
And there you have it, from the mouths of his fellow countrymen. Maybe Ted shouldn’t count on that Cuban-American vote just yet. Now we head to America, where Rafael Cruz’s “inspiring” biography runs completely, irretrievably, off the rails.
Bookmark!
Excellent work!
bkmk
Bookmark to read later
bkmk