Fleeing Cuba 58 years ago after being beaten and imprisoned, Rafeal Cruz came to Austin, Texas, as a teenager without parents, without fluency in English, and with only $100 to his name. Believing in the American dream, he worked full time through school and learned English to succeed.
Today, with a pleasing accent and demeanor and at 74 years of age, he has become a motivational speaker in high demand with pastors, citizen groups and tea party gatherings. As requests for TX Senator Ted Cruz to speak pour in from across the country, Cruz’s father plays a surrogate speaker to his son. Pleasantly surprised, Pastor Cruz finds standing room-only crowds cheering at his authentic and inspiring defense of America’s greatness.
If you want to know more about what makes Ted Cruz tick, meet Pastor Rafeal Cruz in this exclusive, two part video interview with The Daily Caller.
Reflecting on his own hard scrabble life, Rafeal Cruz’s emotion overtook him as he watched his son’s emerging national role. He told us, “I remember almost 2 years ago, when I sat in the Senate chambers, seeing my son being sworn in as U.S. Senator. I couldn’t contain the tears from my eyes and all I could think is, ‘Only In America!’ When I thought 55 years before, I came (to America) with nothing. That is the greatness of America. Horatio Alger stories are a dime a dozen. They are all over the country. People that have achieved their greatest dreams, started with nothing.”
Pastor Cruz rejects the allure of dependency or identification by ethnicity, as he watched Castro bring such policies to Cuba through false rhetoric of “hope and change.” Asked about Hispanic outreach and policy preferences, Cruz says, “I don’t want to get involved with all this hyphenated Americans; we are all Americans!”
He rejects the notion that Hispanics, as a group, are “victims” needing government handouts, as he believes the Administration uses groups to preserve their power base by encouraging government dependency that saps individual achievement and hard work.
Instead, he says, “We don’t get people out of poverty by giving them handouts; we get people out of poverty by empowering them to get out of poverty, by teaching them and helping them to achieve the American Dream.”
Asked about the push back many conservatives don’t even see when the President’s political allies smear and besmirch him and his son, Cruz says, “When truth comes forth, darkness hates the light.”
“I consider it a badge of honor that MSNBC has had two 15 minute tirades about me. If we are not being persecuted, maybe we’re not making a difference,” Cruz continued. “So, actually, I don’t mind the attacks. I don’t think my son minds the attacks. They energize me; I think they energize him too, because it shows we are making a difference. We are shaking their foundations.”
WATCH PART 2:
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