Address At the reAgAn rAnch center ––––––––––––––—————––––——–—––––––––––––––––– Senator Ted Cruz –––––––––––––––––——————————––––––––––––––––
Communist, but he knew that Batista was a cruel and evil conservatives told you: there are 2.3 million Hispanic small dictator. My dad fought four years in the Revolution. When business owners. There are roughly 50 million Hispanics he was 17, he was thrown in prison and tortured. He was living in the United States, assuming two per household. beaten almost to death. To this day, his teeth are not his own That means one in ten Hispanic households are small because they were kicked out of his mouth at a Cuban jail business owners. Hispanics are an incredibly entrepreneurial when he was a kid. community. My dad fled Cuba in 1957, and he fled to Texas. He was When my grandfather was a teenager in Cuba, his father 18. He couldn’t speak died when he was 17. English. He had nothing My grandfather was but $100 sewn into his working on a sugar cane underwear. He went plantation in Cuba. It was and got a job washing a company town where dishes, making 50 cents they wouldn’t pay you per hour. He worked a salary. Instead, they seven days a week, paid would give you a credit his way through school, at the company store. and he and my mother What that meant, as a ended up starting a small practical matter, is it was business—a seismic data generational slavery. You processing company in couldn’t save anything; all the gas business. you had were credits at When I was a kid the store. growing up in Houston— Generation after the son of two small generation would just business owners—my dad work at the plantation. used to say to me over When my grandfather was and over again, “When we a teenager, a bus came by faced oppression in Cuba, trying to gather people I had a place to flee to. If for a political rally. They we lose our freedom here, offered people five dollars Senator Cruz speaks on the importance of promoting the conservative where do we go to?” and a sandwich to come message in Hispanic communities. Listen, that’s why to the rally. My grandfather we’re all here. That’s why said, “I’ll take it, and I’m every one of you is giving sacrificially to Young America’s never coming back.” He got on the bus [and] went to a beach Foundation; that’s why we’re standing up for this country. town that had a fruit stand. My grandfather got a job selling fruit on the beach. Over the next couple of years, he slept on the That’s what the fight is about: preserving the incredible freedom and opportunity of this country. floor of that fruit stand. The policies of this Administration have been Eventually, the owner built a larger store, and my grandfather had saved up enough working at that fruit stand. extraordinarily destructive. Two-thirds of all new jobs come from small businesses. And, by the way, those hurt He bought the fruit stand and was an entrepreneur in the the worst by the policies of this Administration are those at 1920s and 1930s in Cuba. the bottom of the economic ladder. Under Barack Obama, Now, fast forward a few years later. My dad, at the age of Hispanic unemployment exceeded ten percent; African 14, began fighting in the Cuban Revolution. He was fighting American unemployment climbed above 14 percent. When alongside Fidel Castro. Now, he didn’t know Castro was a 24
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