Īfter Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, he was granted political asylum in the United States following the expiration of his student visa. He remained regretful for his early support of Castro and expressed his remorse to his son on numerous occasions. Cruz recounts that his younger sister fought against the new regime in the counter-revolution and was consequently tortured. Upon returning he revisited the same groups to give lectures opposing Castro and the Revolution. When he arrived in Austin he gave dozens of speeches in support of the Revolution to various clubs, but later after a visit back to Cuba in the summer of 1959 he became a harsh critic of Castro after "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent". Cruz states he worked his way through college as a dishwasher, making 50 cents an hour and learned English by going to movies. ![]() He graduated from UT with a degree in mathematics and chemical engineering four years later in 1961. Cruz said he left with $100 sewn into his underwear taking a two-day bus ride from Florida, arriving with little or no English to enroll at the University of Texas. He obtained a student visa after an attorney for the family bribed a Batista official to grant him an exit permit. Cruz has stated in interviews that he was jailed by Batista for several days in June or July 1957 and after he was released he applied to and was accepted by the University of Texas in August 1957. According to Cruz, as a teenager, he "didn't know Castro was a Communist". Cruz enrolled at the age of 17 at the University of Santiago in September 1956. ![]() Cruz joined the Cuban Revolution as a teenager and "suffered beatings and imprisonment for protesting the oppressive regime" of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Ĭruz attended Arturo Echemendia primary school in Matanzas. His mother, Emilia Laudelina Díaz, was a teacher. His father, Rafael Cruz, was a salesman for RCA, originally from the Canary Islands, Spain. Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1939.
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