Ted Cruz's office: New York Times op-ed mocked Hispanic identity
The office of Sen. Ted Cruz is ripping into The New York Times for a recent op-ed on Cuba, taking to the newspaperâs own pages to call it âsaddeningâ and âunfortunate.â âYour decision to allow an Op-Ed writer to openly mock a personâs ethnicity â as Ann Louise Bardach did when she wrote that Senator Ted Cruz âhas been called as Hispanic âas Tom Cruiseââ â is saddening,â Amanda Carpenter, the Texas senatorâs director of communications, wrote in a letter to the editor published Friday. Story Continued Below âAn Op-Ed writer is not the arbiter of a personâs race or ethnicity, and it is unfortunate that The New York Times would allow someone a platform to pretend so,â she wrote. Carpenter said the op-ed âWhy Are Cubans So Special?â, which pushed back against Republican criticism of President Barack Obamaâs recent diplomatic opening to Cuba, used the comment âto bludgeon Mr. Cruzâs principled policy positions.â Bardach, author of âWithout Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washingtonâ and other books on Cuba, also noted that Cruz is not fluent in Spanish. Carpenter, in her response, noted that Cruzâs father Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, who was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and fled the island country in 1957 at age 18, was âimprisoned and tortured in Cuba, and coming to America penniless.â Bardach responded to Carpenterâs criticism by noting that the reference to Cruz was in quotations and âthe quote was not the writerâs comment but that of Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of [the] Texas Democratic Party, and former Texas county judge.â The comment, Bardach said, was made in October 2013 and first published in My San Antonio. At the time, Hinojosa said: âHis last name may be Cruz, but there is nothing, not an ounce, about the way he thinks and the way he has led his life that in any way is similar to Hispanics in the state of Texas and all across America,â Hinojosa said. âTed Cruz is as much Hispanic as Tom Cruise.â