Honoring and Remembering My Tia Sonia

Welcome. It is Verdict was center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you and today is a really special episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz and Senaera. I want you to take it from there, but we're taking a little pause from politics and talking about someone very near and dear to you.

Yeah. On Sunday, January twenty fifth, my aunt, my Theo so Sonia went to be with the Lord. She and I were incredibly close. Might the As Sonia was my father's younger sister. My dad, as you know, fought in the Cuban Revolution. He was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba by Batistas thugs. My Thea Sonya, it was younger than he is, and so she was there after the revolution succeeded. She fought in the counter revolution and she was imprisoned and tortured by Castro's thugs. And she's someone who who

Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz, we are joined as ever by the senator and also by the senators Tia, Sonia is my Spanish is not very good, But I think that was about right, An Sonia, that is thank you. This is in a few days going to be the fifty eighth anniversary of your fleeing the communist regime in Cuba, and yet we've got the leader of the Democratic Party nomination process is praising the Fidel Castro regime. I think we have the clip very.

Opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba. But you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know, when Fidel Cashtro came into office, you know what he did. He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?

Listen, Bernie has spent his entire life, his entire career, praising communist dictators. But this week his latest ode to Fidel Castro, frankly just pissed me off. It And this is not a joke. This guy is the front runner for the Democratic nomination to be president and he sings the praises of Castro and Cuban communism. My dad fled Cuban fifty seven. My Theosonia was still there. She was a kid, and so she saw the Cuban Revolution firsthand,

Actually he was he was.

A lot of people were happy because finally somebody was coming in that was praising We're gonna give you a chance to change hope, We're gonna change things around. Everybody was gonna have whatever they want to. The poor will never be poor, the rich continue to have money, and everybody will be the same. In reality, yes, everybody went the same, but everybody was poor. Everybody went down. Everybody got paid the same amount of money. There was no different between the poor and the rich.

Everybody everyone was poor and suffering and miserable.

And everybody was miserable. Everybody was miserable. What Bernie is saying is a bunch of garbage.

So you're there, you're you're a teenager. How old were you?

Probably sixteen fifteen?

Okay, so you're seeing this. You're a teenage girl. Right, you see what's happening. You see Castro begin executing people.

Yeah, people, nobody could talk. Nobody could say anything. They actually he trained the people to even be against the family, the sons against the father, the daughters acind the family.

So how did he do that by in doctrinate.

In these people by telling we're going to give you this and that and the other, and it's all going to be free. But you got to tell us what's going on in your house? Who talk against the government. So everything was persecuting one another, especially the older people that actually, we live a good life before in Cuba it was beautiful.

What do people face in terms of their friends and neighbors and families spying on them?

Do you have people in each blog there is somebody that is responsible to keep an eye on you in your house.

So's there's an individual spy, a spy and every block.

And they tell you you keep an eye on every neighbor of this blog.

So what are they watching for?

They're watching for everything. If you bring anything you maybe I'm going from the United States to Cuba, and they there's somebody coming in, so we need to wash the house in case they go out and sell in the black market or they do something with what you brought in. So there's somebody's always keeping an iron you and try to report you a good a good thing that happened to something that happened to me that is very interesting.

So because there's so if you go there you can you can. She can't rent a boat because even though she's an American citizen.

Now, yes, you're Cuban, so you can't do that. There was a boat in the reaver that my niece wanted to go in. And when we're get in to ride the boat with the rest of the people, who said you all cannot get in. You all like Cuban, And I said, but we're paying with the same money that they're paying well, I'm sorry, you can't come in. You're not from another country. You're Cuban, and Cuban people are not allowed.

They're not allowed to leave because they know what they were allowed to leave, they'd all leave.

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Sonya, how quickly after as you say, you know, people liked castro initially? He they he was promising them in the world. How quickly did it turn? I mean, how quickly did it turn?

Right away?

Right away?

He immediately starts saying the policies that he wanted to do. He was going to take tens away from the ridge. He was going to take tens away from the people to give to others. He was to actually take money from you and give it to the poors on the other side. I make my money. I worked for what I half. My father worked hard to be where he was. My mother was the greatest school teacher. She was really was proud of what she was doing. My mother itself was told did she have to teach at the school

So let me underscore this story and listen. I grew up hearing this story as a kid. I mean I would sit with my cousin, Bibe, Sonia's daughter. The two of us would sit literally on the floor in the living room and listen to my dad and my Theosonia tell us stories about the revolution of Myabuela and Auela. Their parents were there also, so my grandmother, Miguela, she's a sixth grade teacher. Castro takes over and she's ordered, you must teach Communism to the kids. You must indoctrinate,

That is true, and it was very painful because my mother was a great teacher, It was loved by many people. But she had to play crazy in order to get out of that sea.

But what I want to know is how in Cuba the public opinion changes very quickly. People see what a monster Castro is and they start to hate his guts. How is it that in the United States now so many years on, fifty eight years on since you left left, you have a presidential candidate, You get a US senator who's still singing the praises of this guy.

What did he miss He had not been with the human people. He only if you go there as a Cuban, you go and see somebody a relative. If you're going to see the miser that they live in. They don't know what to put on the table to serve their kids, they don't know how to get they're gonna get the food that they're going to eat tomorrow. If you are going as somebody from another country or as a tourist you're taking to you are actually become prisoner of the government.

In nineteen eighty nine, Sandards stated, after visiting Cuba, quote I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people. Bernie said the Cuban people quote had an almost religious affection for Castro.

That is not he is lying. He's lying to the people of this country. He is playing on the mind of the younger generation here.

He was either himself complicit in the lie, or he was naive enough or ideological enough to let the Castro regime lie to him and say, look at this, this paradise.

They didn't take into what the Cuban people were. Cuban people are starving to death. Cuban people don't have any money to buy anything.

So let me take you back there, back to fifty nine, back to sixty. The revolution succeeded, you begin fighting against Castro. What happened to you as a result? What happened when you started?

I was constantly persecuted. People was looking for me everywhere. They want to take me to prison. They picked me up several times.

So you were pretty clearly fighting.

Against the totals.

Yes, yes, and this is after Castro has taken over, so yes, dictate Yes. So what like when they picked you up? What happened? What does that mean?

Well?

They put you in a room and there was people sitting on the floor and everybody's you know, that's where you were, with a whole bunch of people in the floor, and they keep it there for two or three days. My parents did not know where I was. My mother did not know, so she was going crazy trying to find me. My friends, friends that I have could not even come and find out with my parents where I was I or what was wrong with me. They were

When you left Cube it was sixty two. You left, right, you've been back a bunch of times, right, yes? What if? So when you come back you usually bring a duffel bag with medicine, break.

Food, clothes, cheats.

Just for relatives, friends, friends, people.

Well, so they can't get anything, nothing, nothing.

She leaves a suitcase, she leaves every body, but she leaves her underwear and brail because nobody has underwear there because there's so much poverty. You'll wear like sweatpants, a T shirt. That's what they wear, and that's on the plane coming right. That is correct. A lot of people don't understand what is the difference between socialism.

That is correct.

Socialism is simply the economic system of communism. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production or distribution. Cuba in the nineteen fifties was the world's number one producer of sugar. It had problems. Look, Batista was a corrupt dictator. He was a bastard. My father to this day doesn't have his front teeth because Batista's police kicked them in. His guards kick his army officers kicked them in.

But what about the universal healthcare? I mean, we're told by a lot of people in the United States, a lot of left wingers, they say Cuba has some of the best healthcare in the world, and everybody's covered.

I can personally tell you that I went to the doctor there because I have mosquito biys that it got into effect infection, and they put a shot on me in front of sixty other people that were there waiting for to being seen by a doctor. There's no transportation, there's no gas, so you can't move. Doctors come to your house in a bicycle and they're hungry. They're hungry when they get there. They come to the house to see. Matter of fact, I was in a house visiting and

Probably the most visible sign that Cuba hasn't changed or hasn't progressed is they have those old cars, right.

And you know, people like to think that that's sort of quaint and cute that they have cars from the nineteen fifties. The reason they had cars from the nineteen fifties is they can't get anything else. You know.

The scary thing about all of this is you've got the experience of it, eight years of experience since you left Cuba. There are various studies that have come out that show that even the majority of young Americans, millennials and Gen z now embrace socialism and prefer it to capitalism. Now, the bright side, I will say, the silver lining, is that a much smaller percentage can actually define socialism. So

The work that they is given out the change. They want to see something different, they want to try something new. It doesn't work, guys, it does not work. All of this ambition and given it, given it to me, there's nothing given to you. You need to work and try to achieve your dream by hard work, but by doing what you want to get ahead.

I mean, I've noticed this with with your colleague Senator Sanders. You know, I mean, he's been talking about this for fifty years and no one listened. But now only you know, now that he's in his mid seventies, it's catching on. And I even think of this absent Bernie Sanders. Forget about him for a second. It took a long time. People knew that communism socialism were terrible for so long, and now they don't know that well, and too often

I said, hey, that's really cool. That's all you know. Chaegovar was a gorilla fought with Fidel Castro in Cuba. And I said, hey, that's really cool, that's awesome. Have you thought of maybe putting a poster of Hitler next year? And maybe Stalin and Maw like, if you're going to celebrate people that torture and murder. Actually, Chay was he was low on the totem pole, but you know he was good looking, he had stubble and he was you

You know, we've talked a lot about the political and the economic side of things, how the government takes all your stuff and then they take power away from you. You're both religious. I notice, Sonya, you have a cross that you're wearing. Obviously, Senator Cruz, one of the big aspects of communism as it's always been practiced is the

Well and and and Pope John Paul the second played a profound role of going going to Poland, and and and and and promising that Poland would be free and speaking up and it was truly. I think divine providence, providence, we want God and and and Reagan and Margaret Thatcher all at the same time. And I think those three people, more than any human beings on earth, defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. Mind you, Bernie was rooting for the Soviet Union during all of that.

Right, it's not even hiding at that much.

Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Michael Whorred, You honeymoon honeymooned in Hawaii, USA. Okay, that's where, like normal people, you go to the beach, you go to how do you know what to say, Thomas, It was beautiful. We were walking along the beach. We had fun. What kind of crazy ideologue says, sweetheart, I love you so much. Let's do a honeymoon in the Soviet Union. You know that club you played? He says, he's no friend of Putin. There's only one person I know on the national stage

And you know who.

He doesn't praise Americans, Like when have you ever heard him speak as positively about Abraham Lincoln as he does about Castro and Ortega and Mao and Stalinist and communism also hates God. If you look at these communist regimes, they persecute faith, They persecute they prevent people from the beauty of the First Amendment is it gives everyone the right to choose how to worship, what your faith will be.

Do you think this is part of why they make their appeal successfully though, Because the thing I noticed so much about the socialists in America today is they're all making these very moral arguments. It's about human rights. It's about giving people their right to health care and their right to have a lot of money.

There's a story my grandmother told me. In the schools, you would have Cuban soldiers come in, and this is kindergarten, first grade, and they tell the children. They'd say, close your eyes and pray to Jesus for a piece of candy. And the kids would all do it, and they'd open their eyes and there'd be no candy. And then the soldiers would say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel

And that is true. They are actually inductrinating the people since they were tiny little kids.

Did it work? It doesn't work as people work.

People, why don't they work? They don't work. Nobody want to work in Cuba. Why do they want to work? They're gonna make the same money that you're making that he's making. What do I want to do that?

But do they believe the theory? I mean, does the indoctrination end up persuading?

Actually, they thought that it was going to be reality. They really blind them to believe what they were saying. But they immediately took the blind off on saying, everybody's in the same boat. We're all hungry.

They know they're hungry, they know they're poor, they know they're miserable. They know that has him. I mean, there's a reason people every day risk their lives to flee Cuba.

That's correct.

You know.

You know Reagan in the height of the Cold War, he had a great way of putting it. He said, the thing liberals never seemed to notice it is on the Berlin Wall, the machine guns all point in one direction. That you didn't get anyone from East Germany saying or from West Germany saying I got to go live in that communist paradise. The way I like to put it, as a Cuban American is is the thing liberals never notice is in Cuba the rafts all going one way. Just once, I'd like to see Bernie Sanders go hop

I want you to just pause what you're doing for the next sixty seconds, and I want you to imagine Lucy, a seven year old. Her stomach often aches with hunger, her small hands instead of holding crayons. No, only the struggle of survival on dusty streets. School is a distant dream, medical care forgotten hope. Lucy's potential is overshadowed, her future is dim. But what if someone stepped in? What if there was a way to ignite hope for children just

Well, actually, you know, tying in all of these points on the economic, on the political, and on the religious, Communism has been called the God that failed, right. It was a sort of substitute religion, a substitute god, and it failed, and you saw it fail personally. What was the what was the biggest shock? I mean, what was the biggest despair, the biggest regret when when you saw something that you had believed in fail.

Well, the biggest it was seen the people suffering for not being able to even get food to put on the plate.

It's so basic, the basic things.

That no, don't been able to work because why do you want to work when you don't have anything to buy with? You know that money disappear from you immediately, and you all know the numbers, but you know, an average person make thirty dollars a.

Month, thirty dollars per dollars.

Per month, So what are you going to do with that? So people are being drinking water? You see the kids, they dink water with sugar to get their stomach full.

It's it's that that basic need. It's so interesting that you say that, because it's Communism starts at as this idealistic fantasy, very high falutin, very high minded literacy programs, all that, and then the reality of the failures. People can't even fill their stomachs.

That is true, although you know there is one exception, which is the Communist Party rulers look Fidel Castro lived like a billionaires and by the way, Putin lives like a billionaire. Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him, they lived like billionaires. Right, Communism when you have all the power at the top, and what does Bernie suggest it would be any different if the government is in charge of everything every place that has happened, the rulers live like kings and everyone else's is miserable.

Right.

Well, we did actually get one mail back question that I think is very much on this topic, which is with the Democratic Party veering so far to the left, I'm embracing these absolutely disgusting positions hopefully will turn off most of the American people. Should conservatives be happy? Should conservatives be happy that the God that failed is about to fail the Democratic Party. Not necessarily, you're not as as complacent.

I understand people saying, Okay, great Bernie so extreme that means Trump will get re elected. I hope Trump gets re elected. I'm working hard to re elect the president. But listen, what is truly terrified is I think the American people could elect a wild eyed socialist the media. We're a divided country. If one hundred thousand votes had flipped in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton would be the president right now. And Bernie, the media treats him kind of

If that happened, well, because you already fled one communist heell hole and this was the great hope as America.

Is the great there's no place to go.

Where do you go there?

No place to center.

What an incredible story, and especially so timely with what's happening in Cuba, in Venezuela and Iran, and just I hope it inspires others. I hope people will share this. Our thoughts and our prayers are with you and your family. But what an amazing legacy that she has left behind.

Well, she has left an amazing legacy, including her daughter, Bibie, who is extraordinary. She's like a sister to me, including me. She impacted my life in a very profound way. I will tell you A couple of weeks ago, I went up to see her. She lived in Dallas. I went up to see her and brought Heidi and the girls, and we saw her in the hospital and she was not fully conscious. She was going in and out of consciousness.