Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's office has blasted The New York Times for printing a recent opinion piece about Cuba that, it said, openly mocked Cruz's ethnic identity.
"Your decision to allow an Op-Ed writer to openly mock a person's ethnicity — as
Ann Louise Bardach did when she wrote that Senator Ted Cruz 'has been called as Hispanic 'as Tom Cruise' — is saddening,"
wrote Amanda Carpenter, communications director for Cruz.
The original opinion piece — published Jan. 30 and titled "Why Are Cubans So Special?" — attempted to blast Republicans for criticizing President Barack Obama's recent decision to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Carpenter said the comments by Bardach about Cruz were used "to bludgeon Mr. Cruz's principled policy positions regarding United States-Cuba relations, suggesting that, if he disagrees with her, Mr. Cruz is not truly Cuban — despite his father's having been imprisoned and tortured in Cuba, and coming to America penniless."
"An Op-Ed writer is not the arbiter of a person's race or ethnicity, and it is unfortunate that The New York Times would allow someone a platform to pretend so," she wrote.
Cruz's father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and fled to the U.S. in 1957 at the age of 18.
Bardach is the author of
"Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington," and other books on Cuba.
In her opinion piece, she also called out Cruz for not being fluent in Spanish.
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