Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz (born March 22, 1939)[2] is a Cuban-American evangelical preacher and the father of U.S.

[7] He said he joined the Cuban Revolution as a teenager and "suffered beatings and imprisonment for protesting the oppressive regime" of dictator Fulgencio Batista, although an extensive search by the New York Times found no evidence for his claims.

[11] 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 (UT) in August 1957.

He obtained a student visa[12] after an attorney for the family bribed a Batista official to grant him an exit permit.

[1][3][13] 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.

[9][12] Cruz states he worked his way through college as a dishwasher, making 50 cents an hour and learned English by going to movies.

[5][10] After Cruz graduated, he was granted political asylum in the United States following the expiration of his student visa.

[1][20][23] Cruz left the Catholic Church in 1975 and became an Evangelical Protestant after attending a Bible study with a colleague and having a born again experience.

[14][27] In a 2014 Associated Press story, Cruz was quoted as saying, "I have a burden for this country and I feel that we cannot sit silent."

"[14][30] At the New Beginnings Church in Irving, Texas, in August 2012, Cruz delivered a sermon where he described his son's senatorial campaign as taking place within a context where Christian "kings" were anointed to preside over an "end-time transfer of wealth" from wicked people to the righteous.

"[32] Salon described Cruz as a "Dominionist, devoted to a movement that finds in Genesis a mandate that 'men of faith' seize control of public institutions and govern by biblical principle.

"[34] Also his son's presidential primary opponent, Donald Trump falsely accused Cruz's father of involvement with John F. Kennedy's assassination.