The centerpiece of the Republican campaign to win over Hispanic voters in 2012, Marco Rubio has run into accusations that he has distorted his family’s history in order to appear more-anti-Communist. As part of his own campaign last year to become a U.S. senator, Rubio not only played up his Cuban heritage to win votes in South Florida, but told voters that his parents were forced to flee Cuba after the “thug” Fidel Castro took power.

 

Castro and his communist rebels seized the Cuban government on January 1, 1959.

 

Rubio’s parents, however, came to the U.S. on May 27, 1956, when Castro wasn’t even in Cuba, but residing in Mexico.

 

The truth of Rubio’s parents’ immigration came out after The Washington Post obtained naturalization papers and other official records revealing when the couple emigrated from their homeland.

 

When asked about the discrepancy, Rubio said his accounts have been based on the family’s oral history, not documents. Before the Post article, his official Senate biography stated that his “Cuban-born parents…came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” But last Friday the bio was rewritten to correct the misinformation.

 

In a 2009 interview with NPR, Rubio said that his mother returned to Cuba in 1961 to care for her father, who had been injured in an accident. More recently, he has skipped mention of the accident and instead said that his parents went back to Cuba in 1961 with the intention of moving back permanently, but experiencing Castro’s rule convinced them to return to the United States.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Marco Rubio’s Compelling Family Story Embellishes Facts, Documents Show (by Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post)