Operation Pedro Pan, considered the largest exodus of children of the 20th century in the West, “rescued 14,048 boys and girls from the Castro hecatomb,” said writer and feminist Ileana Fuentes in Miami, USA, recalling the 60th this Saturday. . anniversary of the exodus.
“I was one of those girls. Informally, the program was called Operation Peter Pan. This is the largest child rescue in history to date,” Fuentes wrote in an article published Saturday. in the digital newspaper of Cuban affairs Cubanet.
The architect of Operation Pedro Pan was Monsignor Bryan Walsh, who was in charge of the care of the minors who were later transferred to camps, orphanages or adopted families.
Realizing that there were many cases of Cuban minors coming to the US only to seek safety, Walsh contacted former President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, which provided the resources to support the program.
The operation, which began on December 26, 1960 and officially concluded on October 23, 1962, with the suspension of all commercial flights between the United States and Cuba, took place shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution when a man in charge of Walsh boy named Pedro to seek refuge for him while his parents managed to leave Cuba.
“All flights were by air – by the PanAm, National and KLM airlines – bound for the United States, and the first flight took off from ‘José Martí’ airport on December 26, 1960. Only two Cuban flights escaped on that flight. children. ”Fuentes recalls.
“Two more came on the 28th, six on the 30th and 12 on the 31st. Never in its history has the US government funded a program for refugee children,” he added.
Little by little, so as not to arouse much suspicion in Havana, Cuban boys and girls arrived. The Matecumbe camp and barracks in Kendall filled up when Walsh developed a national network of Catholic parishes … Union: New Mexico, Nebraska, Delaware, Indiana, Colorado and Florida, among others, ”Fuentes recalls.
The former director of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, based in Miami, indicates that “ninety-five social welfare institutions managed this move.”
Of the 14,048 minors who left Cuba alone in those 23 months, 6,584 were with family friends or relatives already established in the United States; 7,464 were under the protection of the Catholic Bureau’s Cuban Children’s Program and others. Protestant and Hebrew institutions, ”explained Fuentes, author of the book” Cuba Without Caudillos. A Feminist Approach. “
The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora is preparing the “Operation Pedro Pan: 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Children’s Exodus” exhibit, featuring a card with the names of all the then children who traveled without their parents during the operation, said current director, Carmen Valdivia, who also came to the US as “Pedro Pan.”
The sample, with photos and documents donated by people who arrived in the United States via this route, will serve to reopen the museum in January, after it closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Valdivia said during an interview on MegaTV last November.
According to Valdivia, this exodus of more than 14,000 children has not received the full interest it deserves. “Little is known, partly because it was a secret in the beginning (…) and also because the media (sometimes) does not like to say that people have fled communism,” concluded Valdivia.