Worried over the political instability of Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution took power, those parents that could afford it began to send their children to schools in the United States. This was nothing new since Cubans had attended schools in the U.S. since the establishing of the American Republic.
Reasons for Pedro Pan
But, by the middle of 1960, just 18 months after Castro took power, concerns about the totalitarian turn of the regime, Marxist indoctrination in schools and rumors of the government taking control of raising the children, caused widespread fear in the island.
Under the auspices of the Catholic Church, the U.S. State Department and various important Cuban individuals, waiver visas began to be issued to any and all Cuban children whose parents authorized to leave the island. By December 1960, Operation Pedro Pan – Spanish for Peter Pan – was under way. About a year later, Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist and the stream of minors leaving the island became a flood. When the operation ended on October 1962, due to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Pedro Pan had become the greatest known migration of unaccompanied refugee minors in the Western Hemisphere.
Bryan O. Walsh and Ramón Grau Alsina
As Director of the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami, Father Bryan Walsh came face to face with the plight of Cuba’s youth when on November 1960, the relatives of a boy named – what else? – Pedro contacted him. Pedro’s parent’s had sent him to live with the relatives, but they had no means of support and needed aid. Well aware of the news coming out of Cuba, Father Walsh got in touch with Tracy Voorhees who was in Miami evaluating what the Eisenhower administration could do to help Cuban refugees. Voorhess got Washington to approve funds for the unaccompanied minors.
Father Walsh then contacted the headmaster of an American school in Havana, James Baker, to help get the youngsters out of Cuba. That was the beginning of Pedro Pan.
One of Baker’s top recruits was Ramón Grau Alsina. Nephew and protégée of former Cuban president Ramón Grau San Martín, Grau Arsina and his sister, Polita, used their home in Havana to distribute the waiver visas – really a transit pass - to the children. When anxious parents couldn’t get to their house, Grau Arsina took the illegal papers and traveled the island delivering them. Waiver visas were provided for any child, without consideration as to sex, race or faith, whose parent wanted to send to the United States.
Grau Alsina served most of a 30 years sentence in Cuban prisons. He had been accused of being a CIA agent. Before his release, he was taken to an intelligence debriefing, there, the agent told him that they should had shot him years before. Grau Alsina asked if it was because he had planned to kill Fidel Castro. No, responded the agent, for stealing our children.
Controversy over Pedro Pan
A lot had been written as to whether Operation Pedro Pan was a CIA plot to steal brains and wealth from Cuba, and about the fate of many of the children.
There is some evidence that supports the idea of CIA involvement, but all and all Operation Pedro Pan was a Catholic Charities program run with volunteers both in and out of Cuba.
In addition there has been debate over the over-representation of white Cubans among the Pedro Pan kids. The unwritten policy of the Castro regime has been to obstruct the migration of Afro Cubans as much as possible.
Most of the children that had no relatives in the U.S. were placed either in orphanages, foster homes or special care units and ended up living high-quality lives, growing up to be responsible members of society. There are reports of ill treatment of some of the minors, mainly by foster parents. The substantiated ones are few.
Outcome of Pedro Pan
Around 50 per cent of the Pedro Pan children were reunited with family members at the Miami International Airport. Of the 7,000 taken into care by Catholic Welfare, 85 per cent were between the ages of 12 and 18 upon arrival, 70 per cent of those were boys over the age of 12. These children were distributed to locations in 35 states.
There is little information on how many of them were reunited with parents or relatives. Two organizations founded by adults who were part of the process, Operation Pedro Pan Group, in Coral Gables, Florida, and Pedro Pan of California, in Los Angeles, are working on gathering information pertaining to their fortune. Yet, it is estimated that the rate of family reunion of those who went to live with relatives or family is a high if not higher than those who were united while still under care of Catholic Welfare.
While the Pedro Pans are less than 2 per cent of the Cubans that emigrated to the U.S., they have produced some of the greatest success stories. Among the best known are salsa singer Wilfredo (Willy) Chirino; former U.S. Senator and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martínez; Eduardo Aguirre, director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and Leo Guzmán, the first Hispanic member of the New York Stock Exchange.
Sources
Operation Pedro Pan
Ivan Castro - Ivan Castro, a former reporter for The Miami Herald, is a free lance writer specializing in History and Archeology.
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