De vuelta a la casa de la infancia

La institución cultural cubana Casa de las Américas abrió sus salas de exhibición a la diáspora de artistas cubanos en el año 1995 a partir de la inauguración de la exposición Los hijos de Pedro Pan del artista cubanoamericano Ernesto Pujol. El creador migró en su niñez hacia Puerto Rico y luego Estados Unidos a inicios de la década de los 60’, cuando se estaba gestando en Cuba el proceso revolucionario de transformación económica, política y social. No será hasta muy entrado en su adultez que Pujol regresa a su casa de la infancia y coordina, junto a la Dirección de Artes Plásticas de Casa de las Américas, insertarse en el circuito artístico cubano mediante la realización de su exposición personal. El artista empleó su memoria, sus recuerdos infantiles para la construcción de cinco instalaciones que reflexionan sobre las circunstancias ocasionadas por el proceso migratorio y su identidad personal truncada.

Penny Powers, Covert Hero of the Twentieth Century

Ms. Penny Powers, a covert British Intelligence Officer during most of the twentieth century and (perhaps) memorialized as Miss. Moneypenny in the James Bond film series, was one of the most unrecognized saviors of children in danger in modern world history. Ms. Powers covertly organized and ran the Kindertransport and Operation Pedro Pan, two shining examples of the British intelligence service's efforts to save thousands of children from danger. Ms. Powers used the same repeatable model twice to save children in danger. Specifically, she helped save 10,000 Jewish children in the Kindertransport and 14,000 Cuban children in Operation Pedro Pan by transporting the children to a safe location, organizing temporary care for the children, planning to reunite the children with their parents when the danger had passed, and using private donations instead of government funding to help the plan appeal to the host countries. In 2016, US Representative Mike Honda proposed to replicate her model to help save children in danger in the Syrian civil war. Now, 25 years after her death, it is high time for Ms. Powers to be recognized for helping save 24,000 children.

The Dark Side of Neverland

Operation Pedro Pan is shown in this chapter to be both the result of and an integral part of the CIA’s covert action program to undermine and overthrow the revolutionary government in Cuba, beginning with the attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs and later with Operation Mongoose. The author describes how the children’s departures were dependent on the anti-Castro movement networks run by Ramon Grau and others closely linked to the CIA. She also shows how the Pedro Pan children were used in Washington’s international propaganda war against the Cuban revolution and in the United States as a response to domestic resentment against Cuban refugees, as well as how the young Cubans were even regarded as potential “freedom fighters” or spies against Castro.

Introduction

The story of Operation Pedro Pan (or Operation Peter Pan) and the Cuban Children’s Program remains a highly contested one, still regarded in Miami as an urgent humanitarian “rescue” mission while in Havana it is viewed as a scheme that hoodwinked parents into sending their offspring out of the country as unaccompanied minors and sometimes even described as a mass kidnapping. This book moves beyond Cold War tropes about threats to the Cuban family by the revolutionary government and uses the episode to examine in detail the social reforms that unfolded in the wake of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and how these changes encouraged a new revolutionary youth culture of political activism and challenged the United States’ historical, political, and economic control and cultural influence in Cuba. By focusing on the generation of young Cubans who came to maturity in the early 1960s and tracking the parallel trajectories of the Pedro Pan children and their siblings, friends, and classmates who stayed on the island (100,000 of whom participated in the 1961 national literacy campaign), this book for the first time takes a broader view and presents a more nuanced explanation of this history.

Operation Pedro Pan and the Children Who Could Fly

Chapter 4 considers who initiated the airlift and how it was organized. This chapter suggests parents had many varied motives for sending their children to Miami. After the nationalization of education in Cuba, some Cubans regarded Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children’s Program, which was set up by Father Bryan Walsh of the Catholic Welfare Bureau and funded by the federal government, as a free, all-expenses paid beca (or scholarship) to a U.S. private school. Other parents wanted to prevent their children from becoming involved in pro-government political activities, such as the literacy campaign, or alternatively become young anti-Castro activists. The author argues that the special visa waiver scheme for unaccompanied minors acted to encourage family separation rather than assist the emigration of Cubans as family groups, and that Catholic clergy, if not the Catholic church as an institution, played a significant role in promoting and organizing this scheme.

The Patria Potestad Hoax

This chapter reviews the impact in Cuba of Cold War propaganda about the family and communism. It investigates the origins of the rumor campaign maintaining that the Cuban revolutionary government planned to eliminate patria potestad (parental authority) and make all Cuban children wards of the state. The rumors were backed up by the printing and circulation of a fake law by the anti-Castro movement. The author examines how this hoax was also spread through sensational news broadcasts on the CIA’s Radio Swan and through other psychological warfare (or psywar) propaganda, along with pronouncements by Catholic clergy, and considers why this fearmongering was so effective in convincing many Cuban parents to send their children out of the country with Operation Pedro Pan.

Operation Pedro Pan and the Exodus of Cuba's Children

This in-depth examination of one of the most controversial episodes in U.S.-Cuba relations sheds new light on the program that airlifted 14,000 unaccompanied children to the United States in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Operation Pedro Pan is often remembered within the U.S. as an urgent “rescue” mission, but Deborah Shnookal points out that a multitude of complex factors drove the exodus, including Cold War propaganda and the Catholic Church’s opposition to the island’s new government. Shnookal illustrates how and why Cold War scare tactics were so effective in setting the airlift in motion, focusing on their context: the rapid and profound social changes unleashed by the 1959 Revolution, including the mobilization of 100,000 Cuban teenagers in the 1961 national literacy campaign. Other reforms made by the revolutionary government affected women, education, religious schools, and relations within the family and between the races. Shnookal exposes how, in its effort to undermine support for the revolution, the U.S. government manipulated the aspirations and insecurities of more affluent Cubans. She traces the parallel stories of the young “Pedro Pans” separated from their families—in some cases indefinitely—in what is often regarded in Cuba as a mass “kidnapping” and the children who stayed and joined the literacy brigades. These divergent journeys reveal many underlying issues in the historically fraught relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and much about the profound social revolution that took place on the island after 1959.

Conclusion

This book concludes that by the time the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962, Operation Pedro Pan had largely served its purpose in the U.S. covert action program and propaganda war against the Cuban revolution. The cancellation of direct flights between the United States and Cuba and Washington’s policy to keep Cuba isolated meant that the children’s reunification with their families was made very difficult and delayed. While Cuban parents may have had many motives in sending their children as unaccompanied minors to Miami, the author argues that, in general, U.S. government political objectives overrode humanitarian concerns for the children’s welfare and Cuban family reunification. She concludes that Operation Pedro Pan was largely unjustified and based on a fabricated Cold War scare about patria potestad that manipulated Cuban parents’ fears and resulted in the unnecessary separation of thousands of Cuban children from their families—in many cases for several years and, in some cases, with tragic consequences.