Alfabeticemos! Let’s Teach Literacy!

The Cuban revolutionary government prioritized education reform as the key to lifting the country out of underdevelopment and creating a new political culture of participatory democracy, epitomized by the 1961 literacy campaign. Fidel Castro’s opponents, however, regarded this campaign as evidence of the “communist indoctrination” by the government of young Cubans and were therefore determined to “save” as many children as possible by sending them to Miami until Castro was ousted. This chapter takes a detailed look at how the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation unfolded with the mobilization of 100,000 teenagers as literacy brigadistas to teach in the mountains and remote parts of the island. It examines the objectives of the campaign, the recruitment propaganda used to mobilize the Conrado Benítez brigades, how the campaign affected relations between parents and children, and the impact that participation in the campaign had on a generation of revolutionary youth.

A Revolutionary Hurricane Sweeps Cuba

This chapter examines the countervailing forces within Cuban society that were exposed as a revolutionary hurricane swept the island after the 1959 Revolution. It discusses the revolutionary government’s social reforms regarding child care, the nationalization of education, race relations, and gender equality, and argues that the revolutionary project initiated in January 1959 was essentially a process of economic and cultural transformation, an assertion of a vision of a New Cuba and a New Cuban. This challenged the values of more affluent Cubans who were more likely to be influenced by U.S. culture, the Catholic church, and Cold War tropes about communism’s threat to the patriarchal family and children’s minds. In drawing young Cubans into the literacy campaign, the new government encouraged them to see themselves as contributing to the revolutionary project.

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.

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.