On January 3, 1961, the United States severed diplomatic
relations with Cuba, making it impossible for Cubans to obtain a visa to
enter U.S. territory. A few days later, Frank Auerback called me from
Washington to tell me that the Department of State would accept a letter
signed by me in lieu of a visa. Such was the beginning of the famous
Visa Waiver that allowed the Catholic Welfare Bureau to sponsor the
passage of Cuban minors to the United States. The first Cuban children
arrived the twenty-sixth of December 1960. The last, the twenty-second
of October 1962, the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis or the
“October Crisis.” Those children, their children, and even their
grandchildren remain a part of my life even today. In truth, there are
fourteen thousand stories to tell. Relying on the testimonies of just
some of those fourteen thousand refugee children, and of some of the
adults who helped them, Josefina Leyva tells their stories. They are
filled with nostalgia for their homes, the difficulties they faced, the
kindness they received from strangers, the misunderstandings caused by
linguistic and cultural differences, their adaptation to a new way of
life and how they adapted once again when they returned to the bosom of
their families when at last their parents arrived.
The “Pedro Pan” children forged their lives in this
remarkable land we call the United States. They are Cuban Americans, but
they have never lost their love of their homeland, the “Pearl of the
Caribbean.” Some have made the pilgrimage back, searching for the street
where they lived and the home they vaguely remember. They were shocked
by encounters with the places of their childhood, noting how much
smaller everything seemed than how they remembered it. In exile, they
have seen their children grow and become adults. Some of the “Pedro Pan”
children are now grandparents. Others have passed away here in the
United States. Many have buried their parents in this foreign country
that now feels like home, although they will always be strangers within
its borders. Many have achieved great things in this adopted land. The
majority has settled in and become a part of the great American
experience as members of the middle class. They see their own children
and ask themselves if they would be able to send them into exile if
circumstances repeated themselves. Now middleaged, they ask themselves
how their parents could have made such a torturous decision. Since they
always felt protected as children, many have never fully understood the
choices their parents were forced to make, or the risk and sacrifice it
all represents. Josefina Leyva’s stories recreate life in Cuba as it was
during the early 1970s, and offer some answers.
How did this come to be called Operation Pedro Pan? It
was important from the very beginning that we in Miami avoided anything
that could jeopardize the exodus, or the people in Cuba who worked to
make it possible. We were never under the illusion that the Cuban
government was unaware of what we were doing, nor that any publicity
could easily have been used as propaganda to provoke some reaction.
Therefore, we remained silent. Inevitably the Miami press discovered
what was going on. When they came to me looking for a story, I told them
the truth; but I asked them not to report it. The press cooperated and
gave our work the code name Operation Pedro Pan, perhaps because the
first unaccompanied Cuban child who arrived in Miami under our
protection was named Pedro Menéndez. Family or friends took in
approximately half of the children who arrived. We placed the rest in
foster homes or in orphanages spread across thirty-five different states.
The majority of the children stayed for four years. When the “Freedom
Flights” began in December 1965, their parents were given first priority
by both governments to come to the United States. Some children remained
in our care until adulthood; there were some whose parents never came.
Others felt the separation was too much and they returned to the Island
of their own accord. Operation Pedro Pan opened the door to the United
States for more than fourteen thousand unaccompanied children. Under the
1965 accord, only those Cubans who had close family members in the
United States could come to this country. Perhaps this accounts for the
one hundred thousand Cubans who clung to this hope and embarked on the
“Freedom Flights” that departed Cuba for Varadero. Still now, in 1993,
middle-aged Cubans in possession of a Visa Waiver ask me if it will
still allow them to enter the United States. For them, it is too late;
the Visa Waivers ended with the Missile Crisis in October 1962.
Monsignor Bryan Walsh C
