Fleeing Castro
Operation Pedro
Pan and
the Cuban Children's Program
by
Victor Andres Triay
Order
this Book now
A stirring account of
the covert effort to smuggle Cuban children into the
United States in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's rise to
power, Fleeing Castro brings to light the
humanitarian program designed to care for the children
once they arrived and the hardship and suffering endured
by the families who took part in Operation Pedro Pan.
From late 1960 until the October 1962 missile crisis,
14,048 unaccompanied Cuban children left their homeland,
the small island suddenly at the center of the Cold War
struggle. Their parents, unable to obtain visas to leave
Cuba, believed a short separation would be preferable to
subjecting their offspring to Castro's totalitarian
Marxist state. For the children, the exodus began a
prolonged and tragic ordeal--some didn’t see their
parents again for years; a few never did.
Until now, this chapter of the Cuban Revolution has been
relatively obscure. Initially the result of an effort by
James Baker, headmaster of an American school in Cuba who
worked closely with the anti-Castro underground, Pedro
Pan quickly came to involve the Catholic Church in Miami
and, in particular, Father Bryan Walsh, who established
the Cuban Children's Program, the nationwide organization
that cared for those children without relatives or
friends in the United States--almost half of them. The
latter program, in effect until 1981, was the first to
allot federal money to private agencies for child care,
an action with far-reaching repercussions for U.S. social
policy.
Victor Andres Triay traces this story from its political
and social origins in Cuba, setting it in the context of
the Cold War and describing the roles of the
organizations involved in Cuba and in the United States.
Making use of extensive interviews with Baker, Walsh, and
influential underground figures, as well as personal
letters that document the fears and dreams of both the
parents and the children, Triay presents this history of
Pedro Pan--the largest child refugee movement ever in the
Western Hemisphere--with the drama of an international
thriller and the pathos of a heartbreaking family drama.
Victor Andres Triay, whose parents left Cuba in 1960 for
exile in the United States, is assistant professor of
history at Middlesex Community College, Middletown,
Connecticut. He grew up in Miami, Florida.
See our Contemporary Cuba Series
1999. 144pp. 6 X 9.
ISBN 0-8130-1612-6 Cloth, $49.95s
ISBN 0-8130-1724-6 Paper, $14.95
Shopping
Cart Operations
For MasterCard/Visa
holders, accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart
and submit your order electronically.
Shopping Cart Operations
|
|
"The first complete and comprehensive work on these important, unique programs. . . . An interesting, humane,
yet tragic component of the post-1959 Cuban experience
and the Cold War in general."-- Antonio
Benitez-Rojo, Amherst College
Titles of
Related Interest:
Colonization as Exploitation in the
Amazon Rain Forest, 1758-1911,
Robin L.
Anderson
Ethnic Conflict and International
Politics in the Middle East,
Edited by
Leonard Binder
Dictating Democracy,
Rachel M.
McCleary
Colombia,
Jane M.
Rausch
|