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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.

Between January 1961 and October 1962, over 14,000 Cuban children under the age of 16, unaccompanied by their parents, departed Cuba for Miami. “Operation Peter Pan” was a clandestine scheme organized by the Catholic Church in Miami and Havana, working with the CIA and anti-Castro forces in Cuba. Parents sent their children out of Cuba for several reasons. As U.S.-Cuba relations deteriorated, and parents could not rejoin their children, many youngsters—about 7,000—found their way into long-term foster care or orphanages throughout the United States. This chapter agrees that the “emotional economy” of parenting, domestic arrangements, and sexuality helps maintain political and economic authority the world over. Fifty years of child migration conflicts have, like missile crises, bombings, and assassination plots, nurtured profound animosities between Cuba and the United States.

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.

Chapter 1 provides the necessary historical background to migration and return. It offers a summary of postrevolutionary migration waves, concise information on the Operation Pedro Pan, the policies that have eased or hindered travel in Cuba and the United States, and the range of attitudes toward return in the Cuban-American community and elsewhere. Additionally, it explores reports on the initial trips to Cuba undertaken by the Antonio Maceo Brigade and Grupo Areíto in the late 1970s as well as others more individually focused that followed.