One of the subjects of this book, former Cuban refugee Mel Martinez, has been selected by President-Elect Bush to serve as head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Stories of numerous other Cuban refugees, who came to the United States between the 1960s and 1990s, are included in this work
Excerpt
"I was terrified. Traveling alone to a strange place, without family or friends..."
"I thank God every day that I was able to get to the United States safely. But I can't imagine sending my teenager let alone my seven-year-old to another country by herself where she couldn't speak the language and would be among strangers!"
"As teenage boys we thought it would be like a vacation or an adventure, flying from Havana, Cuba, to the United States. We expected to be back home within a few months."
These are typical of the kinds of comments that Cuban Americans, now in their forties or fifties, have made as they recall their exodus from Cuba, the island nation just 90 miles from Key West, Florida, the southernmost part of the United States. After Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959 and began to impose his Communist ideology on the Cuban population, more than 14,000 Cuban young people became part of what news reporters in the early 1960s eventually dubbed "Operation Pedro Pan." The name stems from the Sir James M. Barrie play Peter Pan, about the legendary boy who could fly and taught his friends to fly away with him to Never-Never Land.
At least once a year hundreds of Pedro Pan "alumni" in southFlorida gather to recall the day they became children of exile, a day that some have described as the saddest in their lives. On occasion they try to express the overwhelming loneliness they felt leaving their families and homeland and discovering not long after they got to the United States that they could not return to Cuba within weeks or months. No one expected that years would go by before they would see their families again. Some never were reunited with their parents.
Over the centuries, since the time Christopher Columbus claimed the island of Cuba for Spain in 1492, the Cuban people have suffered under the harsh rule of dictators, and countless numbers have escaped to live in exile or have revolted and fought for Cuban democracy and freedom. In recent history, since 1959, well over one million people have legally left Cuba to live in exile, according to Professor Juan Clark of Miami Dade Community College. In his words: "It has been a very painful exodus, tragically dividing most Cuban families. Those who have sought to go into exile have first suffered discrimination and persecution at home. They have been sent to forced labor camps and [robbed] of all their property. Those who have remained behind are now encouraged to ask for dollars from their relatives abroad to buy in Cuba vital goods not available otherwise."
The Pedro Pan flights of the early 1960s made up one of several mass migrations from Cuba that took place over four decades. People from all walks of life--young and old--have fled Cuba, most seeking refuge in the United States. After the Pedro Pan airlifts, additional flights, and then boat lifts from Cuba, particularly the 1980 Mariel boat lift that included many unaccompanied children (those without parents or guardians to live with) as the U.S. government labeled them, brought tens of thousands more refugees to southFlorida. Since the 1960s, thousands of balseros (rafters)--some with children--have risked their lives in flimsy rafts to get to U.S. shores from Cuba.
In the summer of 1994 with Castro's tacit approval more than 35,000 Cubans left their homeland in crude rafts and homemade boats. The dictator hoped to rid the island of dissenters. According to the United Nations (UN), in 1994 about twenty-five people left Cuba each day but at least six of that number died as they tried to escape across the dangerous Straits of Florida. Most rafters preferred to risk death rather than live under a repressive system that denied them their freedom and that made opposition seem futile.
Professional Reviews
School Library Journal Review
In this well-researched book, Gay cites the efforts of centuries of freedom-loving Cubans to rid their country of foreign rule and oppression. The hoped-for changes that might have occurred as Fidel Castro and his guerillas took over the government in the late 1950s were never achieved and citizens began to seek respite from totalitarianism, especially for their children... Large numbers of children were relocated with families in the United States in an airlift program that was dubbed "Operation Pedro Pan." Gay uses biographical sketches to put a human face on the agonies of family separation as well as the readjustment to life in a new country and culture. The book concludes with an unbiased reporting of the Elian Gonzalez case. This is a compellingly written treatment of Cuban refugees, especially as it relates to children.... The graphic layout of the book is especially pleasing and black-and-white photographs are appropriately captioned and well placed. This title will be of particular interest in schools and libraries with significant Cuban populations and is a useful resource for anyone doing research on Cuban-American relations.
