The lost apple : Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban children in the U.S., and the promise of a better future /

This clear-eyed, thoroughly researched study describes Operation Peter Pan, the airlift of over 14,000 Cuban children to the US between 1960 and 1962. In the wake of the Cuban Revolution, parents feared communist indoctrination of their children in the newly nationalized schools. Those fears, aggravated by a US administration eager to squeeze some advantage from a deteriorating political situation, led them to send their unaccompanied children to what they hoped would be a better life. But as Torres (political science, DePaul Univ.), herself one of the "Pedro Pans," makes clear, the US government was far less concerned for the welfare of these young refugees after their ballyhooed "freedom flights" arrived. She makes the case that the policies of both sides were, and continue to be, bankrupt, and that the operation was neither a humanitarian rescue mission nor a sinister plot to steal the children of the Revolution. Her detailed explanation of the mechanics of the operation coupled with her convincing analysis of how the children became "cannon fodder for the ideological battles of the Cold War" add up to what may become the definitive study of Operation Peter Pan. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General collections and upper-division undergraduates and above. M. A. Olshan Alfred University

In the early 1960s-40 years before Elian Gonzalez was found tied to an inner tube off the Florida coast-more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children arrived in the United States through a clandestine airlift program known as Operation Pedro Pan. Unable to get their own visa waivers, many Cuban parents chose to send their children abroad (with the help of U.S. church and government groups) rather than subject them to the uncertainty of Fidel Castro's new Communist state. Torres was one of those children. In this blandly written book, she weaves her own experiences as a six-year-old waiting for a family friend to fetch her in the Miami airport with historical facts and interviews with the program's leaders, from the Miami priest who placed the children in temporary homes to the underground anti-Castro activists who helped facilitate matters on the island. The author of In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States and a political science professor at DePaul University, Torres is thorough in her research but fails to present a whole and compelling picture of the largest child refugee movement in the Western hemisphere. It's a failing she admits, one that she attributes in part to her inability to gain access to classified Cold War documents held by the CIA. While she touches on issues that will resonate with readers of any background (xenophobia, sexual abuse by priests, the agonies of family separation), Torres is at her most insightful when comparing the Elian Gonzalez saga with the plight of the Pedro Pans and addressing the broader issue of the time-worn use of children as political vehicles. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Nuanced explanation of a Cold War program that allowed approximately 14,000 Cuban children to enter the US in an effort to save them from Communism, written by one of those refugees. Operation Pedro Pan was conceived in 1960 to protect the offspring of American-backed activists in the Cuban underground who worried that if they were caught, the children might be sent to the Soviet Union. In a unique move, the US government granted a Catholic priest in Miami permission to waive visas for children under age 16. Until the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, almost 500 unaccompanied children ages 6 to 16 entered America, most going to family friends already living there. In the subsequent 18 months, before the Cuban Missile Crisis shut down the program, the number mushroomed to 14,000. Approximately 6,000 were cared for by friends or relatives in the US, but more than 8,000 were placed in foster homes, orphanages, and other institutions, some waiting decades to be reunited with their families. Torres was one of the lucky ones; her parents soon followed with her younger sibling. In the late 1970s, when the author wished to visit Cuba with a group of Pedro Pans trying to make sense of their past, the exile community issued death threats and murdered one member of the group. "If the battle over children's minds in the 1960s had been a way to contest [Cuba's] political future," writes Torres, "interpreting the exodus became a way to control its history." For the exile community, the exodus epitomized the supreme sacrifice parents made to save their children from communism; returning to Cuba even for a visit betrayed that sacrifice. The Castro regime, by contrast, viewed the exodus as psychological warfare waged against Cuba by the powerful US; it welcomed the Pedro Pans, though it discouraged contact with family members who had stayed behind. Thoughtful, balanced addition to the frequently contentious scholarship of US-Cuban history. (15 b&w illustrations, 2 appendices) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.