The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the U.S., and the Promise of a Better Future

by Maria Torres

Overview

From 1960 to 1962, 14,048 Cuban minors arrived in Miami. María de los Angeles Torres was six years old when she took part in this massive airlift-now known as Operation Pedro Pan-in which parents, terrified that the new communist government would ship their children to Soviet work camps, sent them instead to America. Torres examines the event from both a historical and a personal perspective. This 'relentless investigator of history' (Miami Herald) forces declassification of key documents, challenging us all finally to come to terms with this pivotal yet largely neglected exodus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807002339
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	08/15/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

A frequent media commentator on Cuba-U.S. relations, María de los Angeles Torres is associate professor of political science at DePaul University and author of several books, including In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

'Although there are many books by and about the Pedro Pans, The Lost Apple is one of the best. Torres manages to keep a healthy historical balance in a tricky political landscape, never losing her footing along the way . . . The Lost Apple moves along like a good novel [and] Torres even makes politics come alive.'—Susan Fernandez, Miami Herald

'A thoughtful, balanced addition to the frequently contentious scholarship on U.S.-Cuban history.'—Kirkus Reviews

'Deeply felt and impressively researched, The Lost Apple undertakes the difficult work of reconciliation-between parents and children, exiles and revolutionaries, the Cuba of yesterday and the Cuba of today.'—Gustavo Pérez Firmat, author of Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way

From the Publisher

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 warfarewaged 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)

Kirkus Reviews