A Boy, an Orphanage, a Cuban Refugee

I became a man when I was nine. My other option was death.

I just didn't know it then, but the truth is that I . . . we . . . had to leave.

Why would parents send their children, alone, to a foreign country with no guarantee that they would ever see each other again? From December 1960 to October 1962, over 14,000 unescorted children fled Cuba for the United States in what became known as Operation Peter Pan. Under Fidel Castro's tyrannical regime, the state confiscated people's property and ...