Operation Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) 1960-1962
Introduction
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After Cuba's revolutionary government barred the operation of private and Catholic schools, parents of 14,000 children made arrangements to temporarily send their children to the United States to complete their education. Most of the children were cared for by relative in the Miami area, but nearly half of the children needed assistance. In response, members of the Catholic Welfare Bureau found temporary shelter and provisions for the children and then found families throughout the United States who were willing to open their homes to the children. Fearing negative reactions and political backlash as US-Cuban relations deteriorated, the movement of these children into the United States was kept out of the media. As a result, few people today know about the effort, known today as Operation Pedro Pan, a name derived from the popular children's story Peter Pan.
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Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio