"The first complete and comprehensive work on these important, unique programs...An interesting, humane, yet tragic component of the post-1959 Cuban experience and the Cold Ware in general." - Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Amherst College

Fleeing Castro

Operation Pedro Pan
and the Cuban Children's Program

Victor Andres Triay

From late 1960 until the October 1962 missile crisis, 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban children left their homeland, the small island suddenly at the center of the Cold War struggle.  A stirring account of the covert effort to smuggle these children into the United States in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s rise to power, Fleeing Castro brings to the light the humanitarian program designed to care for them once they arrived and the hardship and suffering endured by the families who took part in Operation Pedro Pan.  The author traces this story from its political and social origins in Cuba and describes the roles of the organizations involved, especially the Cuban Children’s Program established by Father Bryan Walsh of Miami.  This history of Operation Pedro Pan - the largest child refugee movement ever in the Western Hemisphere – is presented with the excitement of the international thriller and the pathos of a heartbreaking family drama.

Victor Andres Triay, whose parents left Cuba in 1960 for exile in the United States, is assistant professor of history at Middlesex Community College, Middletown, Connecticut.  He grew up in Miami, Florida.

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This page is a courtesy of  NoCastro.com