Operation Pedro Pan and the Exodus of Cuba's Children
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1959 Cuban revolution
1961 literacy campaign
A01=Deborah Shnookal
anti-Castro activists
Author_Deborah Shnookal
Bay of Pigs
Category=JKS
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
CIA's Radio Swan
Cold War propaganda
Conrado Benitez brigades
Cuban Children's Program
Cuban family
Cuban family reunification
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban refugee children
Cuban Revolution
Cuban revolutionary government
Elian Gonzalez
emigration of Cubans
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exile politics
family and communism
family separation
Father Bryan Walsh
gender equality
Miami's Cuban community
nationalization of education
Operation Pedro Pan
Operation Peter Pan
patria potestad
Race Relations
resentment against refugees
revolutionary project
social reforms
unaccompanied minors
Product details
- ISBN 9781683402671
- Weight: 469g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jun 2022
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This in-depth examination of one of the most controversial episodes in U.S.-Cuba relations sheds new light on the program that airlifted 14,000 unaccompanied children to the United States in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Operation Pedro Pan is often remembered within the U.S. as an urgent “rescue” mission, but Deborah Shnookal points out that a multitude of complex factors drove the exodus, including Cold War propaganda and the Catholic Church’s opposition to the island’s new government.
Shnookal illustrates how and why Cold War scare tactics were so effective in setting the airlift in motion, focusing on their context: the rapid and profound social changes unleashed by the 1959 Revolution, including the mobilization of 100,000 Cuban teenagers in the 1961 national literacy campaign. Other reforms made by the revolutionary government affected women, education, religious schools, and relations within the family and between the races. Shnookal exposes how, in its effort to undermine support for the revolution, the U.S. government manipulated the aspirations and insecurities of more affluent Cubans. She traces the parallel stories of the young “Pedro Pans” separated from their families—in some cases indefinitely—in what is often regarded in Cuba as a mass “kidnapping” and the children who stayed and joined the literacy brigades. These divergent journeys reveal many underlying issues in the historically fraught relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and much about the profound social revolution that took place on the island after 1959.
Shnookal illustrates how and why Cold War scare tactics were so effective in setting the airlift in motion, focusing on their context: the rapid and profound social changes unleashed by the 1959 Revolution, including the mobilization of 100,000 Cuban teenagers in the 1961 national literacy campaign. Other reforms made by the revolutionary government affected women, education, religious schools, and relations within the family and between the races. Shnookal exposes how, in its effort to undermine support for the revolution, the U.S. government manipulated the aspirations and insecurities of more affluent Cubans. She traces the parallel stories of the young “Pedro Pans” separated from their families—in some cases indefinitely—in what is often regarded in Cuba as a mass “kidnapping” and the children who stayed and joined the literacy brigades. These divergent journeys reveal many underlying issues in the historically fraught relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and much about the profound social revolution that took place on the island after 1959.
Deborah Shnookal is a research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, La Trobe University. She is coeditor of José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas.
