Operation Peter Pan: The Time the U.S. Abducted 14,000 Cuban Children

Published at: 25/07/2025 05:32 PM

Operation Peter Pan, or Pedro Pan in Spanish, was another open-air crime: the kidnapping of foreign children by the United States, this time, against Cuban children. This disastrous event occurred in 1960, after Fidel Castro assumed power of the Cuban Revolution the previous year and was moving towards a socialist system. This led to clashes with those who opposed it, especially with the Catholic Church. In this tense atmosphere, there was a rumor that the new government would enact a law that would eliminate parental rights (parental authority) and that children would be separated and sent to camps or even to the Soviet Union.

In the book called Operation Peter Pan: Closing the Circle in Cuba, written by Olga Rosa Cortés Gómez and based on the documentary by the writer Estela Bravo, it was detailed that “copies of an alleged law circulated, which were later proven to be false and we asked ourselves: Who was responsible for those rumors that led to Operation Peter Bread? It was the International Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose clandestine radio station Radio Swan , was one of the main sources.”

In that book, the victims' experiences were compiled. One of the interviewees, Álvaro Fernández Pagliery, recounted how his father, Ángel Fernández Varela, who was a key CIA agent shortly before his death, regretted his role in the initiation and development of an operation that affected some 15,000 Cuban children and young people.

U.S. official Wayne S. Smith, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba from 1979 to 1982, stated in an interview years later that “the objective behind the CIA plan was to cause disturbances and confusion in Cuban society. The Catholic Church was also involved, Father Bryan Walsh, from Miami, was the main director of the operation.” Smith claimed to have received a call from the State Department in Washington in December 1960, requesting the Church's assistance, because there were about two hundred Cuban children at his embassy in Havana, whose parents had to send them to the United States.

Smith further said that “because of the State Department's decision not to take responsibility for it. Visas could only be granted if the Church took responsibility and Father Walsh agreed. On January 3, 1961, the U.S. government broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. From then on, its embassy was managed by Swiss diplomats. The State Department issued visa waivers only for children through the Catholic Church, and Father Walsh signed them.”

“This was the pattern for more than two years,” Smith said in the same interview, adding that “during those more than two years, about 14,000 Cuban children and adolescents arrived in the United States alone, without the company of their parents. Why didn't the parents travel too? Because they didn't give them visa waivers. The expectation seemed to be that the United States would soon end Fidel Castro's government and that everything would return to normal life, with his children returning to Cuba. But these illusions were dashed by the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and then with the Missile Crisis of 1962, which meant the suspension of all flights between the two countries. In the meantime, what happened to those thousands of Cuban children? Well, the children were placed in orphanages, camps or offices of the Catholic Church, some were lucky and treated well, but for others it was not like that, some were abused by priests. With the breakdown of relations between the two countries, most of them were separated from their parents, whom, in some cases, they did not see for years and in others, never. I know a lot of these victims, to know them is to feel their pain.”

Testimonials

More than 50 years have passed since an event that had enormous repercussions for many Cuban families: Operation Peter Pan. Between 1960 and 1962, more than fourteen thousand Cuban children and adolescents left alone, without their parents, to the United States, as a result of a clandestine operation.

In 1979, when the couple Estela and Ernesto Bravo were filming their documentary, they had their first approach to the history of the Pedro Pan family through Cuban émigrés. That same year, in New York, they interviewed several people who were victims of these decisions.

Elly Vilano Chovel, an activist based in Miami, firmly stated in an interview in 1999 about her foundation for the Peter Pan children's location: “We were the ones who participated in that story, no one could tell us a story about it. We were the ones who had to recapture the story to leave it to those who came behind, in the hope that they would learn from the pain, from the courage we had, from everything we went through.”

“I was a 14-year-old girl when they separated me from my parents and sent my sister and me to the United States, and I was immediately responsible for the care of my sister, who was two years younger . We came alone, a completely unusual situation for Cuban children or for any child in the world, to leave their family and their land, and to grow up separated from all the things that were familiar to us.”

Vilano says that “when we arrived, they sent us to a camp where the girls and those who were under 12 years old were there, we stayed there for about three and a half months. It was a place where it was very hot. We were twelve girls in one room, we slept in bunk beds, it was like a dream or a nightmare, because we had never separated from our parents. The Cuban family is very united, the parents are very protective, they cut the navel when the child turns eighty-eight years old. I think that parents separated from their children is an incredible, unreal thing, I still don't know how it happened.”

“I think we should talk about Operation Peter Pan or Pedro Pan in Spanish, even if it's painful. Families should never be divided, we have to do something to protect children, to protect families. We have the experience and we know how it feels. My heart bleeds when I see what happens to the children of Kosovo, I can't bear it. And when I see the rafters and other children who lose their parents, my heart bleeds for these children.”

“There has to be an understanding between people. There may be conflicts between governments, but it is not necessary between Peoples.” Elly Vilano Chovel worked actively to locate children. She was the founder of Pedro Pan Group, Inc. , an organization created in Miami. He died in 2007.

Ed Canler, businessman, left Cuba on September 20, 1961. He was placed in an orphanage in Lansing, Michigan. He traveled with his brother. His parents arrived a year later. He visited Cuba for the first time in 1994.

“They uprooted me from Cuba, I think it's like uprooting a young tree from the ground. One can hear how the root breaks and that's how it was. You leave your family, your friends, your school, your country, your language, your roots are broken, stretched and broken. You leave what you have known, culture, friends, customs, everything you leave behind.”

It was not a pleasant experience, but it was bearable, because, for example, I was proud that I was not an orphan. The other little American boys were or their parents had abandoned them, but I had parents and they loved me. For that reason I considered myself special and that's why I refused to go to a foster home, because I wasn't an orphan. On one occasion, a friend and I refused, that Easter weekend, to spend the holidays in those foster homes, and we were the only ones left in the orphanage, we were the only two of us in the orphanage. I'll never forget that.

Alex López, living in Washington, left Cuba on June 4, 1962, when he was twelve years old. He works in the tourism sector.

“We were children, young children, that was the first violation, violating the children's minds and then violating everything, the separation, the outcome, the children who never saw their parents again.” On June 4, 1962, when I was twelve years old, I left Cuba. I was in several camps in Miami, then I was transferred to Ohio to an orphanage in the city of Cincinnati, and then I lived with an American family until my parents' arrival in 1966. I currently run a travel agency.

“I left during the time when there was talk in Cuba that parental authority would be taken away from parents, and my parents were completely convinced that they were going to take their children away from everyone and that the salvation was to send them to the United States . It was done through contact in our town, Matanzas, with the parish of the Catholic Church”.

“I definitely think that all of this was organized by the CIA, that's how it was. At the time, I had no idea, but I have come to be sure that it was something created to destabilize the Cuban government and we were the instrument, and from what I have read it is the CIA and the State Department. How is it possible to pick up a visa to enter the United States in the Catholic Church 's Matanzas parish? , where was the connection? I think it's very clear, it's obvious. Someday the truth will come out. No, I don't think anyone will give up their arm and tell the truth, but we Cubans are aware of what the truth is, even those who today hide and deny it know inside themselves what the truth is.”

Until now, the United States has not taken responsibility for this dark episode in history, tearing apart Cuban families, breaking them up forever and leaving the saddest memories of their childhood.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team