In the early 1960s, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare created the Unaccompanied Cuban Children’s Program to care for thousands of minors fleeing their country after its 1959 revolution. Colloquially, it was known as Operation Pedro Pan—a reference to the tale about the boy who could fly. Like today, in the 1960s a vocal contingent of naysayers balked at the newcomers: Some feared that there could be communists in the unvetted masses, while others asked why taxpayers should shoulder their financial weight. Yet drowning out these doubtful voices was a larger willingness to accept the children and to affirm the country’s tradition of sanctuary and freedom in doing so.
The more than 14,000 Cuban minors who arrived to the U.S. between 1959 and 1962—then the largest group of unaccompanied children in U.S. history—were among the 250,000 Cubans who trekked across the Florida Straits during that period. In contrast to today’s migrants, the Cubans were cast as refugees and symbols of anticommunist heroism. President John F. Kennedy reminded the country that welcoming refugees was a Cold War imperative. In a letter to Congress, Kennedy heralded the U.S. as “a refuge for the oppressed” with a “long humanitarian tradition of helping those who are forced to flee to maintain their lives as individual, self-sufficient human beings in freedom, self-respect, dignity, and health.”
The Children’s Program resettled young people across the nation in group homes and with foster families throughout the country—from Helena, Montana, to San Antonio, Texas, to Dubuque, Iowa—largely paid for by state and federal coffers. At times, parents did not know where their children had been relocated.
Now in their 60s and 70s, the former Pedro Pans—many of whom are part of Florida’s large Cuban community—find themselves ensconced in the vitriol surrounding today’s migrant children.
The program relied on a vast network of federal and state offices and a long list of nonprofit church groups, child welfare agencies, and Pan American and KLM airlines, which would help procure seats for these children, as well as embassies, parochial schools, and a counterrevolutionary network in both nations. Those without immediate family support in the United States—more than 8,300 children—received care through the Catholic Welfare Bureau and other religious, governmental, and non-governmental organizations.