As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, WGN News is showcasing the stories and history of Chicago’s growing Latino community.
CHICAGO — In the 1960s, Chicago played a pivotal role in a secret operation known as Pedro Pan or Peter Pan. The project removed thousands of children from Communist Cuba and brought them to the U.S. where they were placed with temporary foster families.
Operation Pedro Pan is believed to be one of the largest exodus operations of unaccompanied minors in history. By 1962, more than 14,000 minors had been sent to the U.S by their parents.
Margarita García, a Chicago area resident was among the children who found a second family in the Chicago area as she waited to reunite with her mother more than a year later. She estimates that more than 80 children were also sent to the Chicago area.
“When you called me [for the story], I started remembering,” García said. “And it was painful, because I did not want to leave. I wanted to do something in Cuba.”
Instead she did something in the U.S. and became the head of a successful marketing agency.
She was 14 years old when she arrived in the U.S. alone. Her family in Cuba, fearing for her life and worried that she would be indoctrinated into the Communist regime, took a gamble on Operation Peter Pan.
The Catholic Church lead the effort with the U.S. government to gets kids out of Cuba and on American soil. While it gave the children an opportunity at a new life, it separated them from their loved ones.
University of Illinois professor and author Maria de Los Angeles Torres wrote a book about the project called “The Lost Apple.” She was also a “Peter Pan kid” at 6-years-old. So were countless others from famous salsa singer Willy Chirino, to former U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, to the stepfather of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Miguel Bezos.
“The experiences are as varied as the 14,000 children,” de Los Angeles Torres said. “Separating children from their parents is never a good thing. If the children are in danger, the parents are too. So, immigration policies really need to take into account families as a unit and not separate children from their parents.”
Operation Peter Pan ran until October 1962 when commercial travel between Cuba and the U.S. ended.
In December 1965, another program started to reunite families where 90% of the Peter Pan kids, who were as young as four years old when they left Cuba, were reunited with their parents.