Operation Peter Pan ( Operation Peter Pan , Operación Peter Pan or Operación Pedro Pan ) is an operation to remove 14,000 children from revolutionary Cuba in the early 1960s , coordinated by the US government, the CIA, and the authorities of the Catholic Church in Miami . This operation was carried out as part of an ideological campaign against Cuba: Cuban parents, frightened by rumors that the new regime would deprive them of their children, themselves gave permission to take their children to the United States. Also at that time, there were rumors in Cuba that children would be taken away from their parents in order to be sent to labor camps in the Soviet Union . Operation Peter Pan preceded the landing of the 2506 Brigade in the Bay of Pigs. [one]
Cuba Position
On June 12, 2009, Cuban revolution leader Fidel Castro stated that “Operation Peter Pan was a cynical advertising maneuver that Goebbels himself, the Nazi propaganda minister, could envy.” In an article “Goebbels Envy” [2] , published by the Granma and Cubadebate newspapers, Fidel Castro recalled that 14,000 Cuban children were sent to the United States without their parents as a result of a campaign organized in 1960 by the Central Intelligence Agency. “The CIA refuses to declassify 1,500 documents related to Operation Peter Pan under the pretext of national security. This thing smells so bad that they don’t want to uncork it, ”says the Cuban leader.
According to the Cuban side, CIA agents created fake documents about the deprivation of parental rights in secret from the Cuban government, and children taken from their parents were taken to the United States. Cubans living in the United States believed that Cuban authorities were mocking the children and the US government was saving their children.
US Position
According to the American side, Operation Peter Pan was undertaken to rescue 14,000 Cuban children from families who feared or opposed the policy of Fidel Castro who came to power. With the support of the Department of State and the CIA , the Archbishopric of the Roman Catholic Church of Miami housed the evicted children in families in 35 US states.
- Operation Pedro Pan Group , official site
- "Children of Cuba Remember their Flight to America" , NPR
- "Cuban Refugee Children" by Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh
- Pedro Pan Network , hosted by the Miami Herald
- "Cuban Kids in Exile: Pawns of Cold War Politics" , Chicago Sun-Times , 24 August 2003, review of Maria de los Angeles Torres' The Lost Apple
- La envidia de Goebbels . Reflexiones de Fidel Castro. Diario Granma, La Habana, 12 de junio de 2009.
Notes
- ↑ Coup in Honduras - Washington's footprint (see note 5)
- ↑ Fidel Castro: Goebbels envy (inaccessible link) - prensa-latina.cu. Alternative translation: Goebbels would envy - inoforum.ru